The Happiness Recipe

‘Which one? The roulade?’

‘Which one’s that?’ he says.

‘Round, in slices, had raspberries in it last time.’

‘Oh no, not interested in fruit. The one with the brownie bits on top.’

‘Ultimate death-by-brownie cheesecake bake?’

‘Yep.’

‘You didn’t think it was too sweet?’

‘No, it was good. Death by brownie. Good way to die. Better than car crash or drowning.’

‘Happy Monday to you too.’

Monday morning means updating The Status Report:

w/c 5th March

‘Project F’ – client briefing – venue TBC

Brief creative team

I live my life in w/cs. Week commencings.

For example, I know that w/c 23rd April we will be shooting our new TV ad for ‘Project F’ whether I like it or not. And I do not.

Devron from Fletchers is briefing me tomorrow. We haven’t even started the project yet, but according to the timing plan we’re already two months late. Devron keeps changing his mind about the brief. It’s probably going to end in disaster, but hey – ‘Tight deadlines are what keep this business fun!’ That’s according to my boss, Berenice: a woman whose idea of fun is Excel. Excel the spreadsheet, not ExCel the conference centre, though she is a woman who loves an industry conference. Networking is one of her middle names: Berenice Robot-Psychopath Networking Davis.

Which reminds me, w/c 4 June I’m being roped in to The Tasty Snacking Show, again. Last year Fletchers forced me into fancy dress to publicise their new ‘Pizza Spagnola!’ range. Words can’t describe the humiliation of getting stuck in the ticket barrier at Earl’s Court tube dressed as a Spanish sausage. Take my word for it, there’s no obvious place to stick an Oyster card when you’re a chorizo.

W/c 16 July – a week in Centre Parcs Cumbria to brainstorm Christmas 2015.

W/c 3 September, birthday week – I shall be on holiday, somewhere hot, preferably with a man but more than likely with Dalia. (That’s if I can persuade her to be parted from her on-off-off boyfriend for long enough to board a plane.)

W/c 17 December – get my bonus, pay off my debts and finally get promoted to the board, thus proving to my parents that I am not a failure and I am not a quitter. Then quit. Work out my three-month notice period in a state of sheer unadulterated bliss, every day a rainbow. Release myself into the free world just in time for spring and start doing what I was put on this earth to do. (I’ll have worked out what that is by then. Definitely.)

My whole life spent, living in the future.

The one good thing about Mondays? They go fast.

The hours are eaten up by a sequence of pointless, infuriating, navel-gazing meetings:

Team Meeting, Floor Meeting, Department Meeting, Production Meeting and finally Meeting-Planning Meeting. Yes. Just when you think it’s safe to go back to your desk at 6.30 p.m., the account directors have a meeting just to talk about the rest of the week’s meetings. Still, tonight we’re finished by 7 p.m., and I race out of the door before Berenice can make her usual hi-larious joke – ‘half day, Susannah?’

With any luck Upstairs Caspar will be out for the night. If it wasn’t for Caspar my home would be perfect. I live in a cosy one-bed flat on the fifth floor of Peartree Court, a six-storey U-shaped block with a little square of garden in the middle, with, yes, a tree, with pears on. It’s in Swiss Cottage, a pleasant area of North London that is not remotely Swiss, nor full of cottages. The flat belonged to my granny, who left it to me and my brother when she died seven years ago. My brother now lives in a big house in Chester where his wife is from. I give him half the mortgage equivalent every month and I get to live here.

Peartree Court is looked after by Terry the Caretaker. If he wasn’t in his sixties and missing two important front teeth we’d be in business. He’s a total sweetheart – he’s even given me a secret key to the roof terrace. It has amazing views of the whole of London. Residents aren’t supposed to go up there – health and safety. But as long as I’m discreet and don’t let myself get spotted by the busybody Langdons on the third floor then Terry’s fine. (The Langdons actually complain every autumn when the pears start to fall from the tree. They don’t like the mess of everyday life. Then again, who does?)

Terry’s kind to all the old people in the block and tolerant of all the 4x4 driving yuppies who move in every time one of the oldies kicks the bucket. Yuppies like Caspar. Love thy neighbour’s not working out too well for us. Caspar moved in just over a year ago. He is an actuary. I don’t actuary know what this means, other than that at thirty-one he can afford two cars (Porsche, Range Rover) and has enough free time to play a lot of tennis. I frequently bump into him in the lift in mini-shorts, thinking he’s Nadal. Except unlike Nadal, Caspar is pasty, blond and snotty. Grand-slam snotty.

I know this because two weeks after my ex, Jake, ripped out my heart, Caspar ripped up his carpets, installing tropical hardwood flooring instead. Due to the acoustics of this flooring I hear Caspar flob up whatever’s in his throat every single morning at dawn, like vulgar birdsong. Caspar spent four years in Hong Kong and he informs me that in Chinese culture it is a good thing to loudly hack up one’s phlegm. Good for him; not so much for me.

Along with the coughing there’s the shagging – his, not mine, obviously. Never optimum to hear your neighbours getting it on. But Caspar’s sex life … it’s so terribly audible. And it’s always the same routine: Michael Bublé goes on the Bang & Olufsen. Then I hear Caspar bang and olufsen. I’ve repeatedly asked him to at least put some rugs down, but he tells me that my ears are too sensitive. So now I’ve resorted to whacking up the volume on my Adele CD – it’s that or else I hear everything.

The only part of his routine that ever changes is the girl. He has a taste for drippy blondes, and because he’s a rich, cocky little bugger he seems to have no trouble pulling. Sometimes I see him strut to his Porsche, an interchangeable girl scurrying a few metres behind him like an obedient little mouse. I never ever want to go out with a man who marches ahead of me down the street.

Tonight I’m in luck: Caspar’s out, which means some peace. I head straight for the kitchen: the only thing that can undo the damage to my soul that a Monday at work has done is a good dinner. The cupboards in here are a bit of a mess – I’m rubbish at throwing things away – but behind the Hobnob tubes and huddles of geriatric spices I find exactly what I’m looking for.

My grandma always told me that a bowl of pasta is the answer to most of life’s problems. She was Italian. Statements like that always sound a little more profound in a foreign language: Un piatto di pasta e’ la risposta a quasi tutti i problemi della vita. All you have to do is pick the right pasta for your circumstances. For example, tonight I’m tired and feeling lazy. So nothing too complicated: a tomato-based sauce, thirty minutes’ cooking time, max. However today, being Monday, was dull, so I’m craving a little lift. The solution? A bit of chilli in the sauce, and a pasta shape that conjures up excitement: fusilli. Lovely and twirly, like a kids’ fairground ride.

I check in the fridge and find a pack of bacon that’s a week past its use by date. My mum brought me up to believe that a use by date is arbitrary – a random sequence of numbers and letters, designed to trick you into throwing good food away before its time. It might as well be in Cyrillic. If it looks fine and it smells fine then it is fine.

I fry a red onion in butter and olive oil till it’s soft and starting to turn golden, then add the bacon and a pinch of red chilli flakes and stand over the saucepan inhaling like a teenage glue-sniffer. After five minutes I pour in a tin of tomatoes, a pinch of salt and sugar, reduce the heat to a low simmer and head to my bathroom.

Make-up comes off, I have a bath and I even manage to apply a Liz Earle nourishing face mask, which promises to brighten my tired, dull complexion. If only Liz could make a potion to brighten the other parts of my tired, dull existence …

OK. Pyjamas: on. Baggy, slightly moth-bitten cashmere sweater: on. Horrendous yet cosy Ninja Turtle slippers, a gift from my brother in 1987: on (I’m serious – I never throw anything away). Pan of salted water for the pasta: on.

Eleven minutes later – absolute happiness. Twirly pasta with a spicy tomato and bacon sauce with loads of melted cheese on top. Eaten on the sofa in front of an episode of 30 Rock. Just me, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin.

My grandma was right about the pasta. My mother was right about those use by dates. And all is right in my world.

Tuesday

All is about to be a little less right.

When I reach my desk the light on my phone is already flashing. It’s 7.42 a.m., which can only mean one person: Berenice. I have been summoned. Always ominous with Berenice; she has a way of making you feel like a mass-murderer just by saying your name on an answering machine. I suspect one day I’ll break down in her office and admit to kidnapping Shergar, shooting JFK and hiding Lord Lucan under my bed.

I rush to the ladies’ to check in the mirror. Could be worse: Tuesday morning bed hair gets pulled back into a bun. Make-up is fine; the early days of the week always see fresh mascara. Catch me on a Friday though and chances are it’s Thursday night’s face. I’m wearing a respectable M&S knee-length burgundy dress that could pass for Jaeger, in the dark. No cleavage or knees on show – extremely important, in light of Berenice’s latest paranoid fixation … Jolly good – I look like a tired, non-sexual, overworked thirty-six-year-old woman who is not having much fun. A carbon copy of Berenice, only five years younger.

I take the lift up to the fifth floor. Her PA must be at Early-Bird Zumba so I hover awkwardly outside Berenice’s office, waiting for her to notice me through the glass wall. Maybe Sam’s right, I think, as I look at the crown of Berenice’s head. Last week Sam informed me that Berenice has her colour done every nine days at that place off Sloane Square where Cate Blanchett goes to when she’s in town. I have never seen a trace of a dark root in Berenice’s hair. It is always perfect: placid, unthreatening, shoulder-length blonde. Not sexy blonde. But grown-up, good taste, all-my-glassware-comes-from-Conran, ash blonde. Personally I favour brown. Slightly unruly, all-my-glasswear-comes-from-Ikea-or-was-borrowed-from-my-local-pub, mousy brown.

Sam also told me that Martin Meddlar, our CEO, gets his hair bouffed at Nicky Clarke once a week and puts it down as a work expense. When I asked Sam how he came by this business-critical information he merely raised an eyebrow and said ‘Exactly!’ (Either he’s hacking into Finance’s expenses file, or he’s hacking into London’s chi-chiest hairdressers’ Hotmail accounts. He’s capable of both.)

I glance over to see if Martin and his bouff are in their vast corner office, but no, the plush leather chair is empty. Generally Martin comes in at 11 a.m., lunches from 12 p.m. with a senior client, then returns slightly drunk at 3.50 p.m. just in time for his driver to take him home at 4.00 p.m. on the dot. (‘The A40 gets totally gridlocked after 4.30 p.m.’)

Berenice must sense movement, as she finally looks up and beckons me in. She’s been the head of my department for six years and yet I still feel slightly sick with fear every time I have a meeting with her. ‘Susannah, take a seat,’ she says.

My name is Susie. I know it’s the same name. I know it’s not a big a deal. But the only other person who calls me Susannah is my mother when I’ve done something earth-shatteringly wrong (borrowed her car and forgotten to reset the rear-view mirror; failed to be a successful and married dentist like my brother).

‘Fletchers OK?’ says Berenice, staring down at her notepad.

Good morning, Susie. Are you well? You look a little tired. I know that we work you terribly hard, but we do so appreciate your labour on behalf of our bottom line. Would you like a cup of tea? A posh biscuit? Maybe even some eye contact? To be honest, I’m happier without the eye contact. There is something hostile in Berenice’s grey eyes that I can only assume is the by-product of her being bullied by Martin Meddlar. That’s just a rumour – he’s only ever been nice to me. Too nice, in Berenice’s opinion – hence my dowdy dress. Anyway, allegedly he bullies her, and she bullies me: a pretty little daisy chain of bullying that entwines the three of us.

‘Fletchers is great,’ I say. ‘Spanish pizza sales are up twenty-three per cent, and the digital campaign’s tracking well.’