Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

Ali. Was our friendship really worth so little to her that she was going to dump me now that I was poor, unemployed and unglamorous? Or was it just now that she saw me for what I really am, a lower-middle-class nobody from Kettering, not the sophisticated City girl she’d met a couple of years ago?
2. Dan. I didn’t want him to be at number two, I didn’t want him to make the list at all, but I couldn’t deny that seeing him at the wedding with her had been like a blade to the heart.
3. Joblessness. Four weeks had passed since I was made redundant and I hadn’t had a flicker of interest from a serious employer.
4. Poverty. OK, maybe not poverty as such, but relative financial distress. It does not suit me.
5. The fact that I had to have lunch with my sister and her husband the following day.

10
     
    Cassie Cavanagh loves her mum
    The next morning I rose early and got the train from Chipping Campden to Banbury and from there to Kettering. Although I wasn’t keen on the idea of lunch with Celia and Michael, for the first time in a long time I was actually looking forward to going home. It was the first time in a long time that I’d thought of my parents’ house in Kettering as home. But for some reason, the presence of Jude the Judgemental perhaps, the flat in London was feeling a lot less welcoming these days.
    I was looking forward to seeing my mum – I was in need of a little TLC – and also to having a conversation with my father. It struck me, on the train, that perhaps, if I asked them nicely, they might be able to help me out with a loan, just to tide me over for a few months. That way I could relax a bit about the job hunt, take time to refocus myself, to get in touch with what I really wanted to do. Perhaps I could go to a spa or aretreat or something for a few days? That would definitely help. There was a good detox place I’d heard about somewhere in Oxfordshire. In fact, that would be ideal. I could get away, have a few days of completely healthy eating and no drinking, do a bit of yoga, have a massage … It would be just what I needed. Plus, if I could squeeze a bit of cash out of Dad I just might be able to get Jude off my back for a week or two.
    And it wasn’t as though I ran to them for money all the time. OK, when I was at college I had taken a couple of loans which were never fully repaid, but since I’d been working I hadn’t borrowed any money at all. Unless of course you count the security deposit for the flat, but that was an emergency. (I had saved up for the security deposit myself but then that money ended up going towards the Dante kingsize bed from Heal’s which was, after all, an essential. I couldn’t very well sleep on a mattress on the floor, could I?) And they would get the security deposit back, eventually. Assuming we don’t trash the place, which is unlikely – although with some of Jude’s friends you never know. Perhaps I should suggest that the anti-capitalist lot get disinvited from our next party.
    The key to getting money out of one’s parents is, like so many things in life, about timing. Diving straight in is not to be advised. Money matters should wait until after lunch, when everyone’s feeling sated and relaxed and has had three glasses of wine. In any case, if I asked Dad for money before lunch I could guarantee thatsomeone would mention it over the dinner table and I could just imagine the reaction from Saint Celia and Miserly Michael who would never dream of hitting Dad or anyone else for a loan. Celia and Michael ‘don’t do credit’, unless you count the mortgage.
    ‘I don’t trust anything that allows you to spend more than you earn,’ Michael says.
    Michael is living proof of the truth of the Wildean maxim that anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
    When I arrived at the house, around eleven thirty, Dad was out front in the garden, pruning something or other. Dad likes his gardening, although he’s not a very imaginative planter. It’s all pink and yellow roses, geraniums and begonias.
    ‘Hello, darling,’ he said when he saw me. ‘You look tired. Rough night?’
    ‘Not too bad,’ I said, giving him a kiss.
    ‘Well, you go on inside and have a cup of tea with your mother. I need to finish up out here.’
    He always does this. Whenever I come home he makes himself scarce for about a half an hour or so, to let me and Mum chat. I’ve never worked out whether he does it because she tells him to, or