One
It’s A Wrap, Amesbury, Wiltshire, UK
‘Soldiers!’
Twenty-five-year-old Becky Rose raised her head from bread and watched her sister Megan burst through the door of sandwich-making enterprise, It’s A Wrap, looking less than her usually super-composed self. Megan’s channelling-Amanda-Holden red trouser suit was crinkled like she’d been contorted into a magician’s suitcase and locked in there for hours and her usually perfect sleek bob of blonde hair was now more comedian Milton Jones than it was Irina Shayk. Megan was also sweating, Becky noticed. Megan didn’t ever sweat. She barely even glowed getting changed in the heady close-to-rainforest humidity of the leisure centre. Becky, on the other hand – shorter, not blonde, never really feeling confident in body-sculpting all-in-ones – always made a puddle on the floor big enough to give home to a couple of ducks…
Becky stopped spreading the multi-grain loaf and opened her mouth to answer her sister. Her colleague, sixty-three-year-old Hazel, beat her to it.
‘Megan, dear, I know it’s your business and I’m just staff, but we did decide at the crisis meeting last September that it wasn’t economically viable, nor risk-assessment friendly, to start branching out into the breakfast arena.’
‘What?’ Megan asked, looking confused. She blew out a breath, moving through their lunch-making industrial kitchen, to the door of her office. She dumped files she was holding onto her desk before coming back in and facing her employees. ‘I never called it a crisis meeting.’
She had called it a crisis meeting, Becky remembered. Another sandwich-making business had started up just a couple of miles away in Durrington and Megan had been insistent that all their customers were going to leave for the lure of new and exciting… and apparently a company with a budget that allowed them to advertise on local radio. Of course, bankruptcy hadn’t happened, and Becky knew that was because It’s A Wrap offered things their customers couldn’t get anywhere else. The kind of personalised that took time, effort and a little bit of magic. And that was solely down to her.
‘Boiled eggs and soldiers,’ Hazel remarked, mixing up a bowl of their legendary cheese and spring onion filling. The cheese was sourced locally – from cows who all had names which apparently made them exceedingly happy and therefore the producers of award-winning flavoursome cheddar – and the spring onions were grown in the small garden at the back of their premises. ‘I know we really, really considered breakfast baps, but we agreed no one likes a cold sausage and—’
‘Who said anything about boiled eggs?’ Megan asked. ‘God, this radio is far too loud again. I’ve told you before, if it’s up past five on the volume button the yoga people next door come round and complain.’ Gone were the days when Becky and Megan used to make their parents mad with music cranked up to eleven and all the best Girls Aloud moves vibrating the floorboards. Becky couldn’t actually remember the last time they had been to the leisure centre together either…
As soon as Jess Glynne was turned lower, mum-of-triplets, thirty-something Shelley looked up from her tortilla-rolling like she hadn’t spiritually been in the room before, but had now had a deep, seismic awakening. ‘Alright, Megan? How did the meeting go?’
‘Finally!’ Megan exclaimed, arms flailing out. ‘At least one of you listened to me properly before I left.’
‘I was listening to you,’ Hazel said, frowning as she forked the mixture. ‘You said you had to pick up something of Dean’s from the dry cleaner.’
Becky grimaced a little. Dean always needed something dry cleaned. He was the messiest eater she had ever encountered. He could make a mess out of swallowing air. ‘And you just said something about soldiers.’
‘Yes!’ Megan said, pressing buttons on the coffee machine and slipping a tiny espresso cup underneath the spout. ‘But the ones dressed in khaki camouflage. Not the ones made out of toast.’
‘Oh,’ Hazel said like she had suddenly had her eyes opened to online shopping. ‘Well, now I’m confused. Is Dean joining the army? I thought he was quite settled with the conservatory-building people.’
‘The contract!’ Becky exclaimed, suddenly. ‘You got the contract!’ She immediately realised what her sister meant. ‘You got the contract at the army camp!’
‘I got the contract at the camp!’ Megan repeated, all high-pitched and excitable. She picked up the tiny cup and swigged the coffee back in one. ‘I pitched for my absolute life. I’m sure there was a brigadier in the room – well, he looked like he could be a brigadier if he wasn’t already – but they all seemed pretty unmoved at the beginning, even when I mentioned we grow our own vegetables and herbs…’
Becky smiled at her sister’s excitement. It had been Becky’s idea to grow their own vegetables and herbs. Megan hadn’t been on board straightaway, as she was all about costs and bottom lines, until Becky convinced her that quality was more important these days. If customers had enough money to buy sandwiches instead of making them, they would certainly pay an extra few pence for something memorable. And that was where Becky excelled. She made her sandwiches memorable and kept the customers coming back. And it all went completely under Megan’s radar. But, Becky supposed, you couldn’t be all over everything when you were the boss. And Becky was, kind of – a lot – hiding it from her…
‘So, what did you do?’ Shelley asked, adjusting the hairnet they all had to wear over their heads because no one wanted a stray strand in their baguette…
‘I…’ Megan started, grinning from ear to ear.
‘You got your tits out! Didn’t you? You got your tits out!’ Shelley announced at the volume of the roar of an Isle of Man TT motorbike.
‘Shelley!’ Hazel admonished. ‘I thought we agreed on what was acceptable language in the workplace.’
‘Well,’ Shelley began, glove-covered hand pointing while holding a flapping-yet-to-be-filled tortilla. ‘You said the word “bitch” the other day and I didn’t say a thing about that. And you didn’t contribute to the swear box.’ She inhaled with authority. ‘That’s £1 you’ve cost the Women’s Refuge. I hope you can sleep at night… in your king-size… with more springs than… than… those onions.’ She pointed at the container Hazel was mixing up.
Hazel shook her head and sighed. ‘I was talking about my neighbour’s dog’s puppies at the time.’
‘Puppies! Baps! She definitely got her tits out, whatever you want to call ’em!’
Megan clapped her hands like she was a schoolteacher losing control of her children. ‘Ladies, I’m telling a story here.’
‘I want to hear, Megan,’ Becky told her sister. The army camp contract was a big deal. And if it was as large as she was thinking, it could mean employing a new staff member – maybe even two – or starting earlier in the morning… Actually, that last idea didn’t really appeal. Becky didn’t function well unless she had had time for two mugs of coffee and a blast of feel-good on Spotify.
‘I did their assault course,’ Megan announced, pride shining in her eyes, underneath coming-off mascara and wayward liner. It sounded like she really had been put through it. No wonder she was still perspiring.