Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (11 page)

The date was Ali’s idea. The man in question was a friend of one of her clients: a trainee solicitor at a City firm, he was allegedly very bright and very attractive and destined for great things. At first I refused.

‘It is way too soon, Ali,’ I protested. ‘I’m a mess. I can’t see anyone now.’

‘You can and you will,’ she replied. ‘We both know that the only real way to get over one relationship is to distract yourself with another one – even if it’s just an in-betweener thing. The moment you’re shagging someone else you’ll stop thinking about shagging Dan, or not shagging Dan, or the fact that Dan’s shagging some Yank.’ She had a point.

I was still contemplating possible date outfits when the doorbell rang – my new bedside table was being delivered. Unfortunately the delivery man had barely managed to get it through the door when Jude showed up – and she had a surprise for me. She’d brought Ali along, too.

‘What is this?’ Jude demanded, staring at the bedside table which was now sitting in the middle of the living room. ‘Oh, please don’t tell me,’ she went on, ‘you’ve been shopping!’ She grabbed the pile of receipts which were still sitting on the kitchen counter (why the hell hadn’t I got rid of those?) and waved them in my face. ‘This has got to stop, Cassie.
This is totally insane,’ she yelled.

The delivery man, who was nervously inching past her towards the door, said, ‘If you could just sign here …’

‘No!’ Jude shouted at him. ‘She cannot sign. Take it back. She doesn’t want it.’

‘But, but …’ he stammered, ‘it was in the sale. We can’t take it back.’

‘Yeah!’ I said triumphantly. ‘They won’t take it back.’ I signed the receipt and the delivery man fled.

Jude stood in the middle of the room, almost purple in the face. Ali stood at her side. She didn’t meet my eye.

‘OK,’ Jude said. ‘We get it. You lost your job, your horrible boyfriend dumped you for another woman, it’s not very nice. But you cannot do this. You can’t just spend your way out of every problem you ever have.’

She was right, of course. I had been overdoing it, but I was suddenly furious at being ambushed like this. And for some reason, it was Ali, who hadn’t yet said a word, who I was furious with.

‘You got anything to add, Al? Because I don’t remember you complaining about my spending when we were drinking fifteen-quid-a-throw cocktails last week. What is this, anyway? An intervention? You two are ganging up on me now, are you? How did that happen? You don’t even like each other.’

‘Maybe we don’t always see eye to eye,’ Ali said evenly, ‘but Jude rang me when she saw your credit card bill and all those receipts because she was
worried about you. And I happen to think she’s right to be worried. If you let this get out of control you could find yourself in real trouble, Cass. We’re not ganging up on you, but we do feel like you’ve got to stop all this and start concentrating on what you’re going to do next.’

‘You are ganging up on me,’ I pouted. I started dragging my new table across the floor towards my bedroom. Jude grabbed the other side of it, tugging in the opposite direction. ‘Jude!’ I yelled. ‘Let go! They’re not going to take it back!’

‘Then you can sell it on eBay,’ she said, refusing to relinquish her grasp. A futile tug-of-war ensued, both of us grunting and swearing as we tried to manoeuvre the table in opposite directions.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Ali snapped eventually. ‘Just let her keep the bloody thing. Compromise, OK? Jude, you let go of the sodding table and in return Cassie agrees to a sensible discussion about what she’s going to do about work.’

With my new piece of furniture safely installed in my bedroom, I returned to the kitchen and slumped down at the counter, feeling a bit like a sulky teenager who’s been caught nicking vodka from her parents’ drinks cabinet.

‘I have been applying for jobs,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not my fault I haven’t got anything yet.’

‘You haven’t registered with any temp agencies,’ Jude countered. ‘You’re not following the Recession Buster plan.’ I rolled my eyes at her. Ali tried to
suppress a smile. I pointed out that I now had three grand in redundancy pay. They shoved the credit card bill and receipts back at me.

‘Plus there’s rent due in a few days,’ Jude pointed out. ‘And don’t roll your eyes at me, Cassie. This is not just about you. We signed that rental agreement together. You default and they could come after me for the cash.’

I was going to have to make cutbacks. I had to cancel the cleaner, the Sky subscription, and ‘make my own damn coffee’ instead of spending seven quid a day in Starbucks. There were to be rules. I was to be allowed to go out on weekends only and there was to be absolutely no shopping. No luxuries, no indulgences, no spa treatments. Thrift was to be the order of the day. We worked out that so long as I stuck to these rules, my redundancy package would cover the minimum repayment on my credit card for this month and next, as well as next month’s rent, bills and living expenses. Very basic living expenses. After that, I would be broke.

‘You’ve got a little over five weeks to find a job,’ Jude said.

‘I won’t need five weeks,’ I assured her, ‘you’ll see. I’ll find something in no time.’

Well, maybe not no time. Every day for the following week I checked my emails for news from potential employers. None came. Each morning I descended the stairs to the entrance hall into which our mail was delivered, each morning I sifted through
bills and junk mail and letters for people who hadn’t lived in this building for months, and each morning there was nothing for me. No offers of interviews, no expressions of interest. Hell, I hadn’t even had a rejection letter! I was just being ignored. Even worse, the temp agencies I finally spoke to told me that they weren’t taking on any new people at the moment – they had more than enough temps to cover the jobs that were out there.

I was going stir-crazy in the flat (I couldn’t risk going out in case I bought anything) and Jude was making things ten times worse. Every evening when she got home she bombarded me with questions: what had I done all day, how much had I spent, how many jobs had I applied for, had I had any responses yet? It was driving me insane. I’d heard nothing from Dan since the day of the credit card bill and Thursday’s date with the solicitor hadn’t helped take my mind off Dan at all.

The date was, in fact, a total, unmitigated disaster. His name was Sean and he was, I have to admit, very attractive. He was also dull, pompous, completely without charm and told slightly racist jokes. Plus he turned up wearing too-tight jeans and a pink shirt with sweat patches under the armpits.

‘How in God’s name could you set me up with that man?’ I demanded of Ali as I walked home, alone, after spending ninety painful minutes, one and a half hours of my life that I was never going to get back, in Sean’s company.

‘Well, I don’t really know him,’ she said blithely, ‘but he’s good-looking and he’s loaded. You like good-looking and loaded, don’t you?’

‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘but I also like human.’

Cassie Cavanagh
is a paragon of virtue

Bank balance: -£193.50

Available overdraft: £1,800

Weeks to go until the money runs out: Four

Weeks to go until the social event of the year: Two

No clothes, no shoes, no cocktails, no lattes, not so much as a lipstick. My anti-extravagance drive was going exceptionally well, although there was one ugly black cloud looming on the horizon in the shape of Emily’s wedding. In two weeks’ time I would be attending the nuptials of Emily Conrad and Tristan Pilkington-Smythe, to be held at Bramley House, astonishingly expensive boutique hotel slash palace in the Cotswolds. I would be attending the wedding of the decade and I had absolutely nothing to wear.

When I mentioned this to Jude she got incredibly irritated with me, dragging me into my room and pulling out five or six dresses that would be suitable
for a winter wedding and flinging them on the bed, demanding, ‘What’s wrong with that one then?’ over and over again. She doesn’t understand.

Emily Conrad works in the corporate finance department at Hamilton. She’s the daughter of Sir Peter Conrad, media mogul and patron of the arts. Emily drives a bright red Mercedes, she wears Chanel, she holidays in Mustique. Her intended, whom I’ve never met, is terrifyingly posh, one hundred and sixth in line to the throne or something. So far, so daunting. But among the legions of posh and rich people I’ll have to face will be dozens of my erstwhile colleagues, including Nicholas, Christa and, worst of all, Dan. I’m praying, hoping against hope that he won’t be bringing the American woman. I don’t even know if he’s still seeing her. I de-friended him on Facebook after I found out about the infidelity. In any case, I
have
to look good. I have to look great, and I can’t be wearing a dress that he, or anyone else at work has already seen me in. I certainly can’t wear the Louboutins, which will for ever be tainted with his betrayal.

Still, with no job on the horizon and the redundancy money fast trickling away, dress-shopping is off the agenda. Not only that, but instead of staying at the lovely country house hotel with all the rich and posh guests, I’ve had to book myself a room in the distinctly average-looking B&B in the local village. I’ll just have to slope off quietly and hope that no one notices.

Unless of course I found myself a job quickly.

So you see, it was the wedding, anxiety about the
bloody wedding, which made me agree to Jude’s ludicrous suggestion. Yesterday, she came bouncing into the room, grinning manically at me.

‘Great news!’ she announced. ‘I’ve got you a job!’

‘Really?’ I asked, trying to sound enthusiastic but feeling deeply sceptical.

‘Now, it’s not the sort of thing you would usually go for …’

No, I’ll bet it isn’t
.

‘… but if you just hear me out. It’s just a part-time thing, it’ll give you some extra cash, tide you over until you find something more … suitable.’

‘OK then, I’m listening.’

‘Don’t just dismiss it out of hand.’

‘OK.’

‘You’ll think about it?’

‘Yes, yes, all right. What is it?’

‘Dog walking.’

‘Dog walking.’

‘Yes, dog walking.’

‘Absolutely no way in hell, Jude,’ I said. ‘I don’t like dogs. I’m a cat person, through and through. If you know of anyone who needs their cat walked, I’m there. But I’m not doing dogs.’

‘You said you’d think about it, you said you wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand,’ she complained.

‘That was before I knew what it was.’

‘But I’ve got it all set up,’ she said. ‘The thing is that my friend Lucy’s parents are going away for a couple of weeks, and they’ve got the lady next door to feed their
dogs, but she’s got a dodgy hip and she can’t take them out for walks. They live just across the Common. It’s really close. And I … well, I already said you’d do it.’

‘Jude! You can’t just hire me out to people without my permission!’

‘But you need the money, Cass. And Lucy reckons there are quite a few of her parents’ friends who need dog walkers – all in this area. Apparently there was a guy who used to do it for them, but it turned out that he was a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, plus someone caught him smoking grass when in charge of the dogs, so he got the sack. It’s cash in hand, you’ll be out and about, getting some exercise instead of just sitting around here eating junk food all day … Please, Cassie?’

The following day I set out to make my first dog-walking appointment. It was a bitterly cold and misty morning, the watery November sunlight barely breaking through the clouds. Cursing Jude all the way, I trudged across the muddy Common to Jedburgh Street where I was due to meet Mrs Bromell, the neighbour with the dodgy hip, to pick up the keys and collect the dogs.

‘Fifi and Trixie are their names,’ she told me. ‘Fifi’s the larger one. You’ll find their leads on the hook behind the door in the kitchen and the bags are under the sink.’

‘The bags?’

‘You know, for the poop.’

Oh, Christ.

I let myself into the house and was incredibly relieved to be greeted by a pair of small and meek-looking poodles who regarded me benignly with sad eyes, wagging their tails gently and showing no interest whatsoever in sinking their teeth into my ankles.

Despite the cold, and the ignominy of being in the process of scooping fresh dog shit into a plastic bag at the precise moment at which three attractive young men jogged past me, dog walking turned out to be far less stressful than expected. Trixie and Fifi were docile and well behaved, they didn’t make a run for it the moment I released them from their leads and they didn’t get into any fights with other dogs. We walked briskly around the Common a couple of times – the first exercise I’d done in days – and I returned them home safely without incident.

I was just letting myself out of the house when Mrs Bromell appeared behind me.

‘Hello, dear,’ she said, ‘you’ll be back again tomorrow morning then? I was wondering if you could take another couple of dogs out at the same time? The lady who lives a couple of houses down mentioned she’d like someone to take hers out – she’s got young children, you see, and she doesn’t really have time to walk the dogs in the morning. Bit of extra cash for you.’