Pear Shaped

This is not just any fridge. This is a fridge the size of a WHSmiths at a major railway station. If it wasn’t quite so cold I would seriously think about living in this fridge. Rows upon rows of shelves, floor to ceiling, stacked with samples of everything we sell and everything we’re thinking about selling, and everything our competitors sell. Zoe calls it ‘Paradise Frost’. I can never think of anything funny that rhymes with fridge in response.

And then there’s the freezer! While I daydream about moving in to the work fridge, I have nightmares about being locked in the work freezer. Our fifteen ice cream variants would only keep me diverted for the first hour or so, and then the thought of a slow icy death with nothing to eat but Coated Protein (that’s fish fingers to you) – death, there is thy sting.

‘Zoe, I can see the fools, but where are the trifles? Zoe?’ I walk through the fridge and back out, and find Zoe deep in the freezer, headphones on, sorting through a stack of giant frozen turkeys.

‘Huh?’

‘Didn’t Appletree send in the trifles and fools on the same courier?’

‘New system … Div-ron’s making us file by packaging colour …’

‘What?’

‘Ridiculous, worse than organising your books by colour …’

‘No, that is really bloody ridiculous. They’re all in different colours according to the fruit.’

‘Don’t worry, babe, I’ve got you covered. Aisle G, shelf 3 on the left – your éclairs are there too. He’s checking in on me this week, but as soon as he gets bored I’ll switch back … man, he is one giant fucking dickhead …’

I load two of every pudding into a giant orange crate and schlep it round to Tasting Room 12.

There’s only three of us attending today – Devron, Ton of Fun Tom and me. I lay sixty spoons, a stack of paper plates, and three glasses of water, then arrange the fools and trifles in the most ramshackle, non-colour co-ordinated order I can think of.

I wait for Devron and Tom to arrive. It’s quarter past, they’re late … Neither of them answers their phone. At half past, I head back up to my desk and find Devron and Janelle laughing at a website that features a selection of goats wearing jumpers.

‘Are you coming to the Phase 4, Devron?’ I say.

Janelle intercepts. ‘I had to move it to next month, I just sent you an email a minute ago.’

‘There’s twenty products that need sign off today, launch date is May,’ I say.

‘Sophie, I’m sure you can push back on suppliers, we give them enough business,’ says Devron impatiently.

‘Fine.’ I go back to the fridge and call up my friends from various departments and tell them to come to Room 12, immediately. Zoe puts the kettle on and six of us eat fruit trifles, chocolate trifles and eight types of fool and take it in turns to do impressions of Devron at the point of orgasm with a frozen turkey.

Afterwards, I return to my desk and a flashing light on my phone. A text message. From James!

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ Ah, the relief.

I know I should be cooler – he’s left it till Thursday afternoon to ask me out for a Friday night – but I believe in momentum and if I don’t see him soon, I fear I’m going to lose it.

We agree to meet at the Dean Street Townhouse at 9pm. It occurs to me that I have no idea what country he’s texting from.

I wonder if he’d have contacted me if I hadn’t called him.

What does that matter now?

On Friday, I run out of the door at 5.54pm. I’m sure I see Janelle make a note of this in her Book of Snitch. I consider waiting for the bus. I have only three hours’ turnaround time before I’m due back in Soho and an über-emergency-face-and-body-makeover to perform. On Tottenham Court Road I hail a cab, even though I really can’t afford it.

Last night I did as much of the home makeover as I could bear to. I washed my sheets, hoovered for the first time in a fortnight, dried the sheets, and attempted to tidy the piles of recipes, post-it notes and newspapers that adorn any horizontal space in my flat.

I then tried to re-arrange my bathroom products to convey the fact that I am a natural beauty who doesn’t sweat or have body hair: hide all make-up, my razor and deodorant, bring out the cheapest, simplest £3 Superdrug moisturiser (it’s very good, actually).

I am not a total sloven, just messy. My bathroom is always clean, and my kitchen is spotless. I love to cook, and this kitchen brings me more joy than any other room in the flat. Although it’s only Ikea, it’s fairly gorgeous. White units, a grey worktop, a pale yellow glass splashback. The only thing I did in the kitchen last night was pop the bottle of beautiful white wine that Maggie Bainbridge gave me for Christmas into the fridge, just in case.

It’s 6.24pm. Two hours and twenty before I have to leave the house to meet him. I perform all ablutions as carefully as possible but I’m in such a panic that I cut my leg shaving. This happens to me about once every three shaves. I’m clumsy and impatient, but I have the added bonus of having Factor XI deficiency, a harmless but irritating disorder I inherited from my dad that means when I bleed, I take a while to stop bleeding. I once cut myself shaving before I had to get on the Eurostar to Paris for a choux pastry seminar and by the time I got to the Champs Elysees, I had a shoe full of blood. Pas très chic.

It will bleed for at least twenty minutes now, but I don’t have time to sit with my leg up and wait for it to stop, so I end up Sellotaping a wodge of toilet paper to my ankle while I go about drying my hair, flossing, and moisturising.

7.59pm, I remove my makeshift tourniquet and my ankle proceeds to drip blood like a slow-leaking tap. I was planning on wearing tights anyway – it’s freezing out – but I can’t just put them over the wound. I settle for two giant plasters and take a spare pair of tights in my handbag – I’ll have to pop to the loo in the restaurant as soon as I get there and change these, and clean up the blood stains from my foot … sexy stuff.

I put on my soft, slinky Topshop black dress and notice with a hiccup of delight that it has never been this loose on me. Final touches of make-up, perfume, a spritz of fig room spray in the hall, and I’m off.

James is sitting nursing a gin and tonic, chatting to the barman, when I walk in. He grins when he sees me and the barman gives me the once-over too. I have made an effort – high heels, earrings, the hair is behaving well. Or maybe the barman checks me out because there aren’t that many younger women in here – the clientele seems to be 60% gay men, and the rest are middle-aged fashion and media types sporting faux spectacles, frowns and unseasonal tans.

‘Have a drink,’ says James, handing me the cocktail list.

‘I don’t need that, I’ll have an Old Fashioned please, Maker’s Mark,’ I say to the barman, who winks his approval.

James immediately rests his hand on my knee. ‘A girl who knows what she wants.’

‘Well, it took me years of research in the field, but I finally found a drink that I love.’

‘And you never drink other cocktails?’

‘Sometimes. But an Old Fashioned has all the qualities I look for in my booze. Not too sweet, the right size, pretty hard for a barman to mess up….’

‘And what about men, what qualities do you look for in a man?’

I stop myself saying ‘not too sweet, the right size, pretty hard …’ -it’ll sound cheap. Instead I run through the essential criteria that twenty years of dating has reduced me to:

Kind

Funny

Clean

Not mentally ill

Tall, big nosed, and a thick head of hair is a bonus. James appears to tick most of these boxes so far (you can’t judge mentally ill after just two dates). If I say anything on this list, I’ll look too keen.

‘I’m looking for a grown-up,’ I say.

He makes to get up from the bar and leave.

‘And someone thoughtful. What about you?’ I say.

‘I’m looking for someone warm and smart. Feisty. Reasonably attractive …’ he grins.

I wonder if his definition of ‘reasonably attractive’ can encompass a woman with a few stretch marks and a light smattering of cellulite.

‘Would you go out with Nigella?’ I say. Such a good test of a man’s shallowness – can he appreciate a gorgeous woman with a real body.

‘Far too old for me!’ he says.

‘She’s near enough your age, you cheeky git!’

He shrugs.

‘Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’ I say.

‘She’s nice looking. Anyway, looks aren’t everything.’

The maître d’ beckons us over, and as we stand, James reaches under his bar stool and presents me with a bag.

‘I got you something,’ he says.

‘Really?’ I say, shocked. Inside the bag is a large bottle of Aromatherapy Associates Rosemary Bath Oil that he must have bought me in Duty Free, wherever he has been.

‘I know you like rosemary,’ he says. I do? ‘The pasta you ordered at the Italian …’

Bless him, I love the taste of rosemary but I don’t want to smell like a roast lamb. Still, extremely thoughtful and sweet of him.

‘That’s lovely of you, James Stephens. Thank you.’ I kiss him briefly on the mouth and feel his eyes on the back of me as I walk to the ladies’ room to check whether my ankle has stopped bleeding.

The ankle is fine, but I change tights anyway as I have to take off the old ones to dab a slight blood stain on my foot.

When I return five minutes later, there is a bottle of decent red on the table.

‘One of the chefs at work was telling me that this place is famous for its mince and potatoes,’ I say, looking at the menu.

‘I knew you’d be a good woman to go out with,’ he says, ‘I can’t stand girls who don’t eat.’ Men always say this. It is often bullshit and means ‘I can’t stand girls who don’t eat but neither can I stand girls who show signs of having eaten’. It is invariably the same men who say ‘I like girls who look natural’, but actually mean girls who only wear foundation, cover up, pressed powder, blush, a bit of eye pencil and a lot of mascara.

‘Oh, and save room for The Queen of Puddings, it’s meant to be amazing.’

‘Queen of Puddings, isn’t that your job?’ he says, smiling.

‘I wish, I’m only a junior developer,’ I say.

‘Still, it sounds great. I think it’s brilliant what you do for a living … Queen of Puddings. So you just sit around stuffing your face with cake all day, do you?’

‘There’s a little more to it than that. You have to think of new concepts, follow market trends, brief suppliers, work out if a product’s manageable in budget, there’s all the microbiotics, health and safety, shelf life, packaging, travel testing …’

‘So you do, you basically get paid to eat cake,’ he clinks his glass against mine in congratulation.

‘Sometimes I bake cakes all day …’

‘You cook at work?’

‘Great job, huh?’ I say.

‘Is that why you don’t paint your nails?’ He makes it sound like I have half a finger missing that he’s been too polite to ask about, but has been dying to know the story behind – did a squirrel bite it off?

‘No,’ I say, tucking my hands away on to my lap. ‘I’m just not always a full hair and make-up kind of girl. I don’t have the time. Why, do you like painted fingernails?’

‘A little red nail polish never goes amiss …’ he says.

‘You really did have your teenage sexual awakening in the 80s,’ I say, shaking my head.

He laughs and fills my glass, then rests his hands on the table. My hands spontaneously float up from my lap to be beside his.

‘God, you don’t see many women out like that anymore,’ says James, as a six-foot, heavily made-up twenty-something in a full-length fur walks in, flanked by a tubby man of around fifty.

‘Bimbos with sugar daddies? London’s full of them!’

‘No, I mean the coat. That’s Russian sable!’ he says admiringly.

‘– I think it’s a bit tacky,’ I say.

‘The coat?’

‘No, them – he looks like he’s paying her by the hour. – How do you know it’s a Russian sable?’

‘The bluish tinge. Do you know that the mating ritual of the Russian sable can last up to eight hours?’ he says, leaning forward, a huge smile breaking across his face.

‘Sounds like Sting … anyway, how do you know all this?’

‘My grandfather was a furrier – Stephanikov Furs, in the East End. Do you like fur?’

‘I don’t like the thought of animals being hurt just for my benefit, but then I eat meat, so … No, I don’t have a problem with fur, not vintage anyway. Sorry, does that make me mean, horrible and heartless?’

‘No, just asking.’

‘Well, if there are any mink jackets lying round your garage that you need a good home for …’

He laughs and orders a couple of vodka shots.

‘Are you trying to get me drunk, Mr Stephens?’ I say.

He raises an eyebrow and grins. ‘So, what’s the best pudding in the world?’ he says.

‘Hot pudding, cold pudding, cake, tart, fool, mousse, flan, trifle – define your terms, please.’

‘Cake,’ he says.

‘Number one: a Jean Clement praline millefeuille, you can only get them in Paris. Number two: my mother’s chocolate and raspberry cream cheesecake – only available in California, and when my mother is in a good mood. And three: Ottolenghi’s apple and sultana cake – Upper Street, any day of the week.’

He beams back at me. ‘You’re not like anyone else I’ve ever dated,’ he says.

‘Why?’ I say.

He shrugs.

‘In a good way?’ I say.

He nods. I feel a little flutter in my chest.

‘What do you actually do, anyway? I mean, I know you sell socks, but very specifically what do you do?’

‘Okay, where do you buy your socks?’

‘M&S.’

‘Why?’

‘Good quality.’

‘Why else?’

‘The right amount of stretch.’

‘Why else?’

‘No other reason. I’m not that into socks. Sorry.’

‘Never apologise. What about tights?’

‘M&S, same reasons. Do you sell tights too?’ I hope so. I could do with a man who could keep me in tights, the rate I’m going through them tonight …

‘Just socks for now but I’m starting something new in legwear this summer. Another bottle of red?’ He smiles at me and I can’t help but beam back.

The main course arrives. I realise he still hasn’t told me exactly what he does. This man could be a drug dealer or a pimp for all I know – he has the hustle to be either – but I don’t care because whatever he is, I am bewitched.

We stumble out onto Dean Street to hail a cab. It is freezing and he tucks me inside his coat with him. ‘Come here, you tiny thing.’

On the corner of an alley is a tramp of about sixty. A pink tiara rests on her patchy orange hair. She is wearing a sheepskin coat, a velvet sailor suit that stops mid-calf, and house slippers. When she sees James she points at him and shouts ‘Jackie Boy, you’re a useless cont,’ in a thick Ulster accent.

‘Another one of your ex-fiancées?’ I say, giggling.

He tries not to smile. ‘I told you all beautiful women are mad.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe guys like you make them mad.’

‘Nah, it’s just the way you’re built. Speaking of which, come here.’

I’m already inside his coat with him but he puts both arms around me and kisses me. We stay like this until the tramp lurches towards us and asks James for some change. I expect him to fob her off like the Tory-boy I suspect he really is, but instead he reaches into his wallet and hands her a £20 note. ‘Buy yourself something to eat, please?’ he says.

I’m more amazed than she is.

‘What?’ he says.

‘Nothing. Generous, that’s all.’

He shrugs. ‘Always been a sucker for a well-turned ankle.’ He laughs and grabs my hand and we walk up to Oxford Street to find a taxi.

‘So, how was the morning after?’ says Laura, when I call her back the following afternoon.

‘Great! We had a fry-up in bed, read the papers, then he left to go to White Hart Lane with Rob,’ I say, surveying the mess of pans, wine glasses and crumbs in my kitchen.

‘And the night before?’

I blush remembering it. We had sex. We had quite a lot of sex, all of it good.

I once dated a gorgeous Italian Jewish lawyer who was tall, funny, kind and spoke five languages. The first (and last) time we slept together, it came to light that he had a rare psychosomatic sexual disorder that meant he had a fit at the point of orgasm.

As Eskimos with ‘snow’, Jews have multiple words for ‘disappointment’. None of these came close to covering off that scenario.

Still, since then, whenever I sleep with someone for the first time and they don’t nearly swallow their own tongue and go blue, I’m profoundly grateful.

‘It was good, really natural. I like his body, it’s big – it makes me feel small.’

‘How did you leave it with him?’ says Laura.

‘He rang just after he left to say goodbye, he’s off again tomorrow for five days, to Portugal.’

‘Is he going to call you?’

‘Well, he said “you’re not going to forget about me are you?” and I said why don’t you call me from Portugal, and he sort of evaded the question.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Weird, isn’t it?’

‘Do you think there’s another girl?’

‘No.’ That thought hadn’t actually occurred to me. ‘He’s visiting some financiers, definitely. But I feel like he’s project managing me, putting me on ice for a week.’ And I don’t like it.

‘Ah well, it’s early days, isn’t it. Let’s see what happens when he gets back.’

After I put the phone down, I ignore the washing up and go back to lie on my bed. The pillow still smells strongly of James. I should wash this pillowcase today, and these sheets, or I’ll lie here later and miss him.

I’ll miss his body, his strong arms, his broad shoulders. The weight of him. I’ll miss his mouth. Those confident hands. His head coming to rest in the curve of my neck. His heartbeat finally slowing under my palm….

Who am I kidding – Persil Bio on a 60 isn’t going to wash away those memories. I force myself to get up and make a cup of tea and wash up the pans. The sheets can wait.

It’s nearly 4pm now, so I pop round to the florist in Maida Vale to buy my grandma a bunch of orange tulips, then drive round to her flat in Highgate. I park in the courtyard next to the communal garden. My grandma lived here with my grandpa for thirty-eight of their fifty-five years together. There’s a beautiful teak bench at the back of the garden under an apple tree, bought for them on their ruby wedding anniversary by the residents in the block. The inscription is from The Bible, The Song of Songs: ‘I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine’. My grandparents would sit together on this bench on balmy summer nights, one or both of them dozing off against each other’s shoulder.

I do love coming to my grandma’s flat. It reminds me of Saturday afternoons spent with my brother, riding up and down in the lift with its old-fashioned sliding cage door. Of being chased along the red-carpeted corridors by my dad till my grandma would poke her head out of her door, and announce in a deeply serious tone that if we wanted any of her world famous spaghetti with tomato sauce and meatballs, we’d better come quick before my grandpa ate the last mouthful.

I ring the bell and Evie, my grandma’s part-time carer, buzzes me in. ‘She didn’t sleep well,’ she says, opening the door and greeting me with a kiss. Evie is the longest-serving carer my granny has had. My grandma has despatched various Eastern European carers over the last decade for looking miserable or talking too much or too little (‘the stumers’). Evie is perpetually cheery, talks just the right amount and paints my granny’s impressive fingernails purple and jangly like a west London rude-girl.

My grandma is ninety-seven. Her legs don’t work and her boredom has morphed into depression, but her brain and her tongue are razor sharp.

She is sitting in her pale blue wing back chair, staring out of the window towards the Heath, but her face lights up when I walk in.

‘For you,’ I say, handing her the tulips.

‘My favourite!’ she says. ‘Evie! A vase please? Now sit. Have a biscuit,’ she says, pointing at a dozen star-shaped, sugar-dusted biscuits arranged neatly on a red and white Delft plate. I nibble a lemon shortbread even though I hate lemon with sweet things. ‘What’s new then, Sophola? How was that pistachio lamb?’

We’d discussed that dish more than a month ago.

‘Needed longer on a lower heat,’ I say.

‘Always the lowest heat,’ she says, shaking her head.

My foodie genes come from my grandma, who is my dad’s mother, and my mum. My grandma was an excellent cook before she tired of food in her dotage. Now all she eats is boiling hot soup, stale lemon biscuits and coffee ice cream, washed down with a small whisky of an evening. I inherited her habit of always trying something new, and my mother’s habit of always ordering three times too much of it.

‘So your brother’s making me feel old – a great-grandmother indeed!’

‘It’s so exciting, I can’t wait!’

‘I’m not sure I’ll still be here when the baby arrives.’

‘Oh, stop it. Of course you will.’

‘This is my last winter, I can feel it,’ she shakes her head.

‘Nonsense, you say that every year!’

‘I’m ready to go,’ she says, her shoulders rising and falling slowly. ‘And you? When are you going to stop flitting about?’

‘I’m not ready for all that baby stuff yet.’

‘Of course not, you need to find a decent man first. Is there no one nice at work?’

Raymond Cowell-Trousers in accounts? ‘Not at work, no. But I have met someone who I think you might approve of.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘He’s … he’s very bright. And handsome. Nice and tall.’ I won’t mention his age; I don’t think she’d approve of that.

‘What does he do?’

‘He runs his own company, he sells socks.’

‘Jewish?’ she says, a faint trace of hope in her voice.

‘I think his grandfather was.’ We both know this doesn’t count. ‘East End, furrier.’

‘Your grandfather knew some people in the schmutter trade. What’s this creature’s name?’

‘Stephens. James Stephens, in fact!’

‘Oh dear!’ she raises her hands to her face in mock horror. ‘Don’t be too nice to him! You know how that poem ends …’

Chance would be a fine thing. He’s now been in Portugal for four days and hasn’t even texted me. Still, he’s busy working. And he’s forty-five. Do 45-year-olds really text? Isn’t that a bit teenage? I hate texts anyway, so avoidant, I’d much rather talk. He’s due back tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll call then.

Three days later he phones from Lisbon airport.

‘I was starting to think I’d imagined you,’ I say. And I’m starting to think Laura’s right and there is another woman.

‘Is that a dig?’ he says, with good humour.

‘Have you been terribly busy with work?’

‘It’s not been too bad, actually. A bit of work, a bit of fun.’

‘Are you just one of those people who compartmentalises their life?’

‘No, not really.’

‘So you stayed a few days longer than planned?’

‘Yeah, the Bonders own a place down the coast, they invited me for some golf.’

‘The Bonders?’

‘The venture capital guys.’

‘Are they Portuguese?’

‘Swiss, but they’ve got houses all over the place.’

I daren’t go for a sixth question, the only one I want the answer to, which is: why didn’t you call? Because he is calling. And I know I’d sound needy and weird. Besides, he’s forty-five. He’s been on a business trip. It’s very early days. We’ve only had three dates. Three great dates and some good sex. Still, you aren’t allowed to expect too much attention at this stage, so Pete tells me, and I should stop being paranoid.

‘So, when are you free to see me, woman?’

I pause. I am genuinely busy this week, plus I want to spend more than just an evening and a morning with him. ‘At the weekend?’

‘What are you doing in the week?’