Before Jaya could respond, Quinn scooped the dog up into his arms and strode off down the beach with him. He took a deep breath of sea air – the smell of freedom. A pang of guilt told him that the dog only offered a temporary reprieve. He’d have to go back, set the jilted record in its place and face whatever music was coming his way. But not now, not this minute. Once he was far enough away, he nuzzled his face into the dog’s head and whispered,

‘I owe you one buddy. Come on, let’s find you a proper meal.’

2 January 2020

Quinn had said he would be in Dalston in thirty minutes. He hadn’t given Minnie a chance to object, and before she knew it, she was desperately trying to get all the pies finished whilst surreptitiously making herself look less like a dowdy dinner lady in a hairnet.

‘You don’t happen to have a make-up bag here, do you?’ she asked Fleur as casually as possible.

‘Always,’ said Fleur with a wink, pulling out a hefty tote from beneath the front desk.

Minnie rationalised that she wasn’t going to any particular effort; she just wanted to look normal. She would have put on a dab of mascara if she’d planned to meet anyone other than her colleagues today. She didn’t want Leila to see her putting on make-up, though; Leila would read something into it. Unfortunately, this whole covert borrowing and putting on of make-up caused such a distraction that another batch of pies came out of the oven overbaked.

‘See, easily done,’ said Bev triumphantly, as Minnie pulled a tray of dark brown pies from the shelf.

‘They’re fine, I like them like this,’ said Minnie, though she knew these pies wouldn’t pass her usually stringent quality control. Alan had already taken one box of deliveries off on the bike and trailer, and soon Quinn would be here. They didn’t have the manpower or the time to be fussy today.

Leila walked through from the store cupboard with more flat-packed cardboard boxes and a stack of aluminium pie cases.

‘Look at all this packaging,’ Bev sighed, ‘how much of it do you think gets recycled?’

‘Bev, give me a break, we’re feeding the elderly and isolated, we can’t be expected to save the planet too,’ said Leila, dumping all the packaging on the central steel countertop.

‘You know my granddaughter Betty, she’s four, she said to me last week, “Gran, what are you doing to save the planet from snowball warming?” ’

Minnie and Leila laughed.

‘I couldn’t think of anything, isn’t that terrible?’ Bev chewed her bottom lip as she carefully transferred pies from the cooling rack into cases.

‘Bev, I think you’ve got enough to worry about with your forgetfulness, I wouldn’t be getting stressed about global warming too,’ said Leila.