Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

rolling her eyes dramatically. ‘I thought she was out for the night.’
    ‘So did I,’ I whispered back, shrugging guiltily.
    Ali can’t stand my flatmate Jude to whom she holds a diametrically opposed world view. Ali is a pure capitalist, she believes in the power of the market and the virtue of hard work. She’s working class – her father is an ex-printer turned cab driver, her mum was a nurse until she died a few years ago – and pulled herself up by the bootstraps, worked incredibly hard at her crappy East London comprehensive and ended up doing maths at Cambridge.
    Jude, by contrast, is upper middle class, had a pony for a best friend between the ages of eight and eighteen and politically stands a few paces to the left of Karl Marx. As far as Ali is concerned, every thing Jude owns has been handed to her, largely courtesy of her father’s extremely successful architecture practice. It drives Ali insane that despite all her privileges, Jude still behavesas though she spends every day struggling against injustice.
    Jude, of course, thinks Ali is materialistic and selfish, motivated solely by making money without any concerns about where that money comes from. If only she could see the error of her ways, Jude says, Ali could use her numerous talents to make the world a better place. Personally, I try to stay out of it.
    ‘Hi, guys,’ Jude said, popping her head round the door and smiling at us sweetly. ‘Oh, champagne! Are you celebrating something?’
    ‘We’re celebrating the fact that it’s Thursday,’ Ali said drily. ‘D’you want some, or would a glass of Laurent Perrier contravene some principle or other?’
    ‘Oh, I can’t, thanks very much, just came home to change and then I’m off to yoga.’
    Jude is pretty good at ignoring Ali’s barbs – a committed pacifist, she believes in turning the other cheek. Then she spotted my shoes, still lying on the rug where Ali had dumped them so unceremoniously.
    ‘Oooh, those are pretty,’ she chirped, picking one up and surveying the glorious red sole.
    Oh, Ali, please don’t say anything , I thought.
    ‘They cost five hundred quid,’ Ali said, giving me an evil little grin.
    ‘Five hundred pounds!’ Jude exclaimed. ‘For shoes! Honestly, Cass, that’s ridiculous. You could feed a family in Africa for months on that. Hell, in some places you could probably feed a family for a year.’
    Ali poured herself another glass of champagne and settled back into the sofa cushions, enjoying a ringside seat to my dressing down.
    ‘I know, I know, it is a bit much,’ I admitted. ‘But I didn’t actually buy them. They were a present from Dan.’
    Jude sighed, cocking her head to one side and gazing at me, an expression of slight disappointment on her face. She doesn’t approve of Dan. Jude doesn’t approve of lots of things.
    ‘Really. And what’s he apologising for this time?’
    ‘He’s not apologising for anything, he’s just being sweet,’ I replied, a little unconvincingly.
    Ali gave a disconcerting snort. She’s not Dan’s greatest fan either – it’s the one thing she and Jude can agree on.
    ‘Of course he was. And where is Prince Charming tonight?’ Jude asked.
    ‘Spearmint Rhino?’ Ali suggested.
    ‘He’s out with clients!’ I said indignantly. Probably at Spearmint Rhino, but I wasn’t about to admit that.
    The thing with Dan is that, like most traders, he plays as hard as he works. And City boys play in a certain way – one that involves copious quantities of champagne, the occasional line or three, and the odd evening in what you might term “gentlemen’s establishments”. But they have to do that – it’s expected of them, to show their clients a good time. Not that Jude understands that – the City is all a bit of a mystery to her. And after the best part of a bottle of champagne,I was not in the mood to get into the age-old debate about Dan’s suitability.
    Luckily, yoga beckoned and Jude reluctantly resisted a comeback and headed off to get changed. Ali sighed heavily, and not for the first time I wished that my two closest friends could get along better. After all, they can’t be that abhorrent to each other. They have me in common.
    I’ve known Jude for ever – we were at school together, although we were never really close. I wasn’t really part of the horsey set. We’d lost touch for years, but she was one of those people who popped up on Facebook asking to be friends and I felt it would be