Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (30 page)

‘Did I tell you about the New York thing?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘You did, but I can’t remember the details. When are you actually going?’

Matt’s new job started in June, but they were going to go over in May in order to find themselves somewhere to live and give Jude a chance to start looking for work.

‘So we need to give notice pretty much straight away, don’t we?’

‘I’m really sorry, Cassie, I know you could probably do without this right now. You could always stay here, and just get someone else to rent out the room.’

‘It wouldn’t be the same without you,’ I said. ‘In any case, I think I could do with a change. Plus, I happen to know someone who’s in the market for a lodger.’

Ali was delighted when I suggested that I should move in with her.

‘That’ll be perfect, Cassie. I really need someone to help out with the mortgage. And of course that’ll mean you’re not just renting any more – you’ll be buying a piece of my house.’

‘No, Ali, I couldn’t do that – it’s your place.’

‘If you’re going to be paying part of the mortgage, I
think it should be our place. Yours, mine and little Joe’s.’

Oh, my God. I was about to become a homeowner. Or at least, a part-of-a-homeowner. How incredibly grown up of me.

Cassie Cavanagh
is moving on to greater things

If I was going to become a homeowner, remaining in full-time employment was going to be a necessity. And I was starting to worry that I might just find myself out of work yet again if things carried on as they had been recently.

The problem was a gentleman by the name of Alexandre Leveque, the owner of Chateau Saint Martin near St Emilion in Bordeaux. Rupert had sampled his wines when on a tour of the region and had become obsessed with doing a deal with Monsieur Leveque. Unfortunately, M. Leveque was not an easy man to do business with. For starters, he despised
les Anglais
. He was not a fan of Anglo-Saxon corporate culture and he was deeply suspicious of Internet-based businesses. In short, he wanted nothing to do with us.

Peter had been dispatched to France to try to sweet-talk Leveque into doing a deal with us and had returned, chastened.

‘Never going to happen, Rupe. The man’s a nutter. He blames the English and the Americans for the demise of the great
viticulteurs français
. Apparently the crisis in French wine production is all our fault because we buy cheap stuff from the New World. And of course because we’ve dared to start producing wine in England, too, which is of course complete sacrilege.’

Rupert refused to accept this. He was determined to get his hands on Leveque’s wines and as a result of his obsession, and of Leveque’s continued refusal to do business with us, Rupert had become increasingly difficult to please. Because the others were out of the office so much of the time, Melanie and I generally bore the brunt of Rupert’s frustration.

After months of feeling that I was a valuable cog in the office machine, I was suddenly made to feel as though everything I did was wrong. It was a bit like working for Nicholas again. The research report I’d written for him on Corsican wines was ‘insubstantial’. The delivery company had messed up three orders in two weeks – why had I not got him quotes from new companies? Surely I should have guessed that he would want to look at new delivery firms? My job was to anticipate his needs, not simply to respond to them. And on the subject of anticipating needs, where the hell was his cappuccino?

It was an immense relief to everyone when, at long last, Alexandre Leveque agreed to meet with Rupert. The terms of a deal were agreed, but Leveque refused to sign anything until he’d met Rupert in person: he
was to travel out to France that Thursday, taking with him the contract which Leveque would then sign, provided Rupert met with his approval.

On Thursday morning, I skipped into work, anticipating my first relaxing work day in weeks. Rupert would be hysterical about the meeting, but at least he would be hysterical somewhere else. Peter and Fabio were both away on trips and Olly was attending his youngest child’s school sports day, so it would be just Melanie, Aidan and me in the office. As it turned out, it was just Aidan and me. Mel called in sick. We were just deciding whether we could afford to nip out to the market for a couple of bacon sarnies when the phone rang.

‘Cassie?’ It was Rupert. He sounded panicky. ‘We have a problem.’

‘What’s up?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t forgotten your passport, have you?’

‘Worse. I’ve lost the contract.’

‘You’ve what? What do you mean, you’ve lost the contract?’

‘I had to change trains in Paris and I must have left it behind.’

‘OK, well, don’t panic. I can fax a new copy over to you. Leveque must have a fax machine at his place.’

‘Cassie, you don’t seem to understand!’ His voice rose a couple of octaves. ‘This is going to be an incredibly delicate negotiation. I cannot turn up there without the contract. I’ll look like a bloody idiot.’
Well, you are a bloody idiot
, I thought.
Who leaves the contract
with an important business partner on the train?
‘In any case, Olly had already put his signature on the contract – a faxed signature is no good. It has to be the original.’

‘Right. Don’t panic. I’ll print out a new contract, take it to Olly – where’s his son’s school, by the way?’

‘No idea.’ God, he was useless.

‘All right, I’ll find it. I’ll get him to sign and I’ll courier the contract out to you.’

‘It’ll have to be at Leveque’s place by eight this evening. We’re having dinner.’

‘I’m sure it’s doable,’ I said, sounding a good deal more confident than I felt.

While the new contract was printing, I called around a few courier companies. The news was not good. If you wanted a package delivered to France by that evening, it needed to be collected by eight in the morning. It was now eight thirty. It was the same story with the first three firms. The fourth said they could do it provided that I had the package ready for collection by nine thirty. Hurrah. I rang Olly. His phone went straight to voicemail. Shit. I left a message.

‘Olly, you need to ring me back as soon as you get this. It is very urgent.’

I rang again five minutes later, and again five minutes after that. He called back at eight fifty. They were just on their way to the sports day at his son’s school in Wimbledon. If I took a cab I could get there in twenty minutes. I rang the courier company again. Could they pick up from the school at nine thirty? Yes, they could. Fantastic.

I hurtled down the stairs, out of the door and up the road to London Bridge station, where you are guaranteed to find a black cab at any time of night or day. There was a queue of around ten people outside the station. Bugger it. I wondered whether I should take my chances on the high street? I decided against it. The queue was moving fairly quickly. It was just after nine when I got into the cab. I could still make it. I would still make it.

The traffic in central London was pretty awful, but once we got past Clapham and out onto the A24 we were picking up pace. It was nine fifteen. It was going to be close.

‘You in a hurry, love?’ the cabby asked me. He’d obviously seen me looking at my watch every thirty seconds.

‘Yes, I really need to get some papers to my boss by nine thirty.’

‘We should make it, provided the traffic’s like this all the way.’ That remark was the kiss of death. Moments after he’d said it, the cars in front of us started to slow. Their speed dropped and dropped and eventually we came to a halt. ‘Famous last words,’ the cabby said cheerfully. Oh, fuck. I wasn’t going to make it.

I got to the school at nine forty. Olly was waiting for me in the car park. I asked the taxi driver to wait and sprinted across to him. He was shaking his head.

‘Too late, Cassie. The courier just left.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m not, I’m afraid. I tried to persuade him to wait, but he said nine thirty is the absolute latest they can accept packages for same-day delivery.’

‘Oh, Jesus. Rupert’s going to kill me.’

‘He is,’ Olly agreed. I sat down on the pavement, my head in my hands. This was a disaster. What the hell was I going to do? ‘We’ll have to let him know. Do you want me to ring him? I can tell him that it wasn’t your fault.’
Of course it wasn’t my bloody fault
, I thought.
He’s the one who left the bloody contract on the bloody train
. But somehow I knew that, when it came down to it, I would be the one to carry the can. There was only one thing for it.

‘Don’t ring him,’ I said to Olly, getting to my feet. ‘Sign the contract.’

‘Cassie, there’s no way you can get it to him today.’

‘Yes, there is. I can take them to him myself.’

In the taxi on the way back to my flat I rang Air France. There were no direct flights from London to Bordeaux until that evening, but I could get a seat on the twelve o’clock flight from Gatwick which got into Paris at one thirty. From Paris to St Emilion it was about three hundred and seventy miles, so if I hired a car at the airport and put my foot down on the motorway I could be in St Emilion by seven. Although unless I could make it to the airport by ten forty-five, all this was moot.

I left the taxi driver waiting downstairs while I ran up to the flat to grab my passport and a change of clothes – I couldn’t get a flight back until Saturday morning unless I was prepared to pay an extortionate
fare. I left a hastily scrawled note for Jude, saying,
Gone to France. Back soon
. Then I ran back downstairs, tripped on the second to last step and fell flat on my face, hauled myself up again and flung myself into the back of the cab.

‘Gatwick,’ I gasped. ‘Quick as you can.’

From the taxi I phoned Avis and arranged the car hire. The moment I’d hung up, Rupert rang.

‘Is everything sorted, Cassie? Is the contract on its way? What time can I expect it?’

‘It’ll be delivered to your hotel by seven,’ I said.

‘You sure about that? The company’s guaranteed that, have they?’

‘Sorry? I can’t really hear you, Rupert,’ I lied. ‘You’re breaking up.’ I hung up. Oh, God, please let me get to that hotel by seven.

I made it to the check-in desk at five to eleven.

‘You’re too late,’ the man behind the desk said. ‘We’ve closed check-in.’

‘Oh, God, please don’t say that. I have to get to Paris. My job is on the line. Please?’

‘You’re too late,’ the man repeated.

‘I don’t have any luggage to check in,’ I said. ‘I can go straight to the gate. Please?’ I pleaded. He sighed.

‘Oh, all right then. But you must go straight to the gate. You don’t have time for shopping.’

I was the last person onto the plane. They literally closed the doors behind me as I got on. Then the plane sat on the runway for forty minutes.

‘It’s your fault, you know,’ the prune-faced old woman sitting on the other side of the aisle said to me. ‘Because we were waiting for you, we missed our slot.’ Miserable old cow.

We landed at Charles de Gaulle just before two. I sprinted to the Avis counter, picked up the keys to my Citroën ZX and purchased a map from a bookshop in the airport terminal. Annoyingly, I discovered that I was on completely the wrong side of the city. I would have to drive all the way around Paris’s answer to the M25 – the
Périphérique
– in order to get to the motor-way towards Orléans and the south-west.
Le Périph
, as it is known by the locals, is notoriously prone to traffic jams. I was just going to have to pray that today was a good traffic day in Paris.

Fortunately, it was. I made it to the motorway by half past two which, I realised, gave me four and a half hours to drive three hundred and fifty miles. That meant I’d have to average about eighty. Oh, shit. I put my foot down. Vast swathes of France passed by in a blur; I sped past Orléans, Blois and Tours, eventually stopping near Poitiers for a cup of coffee and a ham and cheese baguette. It was quarter to five. I wolfed down my sandwich in under three minutes and got back onto the motorway.

I made it to Rupert’s hotel in St Emilion at a quarter to eight. I leapt out of the car, grabbed the contract and my phone and ran into the lobby. There was no one there, but there were seventeen missed calls on my mobile. I didn’t bother listening to them;
I rang Rupert straight away.

‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘On my way to the Chateau Saint Martin. What the fuck happened with the contract? You told me seven o’clock. This is an almighty cock-up, Cassie.’ He put the phone down.

Yes, Rupert, it is an almighty cock-up. Your almighty cock-up
. I didn’t have time to reflect on the injustice of the whole situation, I just had to get over to the chateau. I asked the concierge for directions. He reckoned it wouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.

Clutching the concierge’s hastily scrawled instructions (which were in passable English), I dashed back to the car and headed off in the direction of the chateau. I got lost twice, but not for any great length of time, and arrived at Chateau Saint Martin at twenty past eight. I hastily reapplied a bit of lipstick and mascara, brushed out my hair, spritzed myself with Chanel and rang the doorbell. An elderly gentleman opened the door. He frowned at me.