Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (29 page)

‘It’s a repossession, apparently,’ Ali whispered back. ‘The guy who did it up was a property developer who took on too many houses, spent a fortune doing them up and then couldn’t get rid of them quickly enough. If it goes for anything like the guide price it’ll be an absolute bloody steal.’

Later, over steaks at Black & Blue on Kensington Church Street I asked the obvious question.

‘Say it doesn’t go for anything like the guide price. Say it goes for considerably more. Can you afford a
three hundred grand property if you’re not going to be working, Ali?’

She chewed a mouthful of ribeye thoughtfully.

‘Not really. It depends how long I’m out of work for, I suppose. It isn’t absolutely guaranteed that Hamilton will sack me. Nicholas has actually been making quite encouraging noises since I told him I was pregnant – I think since there are so few women or ethnic minorities at the firm he reckons that having a single mother on the trading floor will be good for the company’s social responsibility rating. I don’t know. I’m not even sure I’m going to want to work as a trader once the baby comes.’ She sighed. ‘I have got enough for a fairly sizeable deposit – I had three years of good bonuses before last year, which was obviously rubbish, and I haven’t spent a great deal of the money. All I did was buy a car, rent the flat and go on a couple of holidays. What would be really helpful would be if I could get someone to move in with me.’

‘Got your eye on anyone?’ I asked with a smile.

‘What, like a man? In this state? Are you joking? I weigh more than half the forwards on the England rugby team, for God’s sake.’ It was true that she was starting to look fairly hefty. ‘No, what I need is a nice young Eastern European who’ll double as a lodger and babysitter.’

When I eventually arrived home that night, Jude was sitting on the sofa, talking on the phone and weeping. My first thought was that someone had died. But
when she looked up at me, she seemed to be smiling and weeping. I was confused. She put the phone down, leapt to her feet and flung her arms around me.

‘He’s asked me to marry him!’ she sobbed, squeezing me so hard I thought she might break a rib. ‘Matt’s asked me to marry him!’

‘He asked you over the phone? That’s not terribly romantic.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she replied. ‘He’s in Somalia, you see, and his car was shot at by rebels when he was driving from one of the refugee camps back to Mogadishu, and he thought he was going to die and all he could think,’ she sobbed, ‘all he could think was that he was never going to see me again and he just couldn’t bear it. So as soon as he got back into town he got hold of a satellite phone and he rang me.’

‘God, that is romantic,’ I said. I was welling up too.

‘Do we have any booze in the house?’

‘No, but the offie’s open for another … twelve minutes.’ I kicked off my heels, slipped on my trainers and sprinted all the way.

I dragged myself into work the next day, my head aching and the rest of my body protesting at the lack of sleep. Jude and I had sat up drinking and chatting until three in the morning, planning the engagement party she was going to have when Matt returned from Somalia in a couple of weeks’ time. A triple-shot latte clutched in my right hand and a copy of
Decanter
magazine in my left, I staggered into the office to be
greeted by Rupert and Olly, beaming at me as though they’d just won the lottery.

‘How are you this morning, Cassie?’ Rupert boomed.

‘I’m very well, thanks,’ I lied.

‘Lovely morning, isn’t it?’ Olly asked. Was it just me, or were they speaking unnecessarily loudly?

‘Do you know what day it is?’ Rupert asked.

‘Umm. Your birthday?’ I ventured.

‘It’s the end of your trial! Your three months are up!’

‘I hope you’re not about to tell me that my services are no longer required,’ I said. They both laughed heartily. And loudly.

‘Course not! We’ve got your permanent contract all drawn up. Thought we’d take you out to breakfast to celebrate.’

They took me to Roast above Borough Market where I tucked into an extremely welcome smoked streaky bacon and fried egg butty accompanied by a glass of champagne (hair of the dog). Rupert laid the contract down on the table in front of me.

‘The money’s still not fantastic, Cassie. It’s not as much as you deserve – we really do appreciate how hard you’ve been working lately. But hopefully it won’t be long before we can offer you a bit more – if things keep going the way they are at the moment there are bound to be opportunities for you to move up in the company.’

He was right, the money wasn’t fantastic, but I was just delighted to be back in full-time employment – and working at a place where I could see myself moving up the ladder in a year or two’s time.

The permanent contract came at an opportune time, offering, as it did, four weeks of paid holiday, one day of which I opted to take that Friday so that I could accompany Ali to the property auction. It was held in a function room at the Royal Garden Hotel on High Street Kensington. Looking around the room, which was packed to the rafters, you wouldn’t have thought that we were in the middle of a housing market crash. There were hundreds of people there, and quite a few of them looked more like first-time buyers – young people, some with kids – than property investors or developers.

Ali’s house, as I was already referring to it, was lot number twenty-two. The first batch of lots sold for well above their guide price.

‘What are we prepared to go up to?’ I whispered to Ali, who had found a chair and was sitting at the back of the room wearing her poker face: perfectly impassive.

‘I’ll go to three twenty,’ she said. ‘That’s the valuation the surveyor put on it. I do love the house but I’m not paying over the odds for it. In any case, anything above that and the mortgage would start to look a bit unmanageable.’

I didn’t know how she could manage to be so calm about it. She was about to spend three hundred and twenty thousand pounds. My heart races when I spend a couple of hundred quid on a pair of shoes. But then she is used to dealing with big numbers. When we got to lot twenty-one, a dilapidated pile
somewhere in Hounslow, I helped Ali to her feet and we moved through the crowd towards the front.

‘Lot twenty-two,’ the auctioneer announced, ‘is number forty-seven St Mark’s Road, W10. The guide price is two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the reserve price is one hundred and twenty thousand. Can I start the bidding at one hundred and fifty?’ We looked around the room. No one bid. My hands were shaking.

‘What do we do?’ I whispered.

‘Nothing,’ Ali whispered back. ‘We don’t open the bidding.’

‘Do I see one thirty? Surely I see one thirty? This is a three-bedroom property in excellent condition, in the heart of West London. Do I see one thirty? I do, the bidding is opened at one hundred and thirty thousand pounds. Do I see one forty?’

‘Who bid?’ I hissed at Ali. ‘I didn’t see who it was.’

‘Shhh. Let me concentrate.’

A bidding war began between two men, both of whom looked as though they might have been developers – they had bid on other properties already that morning. Ali’s house was clearly not their dream home.

‘Hopefully, they’re not going to be in it all the way,’ Ali said to me. ‘They’re going to want to sell the place on, and since there’s not much you can do to the house that hasn’t already been done, they need a low price in order to make their margin.’

One of the developers dropped out at two seventy. It was time to make our move.

‘Do I see two eighty?’ the auctioneer asked. ‘The bidding is with you, sir, at two seventy. Do I see two eighty?’

Ali raised her hand. ‘We have a new bidder!’ the auctioneer announced excitedly. The remaining property developer, who was standing less than ten feet away from us, rolled his eyes and turned to look at us, visibly annoyed. Ali gave him a cold, hard stare. He looked away. He bid two ninety and Ali went to three hundred. The auctioneer asked for three ten. His hand stayed down. She’d done it!

‘The bidding is with the young lady, at three hundred thousand pounds,’ the auctioneer said. ‘Going once, going twice … I have a new bid! The gentleman at the back bids three hundred and ten thousand.’ My heart sank. Ali remained stoical, raising her hand to bid three twenty.

‘Do I see three thirty?’ Please don’t see three thirty, I thought. ‘Three hundred and thirty thousand pounds.’ That was it. I was devastated, and it wasn’t even my dream house. I couldn’t imagine what Ali must have been feeling. She’d wanted this so much, but still her face gave nothing away. The auctioneer asked if there were any more bids. There were not. And then, just as he was about to bring the gavel down, Ali raised her hand one more time.

‘Three fifty,’ she called out. I was so surprised I actually jumped. Three fifty? Where did three fifty come from? What happened to three forty?

‘Three hundred and fifty thousand,’ the auctioneer
announced. ‘Do I see three sixty?’

He did not. ‘Going once, going twice …’ The gavel came down. ‘Lot twenty-two is sold to the young lady for three hundred and fifty thousand pounds! Congratulations.’ Ali and I were jumping up and down, hugging each other.

‘Oh, my God!’ I shrieked. ‘I can’t believe we won! We won!’

‘I need to sit down,’ Ali said.

‘I need a drink,’ I said.

‘I also need to pee,’ Ali said.

When Ali got back from the ladies I’d found a table in the corner of the lobby and ordered a coffee for myself and orange juice for her.

‘Christ,’ she said, sinking into an armchair, ‘I can’t believe I just paid thirty thousand over my limit.’

‘Neither can I.’

‘I just couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear to let it go.’

‘What happens now?’ I asked her.

‘Well, I have to put down a ten per cent deposit today – that won’t be a problem, I can get the bank to transfer over the money. Then I have a month – well, twenty working days to be exact – to get the rest of the money together. I’m going to have to go back to my broker and ask for more cash.’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to get it?’

‘I’d better be able to get it – the deposit is non-refundable, so if I don’t get it, I’ll have just thrown away thirty-five thousand pounds.’

‘Jesus, Ali. How can you be so calm about this?’

‘Oh, I’m not calm. I’m actually having a nervous breakdown as we speak. But I’m an equities trader – we’re good at hiding our true feelings.’

The weekend after the auction was Matt and Jude’s engagement party. They had decided on a picnic on the Common for fifty or so of their closest friends. Jude’s friends Zara and Lucinda, who are both vegans, did the catering. The food was pretty much inedible. There was plenty to drink and quite a bit to smoke, though, and the combination resulted in a massive outbreak of the munchies. Eventually, Jake led a splinter faction of non-vegetarians on a run to the deli on the high street to stock up on real food.

Vegans or no vegans, it was a glorious day. Jake and I annoyed everyone with our flagrant public displays of affection, and Ali kept everyone amused with horrendous tales of ‘the truth about pregnancy’. (She’s threatening to write a book on the subject, complete with the low-down on throwing up on the tube, chronic indigestion, stretch marks, swelling, sciatica and strangers feeling free to fondle your stomach in the supermarket.) As the sun started to set, Jude’s hippy friends performed a ‘blessing ritual’ for the happy couple which had the more cynical among us in stitches.

After the blessing, we played a mammoth game of football, involving teams of at least twenty players each, though who was playing for which team never seemed to be completely clear. Several people, myself
included, took advantage of the failing light to change sides a few times depending on the score. It finished 23–19. I scored three goals, which should give you a keen sense of what the defending was like.

When the booze finally ran out, the more hardened partygoers among us went back to our flat to open a couple of bottles of Vintage Organics’ finest. It was there that Jude dropped her bombshell.

‘We have to move out,’ she said, gazing mournfully into the middle distance. She was quite stoned. ‘We have to leave, Cassie.’

‘Why? You and Matt aren’t getting married straight away, are you – I thought you were planning on a very long engagement?’

‘I’m leaving the country,’ she replied. ‘In two months’ time. As soon as my course is finished.’

‘What? Since when? Where are you going? Why?’

‘Matt’s finally decided he’s had enough of being shot at on a regular basis. They’ve offered him a job at Unicef’s headquarters – it’s a really good job. And it’s in New York.’

‘Oh, my God, Jude, that’s amazing! New York! That’s so exciting.’

‘I know,’ she said, and burst into tears.

I woke up the following morning with an aching head and only a vague recollection of my conversation with Jude. I staggered into the kitchen, where she and Matt were sitting, drinking tea, looking about as bad as I felt.

‘Morning,’ I said softly. They both smiled and nodded their heads very gently. ‘Anyone got any aspirin?’ Matt handed me the box. Jude pointed at the kettle. I nodded. She made me a cup of tea. For ten minutes or so, we sat in silence. Eventually, Jude spoke.