‘Have you got lots of kids?’ said Issy, genuinely curious.

‘Oh, no,’ said Austin. Now he really wished she hadn’t called him at home. He had the spiel off pat, but he hated giving it to strangers. ‘Uh, Darny’s my little brother. My … uh, well, we lost our parents, and there’s a big age gap, so, um, it’s just me looking after him. Boys together, you know! We get along pretty well.’

Issy immediately wished she hadn’t asked. Austin sounded jaunty enough rolling off his spiel; he’d obviously got it down to just a few words. But of course, she couldn’t begin to contemplate the depths of agony beneath the words. There was a silence on the phone.

‘Oh,’ Issy said finally, just as Austin said, ‘So,’ to cover the gap. They both gave a little laugh.

‘Sorry,’ said Issy. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘Not at all,’ said Austin. ‘Perfectly normal question. Sorry the answer is a bit odd. I used just to say yes, he was my little boy …’

Austin didn’t know why he was telling her this. It was strange, but there was something warm and friendly about her tone.

‘But then I’d get lots of people saying he was so like me, and where was his mum and so on, so it just got more complicated in the end.’

‘Maybe you should print it on your business cards,’ said Issy, then bit her tongue in case that was in bad taste.

‘Oh, I should,’ said Austin, smiling. ‘Definitely. Austin Tyler, dad-stroke-brother. Stroke animal wrangler.’

Issy found herself smiling down the phone. ‘I’m sure the bank would be fine with that.’

There was a silence.

‘So anyway,’ she said, getting hold of herself, ‘I know we have to wait for the official letter and everything, but I’ve got the keys now and I’m really anxious to start hiring staff and I’m sure it’s totally confidential and you’re not allowed to tell me so I’ll have interrupted your bath time for nothing so …’

‘Are you going to apologize again?’ said Austin, amused.

‘Uh … well, yes I was.’

‘Come on! What kind of a hard-headed businesswoman are you?’

Issy smiled. For a banker, he was almost flirtatious.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Could you possibly give me a heads-up as to whether the bank is going to take my account?’

Of course he knew he wasn’t supposed to, and it wasn’t officially rubber-stamped yet. But she’d caught him at a vulnerable moment, and he could already hear a lot of noise coming from the other side of the door. And he could never resist a nice-sounding girl.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely not supposed to tell you this. But seeing as you asked very nicely, I can say that yes, I have recommended that we open an account for your business with our business.’

Issy jumped up and down and clapped her hands.

‘The board just have to take my recommendation.’

Issy calmed down.

‘Oh. Will they do that?’

‘Do you doubt me?’

She smiled down the phone.

‘No.’

‘Good. Congratulations, Miss Randall. It appears you’re in business.’

Issy hung up after thanking Austin a million times, and danced around the room, emboldened once more. Austin hung up and looked slightly quizzically at the phone. Was he imagining things, or had he just quite enjoyed taking a business call? That wasn’t like him at all.

‘Austin! Austin!!! My infantry thinks it might need to do a pee in the bath!’

‘Wait!’

Pearl was sitting under the blankets with Louis. It was freezing outside; freezing. A tiny hint of spring at the end of February had proved to be a cruel chimera. Now a howling gale was blowing, the wind funnelling down the tunnels and blowing across the wide open spaces of the estate, making an unsettling amount of noise. Their last combined electricity/gas bill had been absolutely dreadful, so they were huddling together in front of a plug-in fire. Louis had a temperature – he fell sick so easily. She didn’t know why. He was mildly asthmatic and seemed prey to absolutely every bug that came along. In cheerier moments she suspected it was because he was so convivial and social; he hugged everyone and caught whatever they had. At other times she wondered, deep down, if he ate enough of the right foods, was outdoors in enough fresh air and greenery to build the proper immunities, or if he just spent too long inside, breathing stale air. She’d told her mum not to smoke indoors, and she did her best, but when it was as cold as today, it felt cruel to make her stand on the stoop, exposed to the passing gangs of teenage boys who would shout and holler at anyone standing alone and looking even remotely vulnerable.

Her phone rang, with a number she didn’t recognize. Pulling Louis’s sweaty brow to her and giving him a swift kiss, she answered it, turning down the volume on the television.

‘Hello?’ she said, as cheerily as she could manage.

‘Uh, hello,’ came a timid voice on the other end of the phone. ‘I don’t know if you remember me …’

‘Patisserie Valerie!’ said Pearl, pleased. ‘Of course I remember you. And that course was so awful, did you go back?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Issy, happy to hear Pearl so glad to hear from her. ‘In fact, though, the course did work. Because it inspired me to go and do something quite different and actually, you know, network. So, uh, this is me. Networking.’

There was a long pause.

‘Pearl,’ said Issy, ‘this may sound like a stupid question. It’s just an on-the-off-chance kind of a thing. But I’m slightly up to my neck in it, and I just wondered if you knew the answer to a question. Do you know how many kilos of coffee a coffee shop should be getting through in a week?’

Not only did Pearl know the answer to this (‘One kilo is about a hundred cups, so you’d look to start with about six, move up to eight’), but, having being trained by a major coffee chain as a barista (she’d had to give it up though; she couldn’t find childcare to cover the antisocial hours), she knew lots of other coffee-related stuff too. She knew how to tell whether coffee was overripe or burnt, what beans worked best at different times of day, how long you could store coffee and how, and she had her food hygiene certificate. The more she talked – and she could certainly talk – the more excited Issy became. They agreed to meet up the next day.