Fleur had come to work for them two years ago. It had just been Leila and Minnie back then, and when the business first got busy they needed help taking orders. Fleur had come to the interview with a proposal. She’d explained she was learning to code but couldn’t do it at home because her mother believed the internet gave people asthma – she wouldn’t allow a Wi-Fi router in the house. She said she would work four days a week, but they’d only need to pay her for three, as long as she could do her coding course during the downtime.

They gave her the job as it had sounded like a good deal. In retrospect, Minnie wondered whether any of the stuff about Fleur’s mother or the coding course had been true. Fleur never mentioned her parents, never appeared to go home, and still seemed to be doing this six-month coding course two years later. Leila had a theory that Fleur was actually London’s most glamorous tramp, who simply wanted somewhere warm to sit and scroll through social media.

‘Is Leila here yet?’ Minnie asked.

‘No,’ said Fleur, taking the lid off her cappuccino and peering into it as though hoping to find it might be soy milk after all. ‘Oh, and there’s been a dis-arse-terrrr.’

‘What?’ Minnie spun around to look at her. ‘What disaster?’

‘Beverley burnt the pies.’ Fleur gave a slow, swan-like shrug.

‘She didn’t!’

Minnie rushed past the reception desk into the kitchen beyond. Beverley was standing red-faced in her white chef’s coat, leaning over a countertop full of pies. They were lined up in a colour spectrum ranging from lightly charcoaled through to deeply incinerated. Minnie’s jaw fell as she plonked the cardboard tray of coffees down on the countertop and took in the scene of devastation before her.

‘What happened?’ she asked softly.

‘I think these ones are salvageable,’ said Beverley, pointing at the left-hand side of the counter. Beverley was fifty-nine but looked older, with her ruddy skin and soft, jowly face.

‘How … how did you burn so many?’ Minnie asked, shaking her head in disbelief. At least thirty of the forty pies in front of her were too burnt to sell.

‘I came in early to get a bump on things,’ said Beverley, eyes wide with remorse. Her wiry black hair was escaping in tufts from beneath her hairnet, lending her a mad-professor vibe. ‘Me and the oven have not been getting along.’

‘Are these the pies Leila spent the whole of New Year’s Eve making?’ Minnie asked, pulling the iron bar stool up to the large steel countertop. She picked at one of the burnt crusts and the black pastry crumbled beneath her touch. ‘What happened to the timer we bought you? The pies always take exactly forty-two minutes.’