Pear Shaped

by Stella Newman

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 trifl
es.

  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.

  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.