Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (10 page)

‘Apparently they left together and he spent the night with her.’

I remembered the Alchemy party. It was on a Friday. When I asked him why he hadn’t answered any of my calls or texts on Saturday he told me he’d left his phone in the back of a cab. The taxi driver didn’t return it to him, he said, until Saturday evening.

‘According to James, Dan felt awful about it and told this Tania woman that it couldn’t happen again. James says she kept calling him but he didn’t see her again until some time in September. There was that charity casino bash at the Stock Exchange and she was there.’

I remembered that night, too.

‘But Dan stayed at my place that night,’ I said. ‘I remember – he said it was dull, that gambling for a charitable cause took the pleasure out of it.’

‘I know. But . . . Are you really sure you want to know this, Cass?’ Her voice was filled with foreboding.

‘What? What is it?’

‘Well, he didn’t stay very long at the casino thing. Come to think of it, I hardly remember seeing him that night. James reckons he bumped into Tania, they hooked up, went back to her place for a bit and then he went home to you.’ She said this hurriedly, taking no pleasure in being the bearer of such awful news.

A lone, fat tear splashed onto my half-finished plate of eggs Benedict.

‘The next day he sent me two dozen red roses. I remember being so surprised, and so happy. My
boyfriend sends me flowers, for no reason at all, it doesn’t have to be Valentine’s Day. He just does it, I thought, because he loves me.’ I pushed away my food. ‘I’m not hungry. I need another drink.’

Ali summoned the waitress.

‘So they’ve been seeing each since then? For a month?’

‘Seems that way, although according to James, Dan tried to break it off a couple of times. James was actually really shocked when he heard that Dan had chosen—’

‘Her.’

The waitress brought our drinks and took away the plates. Ali lit a cigarette, ignoring the ostentatious coughing noises from the next table.

‘Water’s wet, the sky’s blue, men cheat,’ she said ruefully. ‘And talking of cheating, I’m afraid I can’t hang out and shop this afternoon.’ She gave a cheeky, guilty little smile.

‘The Frenchman, I take it?’

‘We have an assignation at the Covent Garden Hotel. Actually, we’re meeting in Coco de Mer, across the road. They have these beautiful embroidered blindfolds . . .’

‘Ali,’ I said, trying hard not to sound too much like Jude, ‘are you sure this is a good idea?’

‘Almost certainly not, but you know. The heart wants what it wants.’

‘Oh, it’s your heart that wants, is it?’

*

Left to my own devices that afternoon, feeling a little abandoned by my best friend not to mention steamrollered by my ex, I went a bit over the top on the retail therapy. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that shops didn’t use to open on Sundays. What on earth did people do all day? Even the religious ones must have been bored stiff – it’s not like church takes all day. Unless of course you go to one of those evangelical places where the services go on for hours and hours. I bought dresses and shoes and a cute little skirt suit (perfect for job interviews), a beautiful silver Paradise Orchid ring from Bower & Hall (well, no one else is going to spoil me now, are they?) and a bag full of pampering goodies from this fabulous Chinese place which sells things like ‘mood-freshening body scrubs’ made from bamboo and green tea. My mood was definitely in need of some freshening. Finally, I popped into Montezumas for a couple of bags of champagne and white chocolate truffles to eat on the sofa that evening. It was essential, I reasoned, if I was going to start hunting for jobs the next morning, to keep my spirits up.

Cassie Cavanagh
is feeling undesirable

Bank balance: -£766.88
Available overdraft: £1,800
Amount of rent due in one week’s time: £800

I was feeling undesirable not to the opposite sex (I had a date set up for that Thursday – exactly nine days AD – not bad going), but to potential employers. As Jude had warned, job hunting was proving a little trickier than I had anticipated. I leapt out of bed bright and early on Monday morning, eager to get started. I browsed
JobSearch.co.uk
, I looked at the Reed Recruitment site. I checked my emails. I had a promotional mail from NET-A-PORTER. They had Bottega Veneta bags on sale. I clicked on the link. Thirty per cent off! Bargain. I placed an order. Back to the job hunt. An ad for a PA/Events Coordinator. I dismissed it when I saw the pay they were offering. Pathetic.

There was another post, a PA to the MD and FD of a property investment company, which offered a salary more commensurate with what I was used to. The advert demanded someone who had ‘superb organisational skills’, who was ‘very polished’ and ‘a true team player, not a queen bee type’. That summed me up perfectly. I filled in the application, attached my CV, dashed off a quick covering letter and sent it.

Filled with a sense of achievement, I decided to nip down to Starbucks to grab a coffee and a croque monsieur. On the way back, I collected the post from our box and sorted through it over breakfast. I sifted through the mail, which was mostly junk (newsletters from the various charities to which Jude makes regular contributions), but at the bottom were two more interesting items. A stiff, cream envelope with the familiar Hamilton Churchill logo embossed on the back, and a credit card statement.

Good news first. I opened the Hamilton Churchill letter. Very sorry to let you go, blah blah blah, please find enclosed your final salary cheque and redundancy payment in the amount of £3,000. Three thousand pounds!

‘Three thousand bloody pounds!’ I shrieked out loud. Thank God for that. That would last me ages! That would last me weeks and weeks! I didn’t have to worry, I didn’t have to feel guilty, I could buy as many Bottega Veneta bags as I bloody well wanted! And I certainly didn’t have to take the first crappy job that came along. I could take my time. I had breathing
room. Flooded with an over whelming sense of relief, I flung the mail onto the living room table and collapsed on the sofa.

Just as a piece of toast will always fall butter side up, so the mail landed credit card bill on top. I glared at it. Could I ignore it? Just for a few days? Probably best not to. I should just rip it open and get the pain over with. I should do it now, now that I’m feeling better about things. Gingerly, I slipped my finger under the lip of the envelope and ripped. I pulled out the contents. It seemed alarmingly long. Four pages. Bloody hell. I looked at the total. My heart stopped.

£5,322.87.

Five thousand. Three hundred. And twenty-two pounds. Eighty-seven pence.

Holy crap.

My heart went from 0 to 120 bpm in a matter of seconds. That couldn’t be right. That just
could not
be right. Someone must have stolen my identity! That was the only possible explanation. Someone has been masquerading as me, using my card, spending £74 on underwear from Figleaves! Oh, OK, that was me. They’ve been buying shoes at Sub Couture! No, that was me. They’ve been having dinner at Roka! Oh, all right, that was me, too. My sense of horror and shame growing, I realised that it was all me. Me, me, me, buying clothes and shoes and cases of wine, me, spending a fortune on cosmetics and hair products, me buying flights to Rome … Oh, bugger. I’d completely forgotten about the Rome thing.

I rang Alitalia straight away. No, the woman said, they didn’t do refunds, but if I needed to cancel the trip due to illness or bereavement, my travel insurer would cover the cost. Bereft I might be, but travel insurance? Who the hell has travel insurance? Perhaps I could flog the tickets to someone else? Ali and her Frenchman might fancy a weekend in Rome. Or I could sell them on eBay. I might even make a profit. I rang Alitalia back. Would it be possible to issue the tickets without a name on them? The woman laughed. No, that would not be possible, she said, since airline tickets, as everyone knows, are not transferable. Great. Not only had I wasted more than four hundred pounds on tickets to Rome, but the airline woman was calling me stupid.

I rang the Hotel de Russie next, and was eventually transferred to someone who spoke passable English. Yes, they could cancel my reservation, but I would be charged for the first night’s stay.

If you do not cancel your booking more than seven days before your planned arrival date you have to pay for the first night. Hotel policy. Ridiculous, thieving policy more like.

And just when I thought I could not feel any worse, something at the top of the statement caught my eye. It was dated the fifteenth of October. The fifteenth of October. That was over a week ago. Which meant that none of the many, many purchases I’d made over the past week had even shown up on the statement yet. Feeling more than a little queasy, I delved into my bag, rooted around for my purse and retrieved a handful of
scrunched-up credit card slips. With a growing sense of foreboding, I fetched a calculator from the desk in Jude’s room and totted up the total.

Holy, holy crap. Over the past seven days I had spent £1,433.29. Which meant that my total debt amounted to … £6,756.16. Oh. My. God.

I wondered if I could cancel the order for the Bottega Veneta handbag? I decided against it. Probably a false economy – the bag was on sale and if I cancelled that purchase I would most likely just end up buying something at full price instead. No, instead of thinking about saving money, I had to think about making it. I logged back onto the Reed Recruitment site and applied for every job I thought I might be even vaguely qualified for. Most of them were more senior positions than the one I had held at Hamilton Churchill, but I had to aim high now. I was going to need the money.

I was just tinkering with the wording of a covering letter for the post of an executive assistant to the head of a large multinational company when my phone buzzed in my bag. I fished it out and almost dropped it on the floor when I saw his name on the display. Dan calling.

My heart was pounding in my chest.

Should I answer it? No, I should press ignore.

No, I should answer it and tell him exactly what I thought of him.

No, I shouldn’t – I would probably end up crying and screaming, which was undignified. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

But I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to apologise to by voicemail either – he didn’t deserve to get away with that.

The phone stopped ringing. I stared at it, waiting for it to buzz again, to alert me to the fact that I had a new message. It didn’t. Bollocks! Why hadn’t I answered it? Maybe he was calling to beg for forgiveness, to plead with me to take him back. Which was a very good reason not to take his calls. Knowing me, I’d let myself be suckered in to getting back together with him.

Feeling panicky and flustered, I decided to go for a walk. I needed some air. Leaving my phone behind so as to eliminate any temptation to take Dan’s calls, I set off in the direction of the Common. I was almost there when I noticed the ‘Sale’ sign in the window of Oliver Bonas.

Don’t go in, Cassie, I told myself. Resist! Then I saw it. In the window display was the lovely little red lacquered bedside table I’d been coveting for ages. And it was reduced, from £410 to £280. A saving of more than a hundred pounds! Cursing my bad luck (why oh why had they put
that
table in the window?) I went inside and bought it.

The man in the shop promised to deliver the table later that afternoon; I assured him I would be there to take delivery. On the way back home I bumped into Hassan, the Algerian
Big Issue
vendor who sells his magazines outside Sainsbury’s. This added about half an hour to my journey: He is a very sweet man but he is also one of those people who answers the question,
‘How are you?’ honestly; and since he appears to be afflicted by an enormous variety of minor ailments, there is not such thing as a brief conversation with Hassan.

By the time I arrived home it was obvious that Jude had been home and gone out again, not least from the note taped to the front of my computer screen. In an angry red scrawl she had written:

We need to talk. Be in tonight.
DON’T
go out. Will be home 6-ish
.

Next to my computer lay my credit card bill and the pile of receipts I had been going through. I had been so freaked out by Dan’s call I’d forgotten to hide them. So no prizes for guessing what tonight’s conversation would be about.

I spent the rest of the day procrastinating – I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any one task for more than a few minutes. I did the washing, tidied the house, reorganised my wardrobe by colour and watched four episodes of
Gilmore Girls
back to back. I tried on four different outfits for the Thursday night date, but none of them looked right. I browsed job websites but couldn’t find any further posts to apply for. In any case, surely one of the applications I had sent off that morning was bound to yield something?

The reason for my lack of concentration was, of course, the fact that I was waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for it to ring, hoping for it to ring, dreading it ringing, since I had no idea what I would say, if I were to say anything at all, if it did ring. It didn’t. I felt
cheated, I had missed my chance for closure. Still, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the Thursday night date would go so well that all thoughts of Dan would be banished for ever. Somehow I doubted it.