Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

go out with a man without sufficient depilating you are guaranteed to be removing your clothes in his company at some point in the evening.
    The long and short of it was that I was in need of a wax. I rang Body & Soul. The full leg and Brazilian cost£120. I literally could not afford it. I consulted Less is More! . There was an entire section on beauty therapies, including home sugar-waxing. I rang Jude to make sure that she was not planning on coming home until that evening. She wasn’t. I double-locked the door, putting the chain on as well (just in case) and got down to business.
    ‘ Waxing at home need not be a painful or messy experience ,’ the book said cheerily. ‘ In fact, you can recreate the atmosphere in some of the world’s best spas in the comfort of your own bathroom .’ What a load of unmitigated bullshit, I thought, skipping through the rest of the blurb until I reached the actual recipe.
    All I needed, the book said, was a cup of sugar, two tablespoons of water and two tablespoons of lemon juice, as well a saucepan, butter knife and some cotton or linen scraps cut into strips. The book recommended old sheets. I rummaged around in the airing cupboard and found some pillow cases that looked as though they had seen better days. Those would do.
    In the kitchen I boiled up the sugar, water and lemon juice in one of Jude’s copper-bottomed saucepans. According to the book, I had to simmer the mixture over a medium heat for five to eight minutes while stirring CONSTANTLY until it became slightly frothy. After ten minutes or so my arm was starting to ache and there was not a lot of froth going on. I turned the heat up and stirred vigorously. My phone buzzed on the counter opposite. It was Ali calling. Not like her to be calling in the middle of the morning on aweekday; not like her to be calling at all these days. I picked up.
    ‘Hello, stranger,’ I said.
    ‘Hi, Cass.’ She sounded forlorn and distant. There was an odd echo, as though she were calling me from a church.
    ‘Where are you?’ I asked.
    ‘In the loo at work,’ she replied. There was a sharp inhale on the other end of the line. She was smoking. Smoking in the loos at Hamilton in the middle of the morning with the markets open? All was not well.
    ‘Look, I’m really sorry about Saturday,’ she said. ‘I’ve been having a total bitch of a time at work and the thought of having to spend an evening with Jude and the hippies as well as Kate and Sophie was just too fucking much for me.’
    ‘So you thought you’d just ignore me, did you? You could have called me, Ali. You could at least have replied to my texts.’
    ‘I know, I’m really sorry. To be honest with you I went to bed at about six thirty and I turned off my phone.’ A likely story.
    ‘You were with that guy, weren’t you? You blew me off to see your married man.’
    ‘I didn’t, Cassie. I swear, I’ve just been feeling . . . Oh, whatever. How’d the clothes go anyway?’
    ‘Total disaster,’ I said. ‘Because you and the Hamilton girls didn’t turn up, I ended up with a load of tasteless crap from Jude’s mates while they took all my good stuff. So cheers for that.’
    She sighed. ‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry . . .’
    ‘And I had to shell out loads of cash for food because the stuff I’d made didn’t work out . . .’ I realised that I was doing it again – moaning about myself when there was clearly something going on with her. Suppressing my disappointment with her, I asked, ‘Ali, why aren’t you on the floor? You’re in the loos, smoking – don’t deny it, I can hear you – this isn’t like you.’
    ‘Shit, there’s someone coming. Hang on . . .’ There were some scuffling noises, the pffft of a lit cigarette hitting water, then she was back on the line, whispering, ‘I can’t talk now. Gotta go.’
    Feeling more than a little irritated by her halfhearted apologies (I was sure that she’d been with that French guy; there was no way Ali would gone to bed at six thirty on a Saturday unless there was someone else going to bed with her), I realised that there was an unpleasant stench emanating from the kitchen. Oh, fuck, the sugar wax.
    The mixture had boiled down to a nasty brownish-black treacle which was now smoking ominously. I grabbed it off the heat, and chucked it in the sink, yanking open windows as I did in an attempt to stop the smoke alarm going off. Too late. Still, at least I knew the alarm worked. After fighting with