Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

something.
    ‘I’ll be OK, Celia. There are plenty of other jobs in London.’
    ‘Mmm. Or you could think of coming back and living somewhere round here, couldn’t you? After all, Michael says—’
    ‘Celia?’ I cut in. ‘Celia? Can you hear me? I’m about to go into a tunnel,’ I said, ignoring the pedicurist’s quizzical look. ‘You’re breaking up.’
    I switched the phone off and didn’t turn it on again for the rest of the afternoon.
    On Sunday, I met Ali for eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys at Canteen in Spitalfields market. At first she kept me amused with stories of Nicholas’s very public humiliation of Christa Freeman, who, it was turning out, was perhaps not quite the star secretary he had thought, but eventually, inevitably, the conversation turned to Dan.
    ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’ she asked me.
    ‘Well, not really, but I’d rather find out the gory details from you than discover them some other way. It’s Emily’s wedding next month, there are going to be loads of work people there, it’s bound to come up at some point.’ Emily is a colleague from Hamilton Churchill. Her nuptials were taking place in just a few weeks’ time in some incredibly fancy country house hotel and virtually everyone from the office, including Dan, was going to be there. Until the bloodbath break-up, I’d really been looking forward to going with him.
    ‘OK. Well, I asked James Cohen about it.’ James was one of Dan’s best friends at Hamilton. ‘He was very reluctant to tell me anything, but eventually he told me that Dan met Tania at the Alchemy summer party in August.’
    More than two months ago. I took a gulp of my Bloody Mary, almost taking my eye out with the celery stick.
    ‘Apparently they left together and he spent the night with her.’
    I remembered the Alchemy party. It was on a Friday. When I asked him why he hadn’t answered any of my calls or texts on Saturday he told me he’d left his phone in the back of a cab. The taxi driver didn’t return it to him, he said, until Saturday evening.
    ‘According to James, Dan felt awful about it and told this Tania woman that it couldn’t happen again. James says she kept calling him but he didn’t see her again until some time in September. There was that charity casino bash at the Stock Exchange and she was there.’
    I remembered that night, too.
    ‘But Dan stayed at my place that night,’ I said. ‘I remember – he said it was dull, that gambling for a charitable cause took the pleasure out of it.’
    ‘I know. But . . . Are you really sure you want to know this, Cass?’ Her voice was filled with foreboding.
    ‘What? What is it?’
    ‘Well, he didn’t stay very long at the casino thing. Come to think of it, I hardly remember seeing him that night. James reckons he bumped into Tania, they hooked up, went back to her place for a bit and then he went home to you.’ She said this hurriedly, taking no pleasure in being the bearer of such awful news.
    A lone, fat tear splashed onto my half-finished plate of eggs Benedict.
    ‘The next day he sent me two dozen red roses. I remember being so surprised, and so happy. Myboyfriend sends me flowers, for no reason at all, it doesn’t have to be Valentine’s Day. He just does it, I thought, because he loves me.’ I pushed away my food. ‘I’m not hungry. I need another drink.’
    Ali summoned the waitress.
    ‘So they’ve been seeing each since then? For a month?’
    ‘Seems that way, although according to James, Dan tried to break it off a couple of times. James was actually really shocked when he heard that Dan had chosen—’
    ‘Her.’
    The waitress brought our drinks and took away the plates. Ali lit a cigarette, ignoring the ostentatious coughing noises from the next table.
    ‘Water’s wet, the sky’s blue, men cheat,’ she said ruefully. ‘And talking of cheating, I’m afraid I can’t hang out and shop this afternoon.’ She gave a cheeky, guilty little smile.
    ‘The Frenchman, I take it?’
    ‘We have an assignation at the Covent Garden Hotel. Actually, we’re meeting in Coco de Mer, across the road. They have these beautiful embroidered blindfolds . . .’
    ‘Ali,’ I said, trying hard not to sound too much like Jude, ‘are you sure this is a good idea?’
    ‘Almost certainly not, but you know. The heart wants what it wants.’
    ‘Oh, it’s your heart that wants, is it?’
    *
    Left to my own devices that afternoon, feeling a little abandoned by