Leftovers

by Stella Newman

  ‘Knife skills! Did you learn those in combat too?’ I say.

  ‘Those training kitchens at the Little Chef can be deadly!’ he says.

  ‘I’m terrible at chopping,’ I say. ‘Whenever you see chefs on the telly and they’re looking at someone else while they’re chopping an onion at a hundred miles an hour – it makes me break into a sweat. I’d have my arm off if I did that.’

  ‘Nonsense, it’s dead easy. You just need to practise. It’s all about confidence. I could teach you some basic skills, it’d take me half an hour?’

  ‘When?’ I say, too quickly.

  ‘Anytime. You’ll have to give me your number,’ he says, grinning.

  Tom is hovering a few metres away from us, glued to his BlackBerry. Nodding mostly, but also saying, ‘Sure sure, Devron. Fully strategic’ a lot.

  ‘So tell me – what do you do at the agency then?’ Jeff says. ‘Do you come up with the ideas for the ads?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘A creative team does that.’

  ‘That’s a relief!’ he says. ‘So you weren’t responsible for that terrible Perfect Bottom pizza campaign? Find your perfect bottom, we’ll give you the right stuffing …’

  ‘Actually I did work on that,’ I say, blushing. ‘But I didn’t come up with the idea.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘sorry. But they were so cheesy.’

  I agree. ‘Sold a lot of pizzas though,’ I say, shrugging my shoulders in despair. ‘Double-digit growth, your boss was very happy with those ads.’

  ‘So what do you do exactly?’ he says, gesturing to Tom to get off the phone, and pointing at his watch. It’s 9.45 a.m. and I’m sure Jeff had to be somewhere at 10 a.m… .

  I reach into my wallet and hand him my business card. That way he has my number and my email too. On the front of the card is a black shiny NMN logo, the legs of the three letters melded together so that the whole thing resembles one big, scary, slightly embossed praying mantis.

  On the other side it says:

  Susie Rosen

  Account Director

  That should actually say:

  Susie Rosen

  Person with the greatest responsibility in the western world

  (yes, Obama, that is me, not you). The quest for world peace

  is one thing. But do you have any idea how challenging it is

  to ensure that there’s always a brand new bottle of Heinz

  ketchup on hand for Devron’s bacon sandwich when he

  comes in for a breakfast meeting?

  On the flip side it should have a little note from my mum:

  Really, Susannah

  You should have gone to dental school like your clever

  brother. I don’t care that teeth freak you out. And now

  you’re wasting your life away at that agency while Marian

  Bentley’s daughter’s just been awarded an OBE for her

  charity work. And did I tell you Sylvia’s daughter now

  heads up the cancer ward at UCH? And she’s three months

  younger than you!

  I’d need an A4 business card.

  Jeff stares at my job title. ‘Account Director,’ he says. ‘Like accounts as in finance?’

  ‘No, accounts as in Fletchers is the account, I look after it. Basically I try to make sure a client’s happy with an idea; if there are any changes I then need to make sure the creatives are happy. Once that’s all happened I try to get the ad made, on time and in budget.’

  ‘Sounds reasonably straightforward,’ he says.

  ‘If only,’ I say. ‘The problem is that usually clients and creatives have opposing opinions, so it can feel a little bit like piggy in the middle.’

  ‘Piggy in the middle; I used to hate that game,’ he says, smiling warmly.

  ‘Me too.’ I smile back.

  His face crinkles for a minute. ‘Actually do you mean piggy in the middle? Aren’t the two sides both on the same side in that game?’

  I think about it. I’ve been trotting out this analogy for years but of course he’s right.

  ‘I am an idiot!’ I say. ‘I’m going to have to think of a different game where two sides attack one person … How about dodgeball, where you’re just getting hit all the time?’

  ‘Nah, in dodgeball there’s no one’s in the middle. I think you mean you’re a whipping boy. Or a whipping girl!’ he says, with a mischievous look.

  ‘That sounds a bit Fifty Shades!’ I say. ‘Oh look, Tom’s done, I think …’

  Tom comes over looking mildly flustered.

  ‘So shall we go through these slides then, Tom?’ I say.

  ‘You know what?’ says Jeff. ‘I’ve got a better idea. We’re not going to get through these slides in eight minutes and still have time to talk through product. I’m doing some work on cheese next week, but let’s meet up the week after to go through the pizzas. You and me. The product should have moved on by then anyway.’

  ‘Good idea,’ says Tom. ‘I’ll set up a time.’

  ‘No, that’s OK, I’ll do it with Susie directly,’ says Jeff, smiling at me. ‘We can do it together. Just the two of us. If that’s OK with you, Susie?’

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘If that’s what you want. That would be more … efficient. And you’re so busy, aren’t you, Tom? That’s a great idea, Jeff,’ I say, meeting his look with a smile.

  ‘I think I should be there,’ says Tom. ‘To answer any questions.’

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘I mean, of course you’re welcome to come but I can email you afterwards if Jeff can’t answer something … if that’s OK with you, Tom?’

  ‘S’pose so …’ says Tom.

  ‘Listen,’ says Jeff, touching my arm lightly. ‘I’ve got to run. Great to meet you, Suzy Q. Good luck with the whips and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’ He looks again at my business card, smiles, then tucks it into his trouser pocket.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ says Tom, after he’s gone. ‘Jeff’s quite outspoken, he’s a bit of a maverick.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, that’s fine,’ I say. I like mavericks, especially hot ones. ‘Do you know Jeff well then?’ I say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Do you know if Jeff has a girlfriend?

  ‘I mean do you work closely with him?’ I say.

  ‘Not really. He’s only been here about six months. Right, can I show you these charts?’

  If you must. And for the entire hour that Tom’s taking me through the forty-eight slides he’s prepared, the only thing I can think about is the way Jeff touched my arm. And that sly smile on his face when he put my card in his pocket. And the way he looked at me; really looked at me.

  It’s been a long time since someone’s looked at me that way.

  Saturday

  Some Saturdays I wake up, and before I’ve even managed to get out of bed a little grey cloud comes to join me under the duvet. The weekend should be the highlight of your week, should it not? Should. Now there’s a word.

  When Jake and I split up, my best friend Polly told me something her therapist had said after Polly’s first husband, Spencer, walked out on her when she was seven months pregnant:

  ‘“Should” is the worst word in the English language.’

  Funny, because I always thought the worst word was ‘jism’.

  But no: ‘should’ should be eradicated from the dictionary. (Although you see what just happened there?) ‘Should’ means you want people or situations to be a certain way. But they’re not that way at all. ‘He shouldn’t have abandoned his pregnant wife.’ But he did. ‘I shouldn’t still miss my ex.’ But I do. Weekends ‘should’ be the highlight of the week.

  Yet some Saturdays when I wake up, all I can see before me is a vast stretch of time that I’m supposed to fill up with ‘stuff’. And ‘good’ stuff. Fun, meaningful, stimulating stuff. Not just lying in bed, watching DVDs, eating ice cream stuff, because that would make me a loser.

  As much as I hate my day job, at least there’s always stuf
f to do. Stuff I’m paid to do. Pointless stuff. Soul-destroying stuff. But at least it’s stuff that I have to do or else there’ll be a repercussion involving immediate pain. If I stay in bed all weekend watching Ryan Gosling movies there’s no pain. In fact there’s the opposite of pain. But where will it ever get me?

  I’m lucky though. I have good friends. Friends from school, from uni, from all over. Yet when I stand back and look at how our lives have turned out, it seems that I’m the only one still hanging out here on the ledge of singleness. Everyone else has been busy, busy, busy. They’ve been having babies and twins and sometimes up to three babies, though not all at once. They’ve been moving to bigger houses, moving to the country. Buying Farrow & Ball paints, building glass extensions, razing, gutting and expanding into loft space. The only thing gutted in my flat is me.

  Of course they haven’t all had a smooth ride. Take Polly, who’s coming round for dinner later with our friend from school, Dalia. After Polly’s first husband walked out she spent two years bringing up her little girl Maisie on her own. But Polly would never think of herself as a leftover; she got on with life without a fuss. Maybe when you have a kid whom you have to put first then it’s easy, though it didn’t look easy.

  And then she met Dave, and Dave is amazing and it didn’t bother him in the slightest that Polly wasn’t young and perfect and baggage-free. He proposed after three months, down on one knee, singing Sinatra’s ‘All of Me’, in their local curry house. The wedding’s in six weeks’ time and I cannot wait to dance away the ghost of Spencer and celebrate Polly and Dave’s union. If anyone deserves all the happiness it’s Polly. And men like Dave restore your faith in the universe. Shame there’s only one of him in the universe.

  And then of course there’s Dalia: successful and gorgeous and thick as four short planks where men are concerned. ‘Better to have loved and lost …’ That is so entirely not true when it comes to Dalia and Mark. Honestly I think Tennyson would have developed writer’s block when faced with making sense of the on/off relationship between Dalia and that douche ‘property-developer’ (i.e. trumped-up estate agent) Mark Dawson.

  Perhaps, after considerable pondering, with quill in mouth, Tennyson might have come up with the following:

  ‘Better to have never loved. In fact better to have stayed home watching TOWIE repeats than to have wasted so much time at the beck and call of an odious man-boy who tells you, through word and deed, that you’re not quite good enough for him. Where is thy self-respect, girl? The man is clearly a cock-head.’

  But I don’t suppose Tennyson would have used a word like cock-head.

  So yes, there are worse things than being single. And there are worse things than being alone.

  The girls are coming round at 7 p.m., and even though Polly’s meant to be on a pre-wedding diet, she’s asked me to make spag bol – her favourite. Dalia is off the carbs, since Mark poked her in the thigh a few weeks ago and just shook his head. But it pains me that a paunch-laden forty-four-year-old man dares criticise my friend’s weight. She’s been shrinking ever since she met him.

  So I’ll make the spag bol. And if Dalia wants to eat the bolognese sauce on broccoli instead of spaghetti, that’s up to her. But after a glass of wine she’ll probably be herself again, at least for a while. And I’ll make the brownie pudding. Then I can take some in for Sam on Monday morning.

  First things first though, chores: put the laundry on, tidy the flat, do the recycling. I head to the recycling bins round the corner armed with my cardboard wine delivery box, filled with bottles. Thank goodness no one I work with lives in my area and has ever witnessed me at these bins on a Saturday morning. Every time I stand here I curse myself for not having removed the thick tape from these boxes back in my flat, and yet I never do. Because now, not only do I look like an alcoholic (six glass bottles smashing the message home) I also look like I’m drunk. I mean, like I am currently drunk at 9 a.m., not just I am a drunk. I try to tear the tape but it won’t come off so I try to pull the box apart but it’s tougher to rip than the Yellow Pages. I stand wrestling with it like an old souse in a pub brawl. I grunt a bit, pull and shake it, then try to bash it through the slot, even though I’ve tried this twice already and I know it doesn’t quite fit. Then I jump on it, kick it, manage to tear a tiny corner off it and end up grunting again, before throwing it in despair onto the pile to the right of the bins where all the less civic-minded people simply dump their cardboard in the first place.

  I’m exhausted. That’s more than enough interface with the real world for one day. I return home, put Prefab Sprout loudly on the stereo in a pre-emptive move against Caspar and head to the kitchen to start making dinner. It’s barely breakfast time, I know, but the key to making a bolognese this delicious is to start as early as possible on the day you’re going to eat it. (In an ideal world, you’d make it the day before, so that the flavours can develop overnight, but work tends to get in the way.) For best results, the sauce needs to cook for at least six hours, preferably more. If you can leave it to its own devices in the oven on a very low heat for twelve hours, you’ll have the best bolognese you’ve ever eaten in your life, and I can guarantee that or your money back.

  Everyone has a recipe for bolognese that they love. And in Italy, every region has a slightly different recipe. In some areas they sweat the vegetables in butter and olive oil – they insist it makes it sweeter than olive oil alone. Some people don’t even use celery, just carrot and onion as the base. Then there’s the dairy brigade who insist on cooking out the meat in milk, to help cut through the acidity of the tomatoes. Others swear that white wine, not red, is the key to perfection. And don’t even start on the subject of tomatoes. Fresh or chopped or passata or puree? All of the above, or no tomatoes at all?

  Every Italian swears that theirs is the best recipe. What’s more, if you don’t make your bolognese in the same way they do, that means your father must have been dropped on his head when he was a baby and your grandmother was probably the town slut. Naturally I use my Italian grandmother’s recipe, and I know for a fact that she wasn’t the town slut. I know this because shortly after she gave birth to my mother, my grandfather ran off with the actual town slut, a woman by the name of Lucia Mollica, which means ‘crumb’ in Italian. Which seems fitting, as my grandmother took all of his money, along with my infant mother, and left him with just a loaf of bread in the kitchen and a note saying ‘Don’t eat it all at once’. She boarded a train, then a boat, and ended up in Glasgow, where her uncle ran a successful ice cream parlour, in which one Saturday, a year later, she met my ‘real’ grandfather. Until the day she died, whenever she saw or heard the name Lucia, Nonna would curse both her first husband and his mistress in the most lurid phrases you’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of a pensioner. (My grandfather had taught her to swear like a Glaswegian navvy, so she was pretty professional.)

  Nonna’s recipe isn’t difficult but it does require two ingredients you can’t buy off the shelf: love and patience. First you have to chop your vegetables into very fine dice. And of course you can’t use a food processor, because the ghost of Nonna is watching, and she wouldn’t like it. Cook the veg in olive oil for at least half an hour, on a heat so low you have to keep checking that the gas is actually on. Then add garlic, and sweat some more. In a separate pan, dry-fry some pancetta – salty pig meat being the base for so much that is good in this world. Then in the same pan, brown some beef mince, then half the amount of pork mince again. Add it to your soffrito along with a bottle of passata, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper. And then the secret ingredient that truly makes this dish: an entire bottle of red wine. Pour that in, put a lid on the casserole dish and put it in the oven for the whole day, stirring every couple of hours.

  This is the perfect dish for a day like today. The weather’s miserable, I’ve got nothing better to do, and I can justify not setting foot outside again with the excuse that I have to babysit the dinner. At around 4pm I rouse myself from a mid-after
noon doze and head for my A4 files of recipes. They’re the one organised thing in my flat. I’m always fiddling with recipes, and the only way that I remember these tweaks is if I’ve scrawled them on a piece of paper. Aah, here we go: chocolate brownie cheesecake bake. It’s one of the more obscene puddings in this file, but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t go back for seconds. First you make the brownies, and Lord knows there are as many brownie recipes as there are Hindu deities. Normally I’d go straight to my friend Claire’s recipe, which produces the ultimate squidgy yet chunky brownie. But the brownies in this pudding need to stay in neat squares so I use a Nigel Slater recipe that is foolproof and produces a more cake-like brownie, better fit for purpose.

  While the brownies are in the oven I make the cheesecake base – full-fat Philadelphia, mascarpone and vanilla, whipped together and poured onto a base of crushed dark chocolate digestives mixed with melted better. That’s my favourite part of the whole process – spreading the biscuit base out into the tray with a spatula, like it’s wet sand. The brownies come out of the top oven and in goes the cheesecake for forty minutes, then the heat goes off and the cheesecake stays in the oven to cool and set. I give the bolognese a quick stir, then head back to the sofa for another little lie-down. I can’t wait to be an old lady when all this mid-afternoon snoozing will be deemed socially acceptable.

  The girls are due at 7 p.m. so at 6.30 p.m. I open a bottle of wine and start drinking – I might as well air the wine before they get here.

  Polly’s the first to arrive at 7 p.m. on the dot.

  ‘You look amazing!’ I say, as I open the door and give her a hug.

  ‘D’you think?’ she says, handing me a bottle of Prosecco.

  ‘You’re glowing.’

  ‘Really? I’ve been on the Perricone, lots of oily fish. I feel like a penguin.’

  ‘And your hair totally suits you longer.’

  She reaches up and touches her neck. ‘I’m growing it for the wedding. You don’t think I’m too old for long hair, do you?’