Pear Shaped

‘Well, then you talk to me instead. What’s your name?’

‘James.’

‘James what?’

‘James Stephens.’

‘Like the poet.’

‘Ooh, a clever girl.’

‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘My granny has a poem of his she likes to quote.’

‘A love poem?’

‘Yeah, it’s about a man who throttles his over-attentive wife to death.’ He laughs.

‘I can tell you’re smart,’ he says. ‘And warm. It’s in your eyes. Don’t waste your time with Rob, waste it with me.’

So I did. I talked to him, danced a tango round the bar with him, sank three margaritas with him and at the end of the night gave him my number.

He calls when he says he will – the next day. Why do I feel so grateful for this? Because the world of dating has deigned this sort of behaviour too keen. ‘I want to see you again,’ he says.

‘Good.’

‘But I’m going away for a fortnight tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s work. I travel quite a bit.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘China.’

‘What do you actually do?’ I’d imagined he was a high-end builder or something to do with running a warehouse. He’s very masculine, hefty, a bit rough round the edges, and his shirt last night didn’t quite fit.

‘You’ll laugh,’ he says.

‘Are you an international clown?’

‘No. I sell socks.’

‘What, like in a shop?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Everybody needs socks,’ I say.

‘At least two pairs,’ he says. ‘I’m back in a fortnight, I’d like to take you for dinner.’

‘Great. I like dinner.’

‘But do you like to eat?’

‘Are you joking? It’s what I do.’

‘You’re not one of those girls who orders salad and just pushes it round the plate? You’re pretty skinny.’

‘You’ve got the wrong number.’ I have slender arms and a small waist. You can fool most of the people most of the time with this combo.

‘Good. I know the perfect place. I’ll call you in two weeks.’

I work in a twelve-storey shiny building in Soho. Up until six months ago, I had one of the greatest jobs in the world and one of the greatest bosses. I am a Pudding Developer for Fletchers, one of the biggest supermarkets in the country. I worked for a genius called Maggie Bainbridge. She never compromised on quality and had bigger balls than any of the men here.

Six months ago she quit after management fired a bunch of our top talent and brought in a grunt of accountants, intent on putting the bottom line above everything else. Even our loo roll has been downgraded to that tracing paper crap from the 80s that you have to fish out of a cardboard slit.

Maggie’s started up a one-woman brownie business, ‘Happy Tuesday’. Even though we speak often, I miss her, and daydream about running off to work with her again.

So, I still have a great job, but I no longer have a great boss. No. I have Devron.

Devron used to work for a supermarket that was chewed up and spat out by a large American supermarket. He was regional manager for London South East, which is a Big Deal in Retail. Apparently he was very good at driving up and down motorways in his BMW.

His sole qualification for being head of my department seems to be that he is fat, ergo he ‘knows food’. Devron would be happy eating every meal from a service station on the M4. He thinks he’s an alpha male, he’s actually an aggressive little gamma.

The first thing Devron did when he joined was to make us all switch desks. Wanting to make his mark, and attempting to convey his profound creativity he decided to arrange us alphabetically. I used to sit with ‘Hot Puddings’, ‘Family Treats’ and ‘Patisserie’. Makes sense – we share the same buyers, technical advisers and packaging team. We liaise constantly about pastries, sugar prices, trends in the Treat market – all elements that are pudding specific.

But now, because I do Cold Desserts, I sit between Lisa, who does ‘Cocina’ – our fake-a Mexicana range of variety nachos, and Eddie: Curry. Devron says ‘we can learn a lot from talking to our colleagues’. True. I have learnt that Lisa, Eddie and I all agree: Devron is a nob.

The only thing more moronic than splitting us up from the people we need constant contact with, is Devron’s introduction of ‘cross-discipline platform solutions’. He has dumped a marketing wang on our bank of desks: Ton of Fun Tom.

Tom always wants to show me some great viral on YouTube featuring a gorilla or a dancing mouse. Tom’s knowledge of marketing is like my knowledge of Chechen history: he knows three random facts and feels guilty about not knowing more. However, I do not try to bullshit my livelihood as a Chechen historian.

Laura has come for lunch at the Fletchers’ canteen en route to do a voice-over for a car insurance website who want her husky Yorkshire accent to add ‘honest northern values’ to their shonky brand. Laura only has to do two voice-over sessions a month to pay her mortgage, and spends the rest of her time helping her boyfriend Dave run his eBay business selling vintage magazines.

This week’s canteen theme is ‘Pre-Valentine’s Value’ and we have the choice of heart-shaped pork bites or asparagus pasties. Sounds better than the falafel Eddie ordered last month, within which lurked a dog’s tooth.

‘James sounds keen,’ says Laura.

‘D’you think?’ If he was that keen, he wouldn’t wait two weeks to call me.

‘He wouldn’t let go of you the other night. You were dancing for ages.’

I love dancing. My ex, Nick, an introvert, danced with me once in five years: quarter-heartedly, for thirty-eight seconds, at his best friend’s wedding, and only after I’d threatened to embarrass him by dancing on my own if he didn’t.

‘Bet his friend wasn’t pleased,’ says Laura.

‘Rob’s an arse,’ I say. ‘That girl with them was Rob’s fiancée!’