Then, in the third year, Martin asked for the recipe.

“It's for a technical audit,” he said. “Food safety. All our suppliers have to give us their full recipes. Every ingredient, every amount, every step. It's standard.”

“Martin, it's my grandmother's recipe. It's the only thing that makes us different.”

“It'll be kept completely confidential. For safety purposes only. No recipe, no contract, Ellie. I don't make the rules.”

I didn't trust him. But I had forty staff and a mortgage on my house.

So I asked for one thing first. A letter, signed by Greenfields, promising that the recipe would only be used for food safety checks. Nothing else.

Martin sighed down the phone like I was being silly. But a letter arrived a week later, signed by him.

I put it in the blue box.

Then I typed up Grandma Polly's recipe. Every detail. The diced swede. The chunks of beef skirt. The white pepper. The exact pastry. And the twenty-one crimps.

I sent it to Greenfields' technical team.

Six weeks later, Martin rang.

“Ellie,” he said, “we're reviewing our bakery range. I'm afraid Pascoe's is being delisted. You've got two weeks.”

“Two weeks? Why?”

“Just a business decision,” he said. “Nothing personal.”

Four months later, I was standing in aisle nine, counting twenty-one crimps.