Caroline likes to make gifts. Sometimes it’s chocolates, sometimes biscuits, occasionally a bottle of sloe gin, but more often than not, it’s pickles.

Her boss, Andy, loves nothing more this a burger, medium rare, with a couple of beers on the side, and although he doesn’t know it yet, Caroline loves Andy so, for his birthday, she has big plans.

She’s found a recipe online. It’s simple – just sugar and vinegar, mainly, but Caroline likes to put her own special touch on stuff – it’s why she took calligraphy classes, so she could make immaculately neat labels.

But for Andy, her plan for personalisation is different. Truth be told, he probably won’t even notice it. She’s certainly not planning to reference it on the list of ingredients.

Normally, she has her groceries delivered, but for Andy, she goes to the supermarket. She chooses carefully – she wants something that’s a good size, sure, but this is for Andy, not for her, so the colour, the firmness, the freshness – all of these things are more important than the length, or even the girth.

She thinks about Andy while she fucks herself with it – thinks about his big hands wrapped around a nice, juicy burger, or clutching a bottle of beer. She comes in just a few minutes, but that’s in keeping with the quick and easy part of the recipe, she supposes.

Then she chops it, douses it with the vinegar and sugar and gets to work decorating the jar.

Pickled cu-cum-bers, she notices, as she carefully spells it out. She’s never spotted that before, but from now on she’ll never see that word any other way.