Leila glanced up from her screen. Minnie had given her the full Quinn debrief over the phone on Saturday. Well, perhaps not the full debrief. She’d told her about meeting Tara and breaking the lamp. She’d said Quinn was good company, but the type of guy who was friendly with everyone. She hadn’t mentioned the ‘owls waking up in her stomach’ feeling or that thoughts of him kept popping up unannounced in her head.

‘He was very helpful,’ said Minnie. ‘But no one’s dumping anyone. Besides, he has a very pretty and successful girlfriend.’

‘Probably not as pretty as me, though, let’s be honest,’ said Fleur, framing her face with her hands and fluttering her eyelashes at Minnie.

The phone started ringing in reception.

‘Fleur, can you answer that?’ Leila shouted.

Fleur sighed and gave a little pirouette as she flounced back to the tedious task of doing her only job.

The kitchen soon returned to its normal routine. A smell of pastry and positivity filled the air. Alan de-clamped the van and headed out with deliveries. Fleur made phone calls to customers, confirming orders for the next few weeks.

‘So, no news from the love twin?’ Leila asked quietly, once the others were out of earshot. Her curiosity about Quinn clearly trumped her annoyance about Minnie’s response to the pie order.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that. It’s not a thing.’

‘Oh, it’s a thing, trust me.’

‘Look, he’s a nice guy, he helped us out with the car, that’s it.’

Was that it? It had ended so awkwardly between them. She’d sent Quinn a text on Saturday, thanking him again for his help and apologising for breaking his mother’s lamp. He’d replied a few hours later saying, ‘No problem’. Two words. No problem. What did that mean? No prob-lem about the lamp? No problem about helping? No problem about her having a go at him for something that clearly wasn’t his fault? Minnie thought she’d got beyond the stage of dissecting the meaning of texts from men. Clearly she had not.

‘You haven’t spent all weekend working out how you’re going to see him again, then?’ Leila said with a knowing look.

‘Leila, don’t you have some Excel spreadsheet you need to create?’ said Minnie, crossing her eyes at her.

‘I do. I’m going,’ Leila said, picking up her laptop and snapping it shut. ‘I’m going to work in the coffee shop around the corner; too many delightful distractions here.’