Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (12 page)

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘No problem at all.’ Nothing to it, this dog-walking malarkey.

Within days I had built up a growing client base. The cash-rich, time-poor of Clapham were queuing up
to have me escort their pampered hounds around the Common. I had so many requests that I had to do two shifts, one in the morning and one in the evening – the money wasn’t exactly brilliant but since I appeared to have no prospect of any real employment it would have to do.

I did have a couple of other schemes up my sleeve. I had noticed that on some of the less established job-hunting sites, there were advertisements of a more unusual nature. Some of them, like the ones demanding a female masseuse (photo required) were clearly to be avoided, but others looked more promising:

The Research House is looking for females aged 30–45 to take part in a study on Mayonnaise. You must have children. The sessions will be held at our central London facility on November 10th. The time slots available are: 10.00am, 12.30pm and 2.45pm
.

We are offering an incentive of £50 for your time and opinions
.

OK, so I wasn’t the perfect candidate – but not being aged between thirty and forty-five, not having any children and not liking mayonnaise did not seem to me to be insurmountable obstacles.

Another research study asked for people to take part in some market research for a global deodorant brand.

Applicants should have a high level of spoken English, should be confident and comfortable speaking in front of people, and should be avid users of deodorant
.

Did using deodorant every day after a shower qualify one as an ‘avid user’? I wasn’t sure, but I put my name down for that one, too.

In the meantime, I walked dogs. It was on my fifth or sixth evening outing that disaster struck. I was taking Susie, an enormous (albeit very friendly) Alsatian, a pair of skittish greyhounds named Thierry and Theo, a fat and slow Labrador retriever called Paddington and, last but not least, Stanley, a vicious little bastard of a Jack Russell. It was pouring with rain. I had called Mrs Bromell (who, for some reason, had become my dog-walk pimp) to suggest that it perhaps wasn’t the best idea to take the dogs out that night given the weather, but she insisted that a brief stroll would be OK.

‘Dogs don’t mind a bit of rain,’ she said.
Maybe so
, I thought,
but I bloody well do
.

I picked up the dogs – who all lived on the same street – and until Stanley joined the group it was going OK. Susie was incredibly strong and was dragging us along (well, Paddington and me, anyway) a little faster than we might have wanted to go, but I had things under control. Until, on the edge of Clapham Common, completely without warning, Stanley decided to have a nip at Thierry’s ankles and all hell broke lose. Theo came to his brother’s aid, clamping his teeth firmly around Stanley’s left ear. Susie, who is usually such a friendly hound, decided that someone Stanley’s size should not be picked on, and bared her teeth terrifyingly at Theo, hackles raised. Yelling for
calm, I managed to get tangled up in the leads and had to let go of one or risk dislocating a shoulder. As soon as I let go of his lead, Thierry sprinted off into the distance, yelping horribly. Theo and Susie followed at a gallop, dragging yapping Stanley, an increasingly distressed Paddington, and me, along behind them.

It had been pouring with rain half the day. The Common was a bog. We were tearing along, the five of us, skidding and sliding through the mud, water splashing up in our faces and raining down on our bedraggled heads. All the dogs were barking furiously, I was yelling at them to stop, trying to keep hold of the leads, trying to dig my heels into the grass to stop them.

In the darkness ahead loomed a park bench. The dogs were headed straight at it.

‘Left!’ I yelled helplessly at the leaders. ‘Go left!’

Susie went left, Theo went right, Stanley charged straight underneath the bench and I ran straight into it, flying right over it and landing face down in a deep, muddy puddle on the other side. I’d released my hold on the leads, letting the dogs scatter in all directions. Paddington, who had been at the rear of the pack and had managed to stop before hitting the bench, ambled around it and licked my face affectionately.

Forty-five minutes and one nervous breakdown later I had assembled my filthy, soaking, disobedient charges and the six of us limped homewards across the Common. Mrs Bromell was waiting for me outside Susie’s house.

‘Goodness,’ she said when she saw us, ‘look at the state of them! Honestly, Cassie, you shouldn’t let them get dirty like that! They’re going to tramp mud all over their owners’ houses.’

Caught between the urge to scream expletives at her and the temptation to simply sit down on the pavement and cry my eyes out, I apologised.

‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. ‘Things got a bit out of control. They’re not all as well trained as Fifi and Trixie,’ I added, glaring at Stanley. He yipped happily, wagging his tail at me.

I delivered the dogs to their disgruntled owners. Cold, wet, muddy, exhausted and bleeding slightly from a cut above my right eye sustained when falling over the bench, I don’t think I have ever felt so miserable. And my misery only deepened as I stood on the steps of number thirty-two, home to Thierry and Theo, one of the most beautiful houses on the road, a huge, imposing Georgian home with enormous windows revealing a coolly decorated interior (all zebra skin rugs and pristine white sofas). No doubt the home of some investment banker and his perfectly manicured wife. I rang the doorbell. The housekeeper answered.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ she said when she saw the state of the dogs. ‘They can’t come through the house like that. Take them round the back to the utility room.’ They had a housekeeper
and
a utility room. It just wasn’t fair. I escorted my muddy charges around through the garden and back door, admiring the
stunning glass and chrome kitchen extension, and delivered the dogs to the housekeeper, who was still muttering crossly about the state of them. She didn’t show the slightest bit of concern for bedraggled, bleeding me. I started off home.

I was quite convinced that things could not possibly get any worse when, lo and behold, they did. I had just reached the High Street when I saw them: Christa Freeman and Angela Chenowith, PA to Hamilton Churchill’s managing director. They were walking straight at me, huddling beneath an enormous yellow umbrella, picking their way through the puddles in their stilettos. I froze. There was nowhere to run, unless you count straight into the traffic. I considered it. Briefly, the thought of being crushed by a 4x4 did seem preferable to having to confront Christa in my current state. I dithered too long. They were almost on top of me. Christa clocked me. Her expression went from surprised to slightly disgusted. Steeling myself for what I imagined was likely to be one of the most painful conversations of my life, I tried to smile. They looked at me, then at each other.

‘Hello,’ I said with as much jollity as I could muster.

They walked straight past me. They did not even acknowledge my existence. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Hello!’ I said, loudly and angrily.

Christa said something to Angela and they both laughed.

If I’d had anything to throw at them, I’d have thrown it. Sadly I had already binned the assorted
bags of dog shit, so I had to make do with storming home in a terrible rage. Jude was going to rue the day she’d suggested this bloody dog-walking thing to me. I crashed into the flat, slamming the door behind me.

‘Jude!’ I yelled. ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’

There was no answer. I stormed around the flat, trampling mud everywhere. She was out.

‘I could kill you!’ I yelled at no one in particular, storming back into the living room, only to discover that my Designer’s Guild rug was now covered in muddy footprints. Aaaargh. I kicked off my trainers, took off my sodden clothes and stuffed everything into the washing machine. Then I took a very long, very hot shower.

Dressed in my pyjamas, clean, warm and dry, but still simmering with fury, I went straight for the fridge where, on the bottom shelf, was a bottle of champagne which Jude had bought for us to open when I got a new job. I opened it and poured myself a large glass. I flipped open my laptop and went straight to NET-A-PORTER. I was damned if the next time Christa Freeman laid eyes on me I’d be in anything less than the most amazing dress ever. The wedding was black tie, of course. I lost my heart to a Balmain embroidered mini dress, but even I wouldn’t stretch to six grand for a frock. Eventually I settled on a Matthew Williamson embellished silk dress. Click. The site suggested I wear it with Jimmy Choo sandals and an Anya Hindmarch clutch. Well, I was off the wagon now. Click, click. I swigged
down the rest of my champagne and poured myself another glass. Proceed to checkout. Click. The total came to £2,245. More champagne. Gulp. Confirm purchase. Click.

I got up early the next morning. I often do when I’m hungover. You wake up, you think, oh God, what the hell did I do last night, you remember that you spent £2,245 on a wedding outfit, you think, oh shit, and then you can’t get back to sleep again. Given that it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet, I was surprised to see Jude sitting in the kitchen, drinking a mug of camomile tea. She didn’t smile when she saw me.

‘You get a new job then?’ she asked, indicating with a jerk of her head the empty bottle of champagne that was sitting on the table where I’d left it.

‘No, I just had a really bad day. I’m sorry, I’ll replace it.’

‘Did you win the lottery?’

‘It’s a twenty-five-quid bottle of Moët & Chandon, Jude, I think I can probably stretch to that without breaking the bank.’

‘Right. And what about the dress? And the shoes? And the handbag?’

Shit. I’d left my laptop on.

‘I come home, I see empty champagne bottles, mud all over the place, all the lights left on, and then I go to check my emails and I find out that you have spent more than two grand – two fucking grand – on a dress!’ She was yelling at me. And swearing. Jude
never swears. This was bad. ‘You don’t have enough money to pay next month’s rent so how the fuck are you able to afford that?’

‘I just … I just wanted to cheer myself up,’ I said weakly.

‘Well, then you rent a fucking comedy, Cassie. You watch
Friends
on TV. You call Ali, you call me, call your mum, whatever. You don’t spend two grand on some ridiculous fucking outfit.’ I don’t think I have ever heard Jude swear so much in such a short space of time. She marched across the room, picked up my laptop and plonked it down on the counter in front of me.

‘Cancel it,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Cancel. It. Now.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not cancelling it. You can’t just order me around all the time, Jude. It’s my money and I’ve decided to spend it on an outfit for this wedding. It’s none of your business. You shouldn’t be snooping around on my laptop anyway.’

‘It’s not your money, Cassie. You don’t have any money, remember? It’s the bank’s money. And it
is
my business if we’re going to get a sodding eviction notice next month.’

‘I’m not cancelling it.’

‘Fine, don’t. I’m going to call the landlord this morning and give notice. I’m going to find myself somewhere else to live before we get thrown out onto the street.’

I cancelled the transaction. And I would never admit it to Jude, but I actually felt incredibly relieved as I was doing it.

Cassie Cavanagh
demands to know, what fresh hell is this?

Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, a new low comes.

When Emily invited me to her wedding, I was delighted. It was going to be such a lovely weekend. I had pictured Dan and me driving up the night before the service in his Audi TT coupé, with the top down, a brightly printed scarf tied around my hair (in my imagination it was a very warm and sunny November). We would book a suite at the hotel, we would drink champagne and eat strawberries on the balcony (again, warm and sunny), we would have breakfast in bed, perhaps pop down to the spa for a shiatsu or a scrub before getting ready for the main event. I had not pictured myself having to take the train from London, or jammed into a carriage where there was standing room only (I stood) because there were engineering works on the line. I had not pictured
staying in a grotty bed and breakfast two miles away from the reception venue. And I had certainly not pictured myself having to walk those two miles, in my nasty cheap high heels, because there is only one minicab firm in the entire bloody county and all their cars were already booked.

When I discovered that there were no cars available, I rang Ali, who was staying at Bramley House with the rest of the rich and posh.

‘You have to come and get me!’ I pleaded with her.

‘I don’t have my car,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I got a lift down with Sophie and Kate.’ Sophie and Kate were the only other female traders on the Hamilton Churchill equities team.

‘Oh. Well, maybe one of them could come and get me?’

‘No, they can’t, they’ve been drinking champagne since breakfast. Sorry.’

‘Ali …’ I started to say, but she’d already hung up.

She didn’t sound very sorry. She sounded slightly irritated that I was bothering her. She was obviously still cross about the confrontation at my place, when I’d yelled at her and accused her of ganging up on me – with Jude of all people. There was nothing for it. I would have to walk.