Pear Shaped

Pear Shaped
Stella Newman

A novel about love, heartbreak and dessert.Girl meets boy.Girl loses boy.Girl loses mind.Sophie Klein walks into a bar one Friday night and her life changes. She meets James Stephens: charismatic, elusive, and with a hosiery model ex who casts a long, thin shadow over their burgeoning relationship. He’s clever, funny and shares her greatest pleasure in life – to eat and drink slightly too much and then have a little lie down. Sophie’s instinct tells her James is too good to be true – and he is.An exploration of love, heartbreak, self-image, self-deception and lots of food. Pear-Shaped is in turns smart, laugh-out-loud funny and above all, recognizable to women everywhere.Contains an exclusive extract from Stella’s new novel Leftovers.

Stella Newman

Pear-Shaped

Dedication

To my parents, and in loving memory of

my grandparents.

Epigraph

Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

George Bernard Shaw

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

Colette

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Parfait

Crumble

Icing

Epilogue

Food in the book

A word on brownies…

A few of my favourite things…

Further reading

Acknowledgements

Coming Soon (#litres_trial_promo)

Leftovers (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Parfait

1. noun – a rich frozen dessert, made with eggs, cream and sugar

2. noun [from French] perfect

Two girls walk into a bar. There is no punchline.

I’m the girl on the left in the wildly inappropriate black and white spotty summer dress. It is the snowiest February in thirty-eight years but I flew back from a month in Buenos Aires three days ago and this tan ain’t going to waste.

A month in Buenos Aires: sounds glamorous? Ok: a month in a £6 a night hostel in the Boedo barrio – think Kilburn with 98% humidity. No air con, no overhead lighting, shared showers. I’m thirty-three. I earn okay money. I don’t like sharing showers, not least with 18-year-old Austrians proclaiming Wiener Blut the greatest Falco album ever released. Wieners aside, Laura and I have the time of our lives.

Laura is the girl on the right in the bar. Best friend, tough crowd, northerner. She’s wearing a polo neck and a woolly hat. Together we look ridiculous; we don’t care.

It is one of those evenings. Whether it’s the outfits, the tans or the sociability that a snowy Friday night in London brings, we end up being the epicentre of it all. One guy, Rob, has been trying to impress me for the last twenty minutes. He’s too pretty for my taste and he’s spouting off about knowing Martin Scorsese’s casting director.

‘I can see you playing a gangster’s moll in that dress,’ he says. ‘Those big green eyes. Real curves.’

I laugh. I’m a size 10, with tits and an arse, and the girl he’s abandoned at the bar talking to his mate is one of those girls you can count the vertebrae of through her silk shirt.

‘Are your eyes real?’ he says.

‘No, they’re mint imperials, I paint the irises on every morning to match my shoes,’ I say.

‘I like your brushwork,’ he says, smirking.

‘Your girlfriend’s getting pissed off,’ says Laura.

‘She’s with my mate,’ says Rob, fiddling with his watch. ‘Actually, do you girls want a drink? Two more margaritas?’ He heads to the bar. Before he’s even back there, his mate, who is less pretty and far more my type, heads towards us.

‘He doesn’t waste his time …’ says Laura.

I say nothing. I look at Rob’s friend and a rare but familiar feeling grabs me: something big is about to happen.

‘Why are you talking to Rob?’ he says to me, grinning. ‘You don’t fancy him.’

‘What business is it of yours?’ I say. ‘Do you fancy me?’

He looks at me for a heartbeat. ‘Yeah.’