‘Thanks Fleur, but I am very happy with Greg,’ Minnie said huffily. She took the phone, purposely didn’t check it for messages, and placed it firmly into her apron pocket. Then she went back to busying herself lining tins. The others all stood watching her. ‘Come on guys, stop dicking around, we’ve got serious time pressure here if no one noticed. There are forty orders to be made, baked and delivered today, and if we don’t get them out, we don’t get paid, and if we don’t get paid, none of us will have jobs tomorrow, OK, so can we just … ’

Everyone was quiet. Beverley dropped a tin and it clanged to the floor, rattling around and around on the hard cream tiles. Minnie’s phone pinged loudly in her pocket. She caught Leila’s eye and then turned her back on the room as she checked it. She had a notification on Messenger from Quinn Hamilton. She clicked it open.

‘Minnie, I’m hoping this is you – the first of January girl. Can you call me? There’s something I’d like to discuss. Quinn.’ Then he’d linked his number in the message.

Minnie felt her cheeks flush with heat; he’d tracked her down. She felt relieved, as though the growing bubble of anticipation over whether or not he would be in touch had finally been burst.

‘Who’s that message from?’ Leila asked, her eyes locking onto Minnie like heat-seeking missiles, trained to identify the suspicious glow of embarrassment.

‘No one,’ Minnie said, thrusting her phone back into her apron pocket. ‘Come on, let’s get this batch in.’

Minnie clapped her hands together, creating a cloud of flour in the air and closing down Leila’s interrogation on the subject. Leila put the first tray of pies in the oven, Beverley sweated over the timer, and Alan went to pull the van around front in preparation for loading up the day’s deliveries. Fleur looked at her phone and took selfies of her new hairstyle with various filters.

‘Hey, Minnie, I forgot to say, I need next Tuesday off,’ said Fleur, still snapping away on her phone. ‘My cousin’s mates with Tarantino and he’s in London researching ghost stories on the Underground for some new movie idea. It’s what I did my dissertation on, so I said I’d help him out, show him some of the spookiest sites. Mega-bore, I know.’ Fleur rolled her eyes skyward.

‘Fine,’ Minnie muttered. She didn’t have time to delve into one of Fleur’s fantasies today. Fleur had a habit of telling the most ridiculous tales about why she needed a day off. It was never simply, ‘I’ve got a dentist appointment.’

A few minutes later, Alan bounced back into the kitchen wringing his hands.

‘We have another problem,’ he said, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.

‘What now?’ shouted Leila.