Esther gave Imran the shopping list at eight on Saturday morning, and Imran read it on the outside stair and came back in.
“You’ve put how many grams of mince.”
“Twelve hundred.”
“And you’ve put not the lean, underlined.”
“The lean’s no good for it. It goes dry.” She took the list back and looked at it, in case she had written anything she would have to defend. Potatoes, two and a half kilos, floury. Onions, carrots, a swede if they had one. Butter, the salted. Worcestershire sauce. Strong cheese for the top. Flour, sugar, eggs, a jar of jam, the cheap kind, raspberry. “And a roasting tin. The deepest they’ve got. There isn’t one in this kitchen that’ll do.”
“What are you making?”
“Cottage pie,” she said. “My mother’s. The way she made it for three hundred children every Tuesday for twenty-six years. And a jam sponge after, because…
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