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The Happiness Recipe
Stella Newman
Previously published as LeftoversA wonderfully uplifting novel about friendship, hope and the power of pasta.According to a magazine, Susie is a ‘Leftover’ – a post-Bridget Jones 30 something who has neither her dream man, job, nor home. She doesn’t even own six matching dinner plates.According to her friend Rebecca, Susie needs to get over her ex, Jake, start online dating – or at least stop being so rude to every guy who tries to chat her up.But Susie’s got a plan. If she can just make it the 307 days till her promotion and bonus, she can finally quit and pursue her dream career in food, then surely everything else will fall into place. If only her love life wasn’t so complicated…A sharp, witty and refreshing novel about love, friendship and enjoying what's left on the table.
STELLA NEWMAN
THE HAPPINESS RECIPE
Copyright
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published as ‘Leftovers’ in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Stella Newman 2013
Cover design © Becky Glibbery
Cover illustration © Shutterstock
Stella Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847562715
Ebook Edition © April 2013 ISBN: 9780007478446
Version: 2018-06-25
To George Hanna, with thanks.
‘We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up – and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.’
Kate Bolick, ‘All The Single Ladies’, The Atlantic magazine
Contents
Title Page (#u90d572d2-0f0d-50bb-8a7c-d0797073f738)
Copyright (#u8dabab48-c8fd-55a3-af2e-e3b00d26be56)
Dedication (#u09d44b1a-dcda-5ad1-8556-39a7c41932ea)
Epigraph (#uf7b1c3b3-1c74-5e07-932f-8532000a26a0)
w/c 5 March (#u7476e186-e162-5ac5-b127-7bc531a3ffd2)
w/c 12 March (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 19 March (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 26 March (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 2 April (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 9 April (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 16 April – three weeks to airdate (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 23 April – Shoot Week (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 30 April – one week to airdate (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 7th May – Airdate! (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 14th May (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 21st May (#litres_trial_promo)
w/c 28th May (#litres_trial_promo)
One year later (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Read on for an extract from Pear Shaped (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
I am a Leftover.
Well, according to this ridiculous quiz in Style and Food Magazine I’m a Leftover:
Bridget Jones is so mid-90s! Today’s 30-somethings manage hedge funds, plan mini-music festivals and bake macrobiotic Red Velvet cupcakes, all without breaking a sweat! Answer these four questions to discover which tribe you belong to:
1) Work – Do you:
a) Run your own multi-million pound start-up, mentor young entrepreneurs in your lunch break and still find time for power pilates and a blow-dry before end of play.
b) Have a trust fund – you don’t need more cash; even so, you’ll be launching your first shoe collection in Harvey Nicks this spring.
c) Plod along on a treadmill non-career doing long hours for average pay while younger, more thrusting colleagues are promoted all around you.
2) Love and Sex – Are you:
a) Blissfully married to a man you still find ferociously attractive (the sex just gets better every year!) and tiger-mothering four kids under 10 who perform Mozart quartets together.
b) Heavily loved-up with your DJ boyfriend, and having loads of rampant, gymnastic sex, sometimes in public but mostly in Mr & Mrs Smith hotels.
c) Still recovering from your last failed relationship, living a non-voluntary celibate existence because your sad, jaded aura can be spotted from space.
3) Your weekends are spent:
a) Flicking through the FT’s ‘How to Spend It’ with one hand, buying Lanvin on Net-A-Porter with the other, only pausing to bake gluten-free alfalfa flatbreads.
b) Glamping, and on mini-breaks in Copenhagen/Babington House, religiously avoiding wheat and dairy.
c) Planning what you’re going to do if you ever stop feeling so goddamn lonely, while eating and drinking too much of everything.
4) Your role models are:
a) Nicola Horlick, Karren Brady.
b) Kate Moss, Florence from Florence + the Machine.
c) You have no role models. You have given up all hope. All that’s left is anger.
Mostly As – You’re an Alpha Alfalfa!
Mostly Bs – You’re a Gluten-free Glamorista!
Mostly Cs – You’re a Leftover!
Quiz by Khloe B
Well, Khloe, I have four things to say to you:
1) I am due to be promoted this Christmas, which is now only 307 days away. (It’s a week after Valentine’s, and we’ve just brainstormed our XtraSpecial Xmas poster concepts: Turkey Cran-Apple-Stuffing Ball Pizza anyone?)
2) Everyone has failed relationships. Perhaps not quite as fail-y as mine; still, your mistakes, your failures – they make you who you are, don’t you know?
3) Eating alfalfa is about as much fun as eating a handful of baby’s hair. And gluten-free? I happen to be a huge fan of gluten: bread, cakes, pasta. Some of my best friends are pasta. So no, Khloe, there will be no gluten-free alfalfa flatbreads.
4)Who actually spells Khloe with a K? Someone who doesn’t know how to spell Khloe, that’s who. Is your role model a Kardashian?
And another thing, Khloe: anger has nothing to do with anything. You shouldn’t try to pigeonhole people, that’s all. It’s stupid. Really stupid. In fact I’ll tell you something else that’s stupid: quizzes like this. Stupid quizzes in crappy magazines. Sorry, make that stupid kuizzes in krappy magazines.
I am not a bloody Leftover.
w/c 5 March
Monday
Show me someone in London who loves a Monday morning and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t take public transport, doesn’t work at NMN Advertising, and doesn’t make ads for Fletchers pizzas; pizzas that you wouldn’t feed to a dog. Not unless you’d been having an ongoing Mafia feud with that dog and his entire family for several generations. Even then you’d probably only feed that dog a single mouthful of pizza before taking pity on him and reaching for the Pedigree Chum.
This morning the tube was delayed, so I was delayed, and by the time I reach the glass revolving doors of NMN, just off Charlotte Street, it’s already 7.34 a.m. Free breakfast, courtesy of NMN, runs strictly from 6.30 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. Free breakfast is one of the few perks still left in this office. Obviously there’s no such thing as a free breakfast and these breakfasts are a trap, designed to lure you in to work prematurely. However (and it is an important however): Sam, Head of The Post Room, has proved beyond doubt that the egg and bacon croissants NMN use as bait are worth coming in early for.
For a bloke who’s spent ten years dossing around in a mail room, Sam’s remarkably good with computers. Last summer he was so bored, he created an interactive 3D model on his Mac. He programmed in all the variables:
Croissant Induced Happiness versus Joys of a Longer Lie-in
Relative Density of Commuters on the Northern Line 06:00 to 08:00
Financial and Emotional Costs of an Inferior Breakfast from Somewhere Else
Then he did some sums and an A3 colour printout: the croissants won. I had never even considered putting egg mayo and bacon into a croissant. Fried egg and bacon between two slices of a fresh white sandwich loaf? Sure, that’s a classic. But egg and bacon crammed into a seductively flaky French buttery croissant with melted cheese on top? If I were Robbie Doggett, NMN’s Head of Creative Thinking (and King of Trying to Be Down With the Kids even though he’s forty-nine), I’d say OMG, or hashtag ooh la la brekkie.
I don’t say either. I’m thirty-six, I don’t txtspk out loud, I don’t wear £200 customised Nikes and I don’t spend all day Tweeting shite. I would simply say ‘great croissants’; but I can’t, because it’s four minutes past the freebie and they’ve been removed. Instead I head for the mail room.
Sam’s sitting in his swivel chair wearing his favourite Bowie t-shirt and distressed jeans. (‘Distressed’, due to the fact that he’s worn them constantly since 1993; unlike Robbie Doggett’s jeans, which are made to look distressed by a team of under-age Cambodian fabric workers who are, I suspect, genuinely distressed.)
‘Seven letters, spice from crocus …’ Sam says, looking up from the crossword and giving me a brief once over. Sam is annoyingly cute: green eyes, light brown wavy hair, and a permanently amused smile that’s the result of him being privy to every last thing that goes on in this agency. It’s a good job he’s lazy, rude and smokes all day, which work against his natural attractions and mean I don’t have to fancy him. Much.
‘Hold on, I know it, Sam, I do … nutmeg?’
‘One letter short.’ He shakes his head in mock disapproval. ‘And there’s me thinking you might be hungry …’ He points his finger at a stash of goodies hiding under a paper napkin on his desk.
‘You saved one for me! You can be such a charmer …’
‘I didn’t save one for you, I saved one for whoever solves eight across,’ he says. ‘Come on, Suze, sixth letter’s an O, you’re always good on the food questions …’
‘O … o … Saffron. It’s saffron.’
He nods, then slides his chair over to the pile of goodies and whips the napkin away like a toreador. Not only has he saved me a croissant, he’s also snaffled a chocolate muffin. Best of all, he’s ordered in some of those nice Muji fibre-tip pens that are strictly contraband in our new cost-cutting regime, and a brand new pack of turquoise Post-it notes!
This is what my life has come to: elation over a pack of stolen Post-it notes. (It’s been a bad couple of years.) I could almost hug him, but Sam doesn’t do touching at all – unlike every other man in this building who does far too much touching.
‘Thanks Sam, I owe you.’
‘Yeah, yeah … just bring me in some of that chocolate pudding next time you make it.’
