Pear Shaped

‘Cheer up, Lisa,’ says Eddie, who is our desk’s resident optimist. ‘At least he hasn’t asked you to rethink your entire range based on what his girlfriend likes.’

‘No way.’

‘Apparently Mandy thinks our Chicken Korma’s not a patch on Asda’s, and says our Madras tastes a bit spicy …’

Lisa rolls her eyes, grabs her fag packet and marches off.

If I’m meeting James at 8pm, I need two hours prep time which means ducking out of work early – doable if Devron is in one of his endless meetings or on the phone to his barely-legal girlfriend, and if Janelle is walking the floors. Janelle is Devron’s rottweiler PA. Devron’s swollen self-importance comes from the fact that he is Head of Food Development at the UK’s seventh largest supermarket. La-di-da. Janelle’s comes from the fact that she is ‘PA to the Head of Food Development at the UK’s seventh largest supermarket’. If you printed that on a t-shirt, she’d wear it at the weekends.

Janelle and I have had an uncomfortable relationship since my first week here, when I saved a status report in a more logical place on the shared drive than:

S:/a4/janellestott/general/dayfiles/2010/js/Qzgg67/4/ac/dc/Y-me

By creating: S:/status reports, I have created a nemesis for life.

Janelle thinks I am disobedient. I think ‘I don’t care what you think,’ and we chafe against each other like an extra-small belt on a woman who likes custard and cream with her apple crumble. (No prizes for guessing who is who in that metaphor.)

I’m in luck – neither of them is visible and I bolt out the door and jump in a cab home.

Home is a mansion block in Little Venice: misleading. When I hear mansion, I think Krystle Carrington’s sweeping staircase, not a one-bedroom, fifth floor flat with no lift. And Little Venice is pushing it – more like Little A40, within a Tango can’s throw of the Westway. Still, Little’s accurate. And if I walk out of my flat and turn left I can be at Regent’s Canal in two minutes, and at Baker and Spice eating a blueberry muffin in three and a half.

I take the stairs two at a time – work to do! I dump my bag on top of my mail on the doormat and head straight for the bathroom, disrobing en route. I’m the lowest maintenance girlfriend on the planet after six months, but a first date is a first date and I have waited three weeks to see this man; I am going to look my absolute best.

My long brown hair is naturally curly. No one but Laura and my immediate family have seen me with curly hair since I was fourteen and no one ever will and live to write about it. When I blow-dry it carefully it takes an hour. Today: seventy minutes. Make up is light and for once I don’t cut myself shaving my legs.

To the bedroom: it takes me seven minutes just to find tights that don’t have a ladder below the knee. I find one of the holy un-holey pairs, and ferret out my best four-inch black heels from the bottom of my wardrobe. One day I’m going to be the type of woman with Polaroids on the front of her shoeboxes. Probably the same day I win the Nobel for Services to Custard.

My dress is fantastic – clingy and low on top, flirty and loose from the waist, in a deep purple that makes my eyes look very green. £40 from Topshop and it passes for Roland Mouret. I’d never normally think it, let alone say it, but I leave the flat looking great. Well, I look great, the flat looks like I’ve been burgled – twelve pairs of tights decorating the bedroom floor and my work clothes strewn down the hallway. Ben, the caretaker in my block, double takes and wolf whistles as he helps me into my minicab.

I’m insanely nervous and hopeful and excited. I haven’t been this excited about a man since I met Nick five years ago. I try not to think about Nick and instead pick up the phone to call Laura, my dating guru, the happiest person I know. She and Dave have been together a decade and yet they look at each other like they’re on a fourth date.

‘I’m on my way,’ I say.

‘Relax. Be happy, keep it light, don’t talk about Nick. Just remember, you are exceptional and smart and gorgeous and funny and any man would be lucky to have you.’ I nod. I believe at least half this sentence.

‘What if I don’t fancy him? It’s been so long I can’t remember what he looks like.’ Other than that he’s manly and his eyes have a deviant twinkle.

‘If nothing else it’s a free dinner.’

No such thing, as even the biggest fool knows.

My cab pulls up outside the restaurant a perfect ten minutes late. I see James through the glass looking slightly panicked that he’s going to be stood up, but when I walk in, his eyes open wide and his whole face lights up.

‘Remember me?’ I say.

‘You’re even better than I remember,’ he grins.

So is he. Thick brown hair with just a smattering of grey, blue eyes, a large Roman nose. Tall and broad, with a stomach that he wears well. I love big men; I love big noses. He must drink a lot of water, his skin is amazing – he looks late thirties, tops. Not a hint of hair product or jewellery or any of the metrosexual accoutrements that adorn modern girly-boys. As he stands to kiss me, he rests a firm hand on my back. There is such confidence in his gesture – a mix of strength and gentleness – that I feel myself start to blush.

‘I’ve never noticed this place before,’ I say, taking a seat and trying to stay cool as he pours me a glass of red wine. From the outside it looks like nothing special but inside it’s cosy and romantic: dark oak tables, simple silver cutlery, half-burned candles, warm grey walls. Every table is full.

‘An Italian friend introduced me to it.’ I wonder fleetingly if the friend was female.

‘So how’s your friend Rob?’ I say.

‘Sends his love! He got an earful from Lena that night.’

‘He shouldn’t flirt with other women in front of her,’ I say.

‘Rob’s a dog. A feisty girl like you wouldn’t put up with that, would you?’

‘Don’t try finding out.’

‘Not my style – I’m too forgetful to be a love-rat. Always better to be honest.’

‘So if your memory was better you’d be Tiger Woods?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m a one-woman man. I never lie.’

My mother’s voice pops into my head telling my anxious 7-year-old self, ‘An axe murderer doesn’t have axe murderer written on his forehead’.

‘How was your day?’ I ask, taking a sip of wine.

‘Good,’ he says.

‘What did you do?’

‘Had a few meetings about a new project, then had a set-to with Camden Council …’

‘Been dodging your council tax?’ I say.

He laughs. ‘No. I’m advising them on a clothing re cycling website for schools.’

‘Sounds interesting.’ And quite worthy. I hadn’t pegged him as a leftie.

‘They’re using a panel of industry advisors – I’m helping on the digital architecture side.’

‘And how come they picked you, are you really Green?’

He laughs. ‘No. I live in Camden, my background’s in clothing and online. And I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I’m good at what I do …’

He doesn’t sound arrogant, just extremely confident. ‘And what was the row, are you arguing about your fee?’

‘Fee?’ he sounds surprised. ‘They’re not paying. No, I think they should take a more aggressive approach, be more ambitious: sell space on the site to other green brands. It all feeds back into the budget and that means lower taxes.’

‘Ah, so you are trying to get out of paying your council tax!’

‘Good point! Smart woman.’ He grins and hands me the menu. ‘What are we eating?’

‘It all sounds delicious … pappardelle with lamb ragu and rosemary, or steak – I do love rosemary …’

‘I was thinking tortellini or steak. The pasta here is great …’

‘I’ll have pasta,’ I say. He looks at me intently and smiles.

‘Me too. And something healthy on the side … let’s see …’

Call me shallow but I think I fell for James Stephens when he ordered the steak as our side dish.

We are a game of snap.

We both love chips with 2 parts ketchup: 1 part mayo, and think brown sauce is the devil’s own condiment.

We both hated our fifth-year maths teachers, and were the second naughtiest in class.

We both only recycle what’s easy to recycle, and think the idea of compost in your kitchen is a bridge too far.

We both have one parent who selfishly died on us before we hit puberty, and one parent who remarried and moved abroad (Victor Stephens, Switzerland/Ruth Klein, California.)

We both suspect Ricky Gervais will never do anything as funny as The Office ever again, and that he’s probably just like David Brent in real life.

We both have a 39-year-old brother (Edward/Josh) who was/is our mother’s favourite, who we see once a year, and who is a reformed playboy, lives in a hot country (Singapore/America) and drives a Porsche (red/navy). Snap x 6.

We both believe that drink drivers who kill should get life, and never be allowed behind the wheel again.

We both feel that getting married in one’s twenties usually doesn’t work out, and that we both know ourselves pretty well by now.

We both think the greatest pleasure in life is to eat and drink slightly too much and then have a little lie down.

We are both narcissists and agree that our evening has been exciting, and that the person sitting opposite us is deeply alluring and fun and we would like to see them again, very soon.

My friend Pete and I are at his local cinema, sitting in overpriced armchairs waiting for a Norwegian vampire movie to start. Having checked the coast is clear, I remove the family pack of Revels I’ve smuggled in under my jacket. I’ve paid £14 for this seat, if they think I’m paying another £6 for their Valrhona chocolate buttons they can think again.

Pete is a serial commitment-phobe. When we were fifteen, Pete and I had a heated dry-hump on the floor of David Marks’s parents’ guest bathroom. Pete has never gotten over the fact that I wouldn’t let him touch me up when I’d allowed David Marks a brief foray the previous summer, and in a tiny part of Pete’s still-teenage mind I am The One That Got Away. If this were a rom-com movie, I’d be played by Kate Hudson and Pete would be played by someone appropriately dreamy and thick-looking – Ryan Reynolds, perhaps – and we’d end up together. That is not how this story ends.

‘Did you kiss him?’ Pete always wants full details of my scant sex life, which is nowhere near as prolific, athletic or incessant as his. Pete’s phone is full of picture-messages from various twenty-something actresses and stylists gazing over their own naked shoulders at their bottoms reflected in Venetian mirrors. These photos make me feel depressed and prudish and make Pete feel moderately aroused and then bored.

‘Briefly, as he put me in a taxi.’

‘Old fashioned!’

‘Old full stop. Did I tell you he’s forty-five? He doesn’t look it or act it. He has way more energy than me.’ I have never dated anyone this much older. One of my few memories of my father was blowing out the candles with him on his forty-fifth birthday cake, when I was six. Forty-five is properly grown up. It is dad aged. Yet James radiates vitality – he is a man in the prime of his life. His expression seems to say ‘I am going where the good times are.’ I want to go with him.

‘You’d like him, Pete. You should meet him.’ If he sticks around. ‘How’s your love life?’

Pete shrugs. ‘I’m seeing one of the PR girls at work, I’m not sure about her …’

‘What is it this time?’

‘Don’t know. She’s gorgeous but she’s a bit … she’s never heard of Bladerunner.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Try dating someone your own age. Or IQ.’

‘Why would I want to do either of those things?’ he says, smiling as he shoves a handful of contraband Revels into his mouth as the trailers start.

James and I are three lightning hours in to our second date, stretching out our meal, the last ones in the restaurant. We are in Curry Paradise, my local, my treat. The manager is hovering, the waiter is hoovering. I wish we’d met earlier; I don’t want to go home. I want to keep talking, and keep looking at the way this man smiles at me when I do, with pure delight in his eyes.

‘So, how on earth is a girl like you single, Sophie Klein?’

I’ve made bad choices. I’ve been unlucky. Because it’s really hard out there.

‘I don’t know.’ I say. ‘Why are you single, James Stephens?’

Tall. Charismatic. Good at your job. Such a thick head of hair. Manly: strong features – strong nose, strong jaw. That look in his eye that says ‘take it or leave it, but you’d be better off taking it’. Why has no one snapped this man up in the last twenty years?

He shrugs quickly. ‘Just haven’t met the right person yet.’

‘You’re not secretly married, are you?’

He chuckles and his hand comes up and rubs his cheek. ‘No.’

In poker that would be a tell. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure,’ he laughs, but his fingers pause briefly near his mouth.

‘Ever been engaged?’

He picks up his beer and takes a long sip, then nods slowly.

‘Who to?’

‘A girl called Lacey Macbride.’

Ironic. ‘How long ago was that?’

‘I was nineteen. She grew up round the corner from me in Wanstead. My first true love. Broke my heart, the Jezebel,’ he laughs.

‘What happened?’

He shrugs and picks up his glass again. I imagine classic childhood sweetheart territory.

‘Any other ex-fiancées knocking about?’

A tiny flicker of discomfort passes through his expression. He nods very slowly. ‘Celine.’

‘Engaged to her as well? How many ex-fiancées do you have?’

‘Just the pair, don’t need a hat-trick,’ he says.

Better than two ex-wives, I suppose.

‘Long relationship?’

‘Three years. Can you pass the spinach?’ He smiles softly, trying to change the subject.

‘How long ago did you split up?’

‘Four years.’

Okay. Definitely beyond statute of limitations for a rebound.

‘Are you on good terms?’ Are you still in love with her?

He pours us both more beer, filling his glass almost to the rim. ‘She went back to Paris, married an Argie. She’s a Wolford model….’ He turns to the waiter, ‘Could we get two more beers, please?’

‘Wolford tights?’

‘And stockings …’

The news that his long-term ex is a French hosiery model has put me right off my chicken balti. I put my fork down.

‘Why do girls always have a problem with that?’ he says, his face crinkling in confusion. I don’t like that word ‘always’.

‘I don’t. It’s just … a man who dates models is … a certain type.’ The type who likes women with abnormally tall, slim bodies. Not my type. Mind you, he’s the type taking me out to dinner.

‘Celine was lovely but totally insecure. Anyway, I’m over beautiful women, they’re all mad.’ He grins, but I do not like those sentences at all. ‘I’m looking for a soul mate. A woman I can talk to.’ That’s a bit better. ‘A wife,’ he says, fixing me with an intense look. His pale blue shirt is making his eyes a deeper blue than usual tonight. I catch myself staring.

‘Tell me something else,’ I say, picking up my fork.

‘What do you want to know?’

Why you’d mention that your ex is a leg model? Was that information strictly necessary?

And how a sock-seller procures that type of trophy girlfriend anyway?

Maybe her legs were perfect but she had a face like a monkfish. I make a note to google her.

‘His ex is a leg model,’ I say to Laura. I’m treating her to an Ottolenghi brunch near her flat in Islington to celebrate my forthcoming end-of-fiscal £100 bonus. When I say treating her, I mean I have already eaten my egg and bacon pie, and have started on her blueberry ricotta pancakes before she’s even halfway through.

‘So?’

‘Well … her figure must be perfect.’

She tuts. ‘You are one of the best women I have ever met, and I don’t give a flying fuck who’s got a perfect body and who hasn’t. It’s not like he’s perfect looking …’

I know Laura didn’t warm to him the night we met him – she thought he was overly confident and slightly shifty. She has some random psychological theory that this actually masks some deep fear within himself.

I do trust her instincts, she is invariably on the nail; however, in this instance, she is being overly protective of me. She spoke to James for all of ten minutes. I know if she spent any time with him, she’d like him.

‘I suppose models are usually quite vain, aren’t they …’ I say, pondering whether to order the pecan praline Danish, then imagining Celine’s thighs, and ordering a sparkling water instead.

‘Are you kidding? Do you not remember Washington Avenue, New Year’s Eve, 1993? Ladies and gentleman, we bring you Ericc and Thor …’

I throw my head back with laughter. How could I ever forget? Laura and I had spent the night with two male models we’d met in a bar Mickey Rourke used to own. We were so overexcitable, having been introduced to Mickey Rourke by some ageing gallery owner who was lusting after our 18-year-old flesh, that we’d been swept like a wave into The Miami Beach Fashion Awards.

‘Ericc with two ‘c’s. God, he was so ridiculously chiselled. That was the most boring eight minutes of my life,’ I say, remembering his pillow talk, detailing his awesome nutritional supplements: chromium picolinate – super-awesome, apparently.

‘I rest my case,’ says Laura.

At the end of our last date James said ‘I’ll be in touch.’

That was six days ago: no call, no text. I’m scared it’s because I kissed him for a full twenty minutes outside the curry house, and maybe he thought that was tacky or overly eager. Or perhaps it’s because I made that silly comment about him dating models, which made me look insecure and jealous.

Hmm, time to make myself feel more insecure and jealous. Excellent idea.

I google image search for ‘Celine’ ‘Wolford’ ‘model’ ‘French’ ‘leg’ and immediately come up with over 700 photos of her. In none of them does she remotely resemble a monkfish.

I know I should stop myself right now. She’s married. What difference if she’s beautiful or not anyway? He is dating me.

Okay, I click on the first image. Relief. Dark blond hair, brown eyes, generic Disney features, looks like she eats a lot of yoghurt and apples. Swiss looking. Maybe she’s from the Alps. Second photo, a close up. Even though she’s smiling, she looks fearful, like she’s just found out her currency’s in free fall. Third photo, taken last year at the Cannes Film Festival. That must be the Argie husband. He’s corpulent. Mid-fifties. Oligarch-y. She is Botoxed to the hilt, skeletal, clutching his arm with a jewelled hand.

It’s not until the fourth photo that I see her in suspenders and a thong and start to feel in any way envious.

Her legs are perfect, long, shapely, amazing. Of course they are. She owns two Wolford legs. That’s her job. I decide it’s high time I get back to my job.

I go to the C-drive and click on the kitchen sample report for my latest trifles.

Besides. She’s married now. And not to James.

Ah, good: thicker, more even deposit of custards with 38% stabilised whipping cream …

And just because her legs are amazing doesn’t mean she’s smart or kind or funny.

Let’s see … uneven almond spread rectified, shelf life now at seven days … Devron will like that …

Just because her legs are amazing doesn’t mean she isn’t also smart and kind and funny.

Get a grip – he’ll call. And if he doesn’t? So be it. They are not together; she is irrelevant. He is dating you. Or is he …?

I’m going to call him because if he likes me it won’t matter, and if he doesn’t, it’ll expedite the ending of the relationship. I don’t want this loop of crap in my head; I have a big Phase 4 meeting in two days that I need to prepare for. Call him: then it’s done, either way.

I dial his number before the sensible voice can stop me. It’s a foreign ring tone. I hang up immediately.

He hadn’t mentioned he’d be going away. Why not? He’s flown to Paris! The Alps!

Enough. I delete James’s number from my phone and from my dialled list. I am not going to do this to myself. Nick called me at least once a day from the first day we met. He loved me and he could show it. He never made me feel insecure, not once. Bored, enraged, despairing, sure. But insecure? Never.

If James Stephens wants me, he’s going to have to make a lot more effort.

The average human touches their nose dozens of times a day. In this sole regard, Devron is a well-above-average human. He touches his nose at least three times a minute. Sometimes he gives it little tugs and pinches. Sometimes he fiddles with the end and you can tell he’s trying to fish something out surreptitiously. Sometimes he holds, squeezes, sniffs loudly and wipes his hands on his trousers. Eddie and I always play ‘Devron Nose Bingo’ – whoever is the first to observe twenty nose manoeuvres in any given meeting and whisper ‘wanker’, wins a luxury hot chocolate from the canteen.

The worst ever time that Devron touches his nose though, is in a Phase 4 meeting.

A Phase 4 meeting is the final stage in taking a new range to market. Phases 1 to 3 involve briefing suppliers, tasting initial product ideas, doing shelf life, transport and safety tests, and evolving the products accordingly.

Phase 4 meetings are the reason why I will never leave this job voluntarily – you’ll have to cart me away in a straitjacket.

At a Phase 4, you basically sit around like a bunch of Roman emperors dressed in Next suits instead of togas, and eat the entire range – whether that’s 12 fools and 8 trifles, like my meeting today, or Eddie’s meeting last week where I sampled 23 different curries in an hour. Of course, you don’t eat the whole dish – you just take a bite, and the majority of people ‘spit in the cup’. Yup, they gob out their food in a paper cup, like a Bulimics Anonymous Christmas party.

I never ever ‘spit in the cup’. It’s not about etiquette. Many women, and even some men, manage to spit quite discreetly, so you barely notice the person next to you opening their mouth to eject a half-chewed lump of naan bread. No, I refuse to ‘spit in the cup’ because I think it’s cheating. Any food that goes in my mouth goes in my stomach. Admittedly, I also see it as a badge of honour – there were six men and four women at Eddie’s Phase 4, and I was the only one to make it through all 23 curries without spitting. It’s just as well I only go to the Phase 4s that are mine, Lisa’s or Eddie’s, and that I walk in to work every day.

The official rules of a Phase 4 are as follows:

 you change forks with every dish you taste

 you don’t double-dip your fork in a communal dish

 you pretend you’re only eating as a duty, not getting real pleasure from the food, for fear you’ll be taxed on it as a perk

Devron ignores all three rules and invariably digs in to the food with the hand that has just been inside his nasal cavity.

Whenever I’m arranging a Phase 4, I make sure to order two of everything – one for Devron and one for everyone else. However, this rarely stops Devron sitting in front of two identical cherry pies, flitting between the two with his sucked fingers. Fingers/nose/fingers/nose. Once Devron has touched a pudding I can’t eat that pudding, even if I try eating it from the other side. I just can’t. I’m pretty sure one day I’ll flip and pie Devron in the face, or ram a churro up his nose and kill him.

Today I pop down to the fridge to fetch the samples my supplier, Appletree, has sent in. I love working with my contact there, Will Slater, not least because he always sends me down a box of custard-filled éclairs he’s had the head chef make specially.

Zoe, our fridge manager, tells me I’m looking a bit skinny, she prefers me with curves. If I ever decide to date a woman it will be Zoe. She has Pantene hair, great Patti Smith t-shirts and a super-fast wit, and above all else, she has an even better job than I do: FRIDGE MANAGER.