Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

open almost the second I took my finger off the doorbell.
    ‘Hello!’ the woman who had opened the door said, beaming at me. ‘You must be Cassie.’ She didn’t look like a Mrs Mellor at all. She was quite exotic looking, with long, black hair, piercing green eyes and a somewhat left-field – though still elegant – choice in clothes. ‘Come inside, come inside,’ she said, ushering me into the elegant hallway. I noticed that she had a bit of an accent, something European, Spanish maybe, or Italian. I hadn’t noticed it before. I took off my parka while she fussed over the dogs.
    ‘Go on through to the living room, have a seat,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’
    She disappeared with the dogs in tow, leaving me perched incongruously on the edge of her beautiful white leather Corbusier sofa which I was convinced I was going to get dirty. She reappeared a little while later clutching two glasses.
    ‘Do you like sherry?’ she asked, then she laughed. ‘I know, it sounds like an old lady’s drink, but this is good stuff, it’s amontillado, it’s really very nice.’
    ‘Sounds lovely.’ She handed me a glass and I took a sip. It was delicious – dry, smooth and chilled. ‘This is a lovely place, Mrs Mellor,’ I said, wondering what on earth I was doing here. She laughed again.
    ‘Mrs Mellor! It sounds so awful, doesn’t it? As though I am married to a fat Tory MP. Call me Gabriella.’
    Over two glasses of sherry, Gabriella told me thatshe was half Spanish, half Italian. She was the manager of an art gallery on Great Titchfield Street and was married to an Englishman she’d met when she was running a bar in a ski resort in Pragelato, in the Italian Alps.
    ‘You have been there?’ she asked me.
    ‘I haven’t, I’m afraid.’
    ‘You must go, it’s wonderful. You ski? I thought you City types were always off skiing. You did used to work in the City, didn’t you?’
    ‘That’s right. I was made redundant a couple of months ago. Cutbacks, you know.’
    ‘I know. It’s terrible. My husband works for a bank – commercial not investment – but even for them it is very bad at the moment. But this, what you are doing now, walking dogs, that is just … for a little while?’
    ‘Hopefully,’ I said a bit sheepishly. ‘I’ve been looking for other things, but I haven’t found much yet.’
    ‘Well. You must come round for drinks on Saturday. I am having a party, there will be lots and lots of people there who work in all sorts of different fields. Interesting people.’
    ‘Um …’ I didn’t know what to say. ‘OK. That would be … very nice.’
    ‘You think I am strange, asking you for drinks when I don’t even know you!’ she laughed. ‘It’s just … I would like to have some young people there. We are all so old. I have children, but they are too young. Eleven and nine. I am just trying to bring down the average age, you see?And I think you do a good job with my lovely dogs, and I feel bad that I haven’t made the time to get to know you. So there you go. No ulterior motives.’
    Gabriella was, without a doubt, the nicest and most interesting person I’d met in ages. The fact that she had been so warm and welcoming meant that I turned up at the drinks party on Saturday with my glass half-full and my guard down. I had not been fretting about who would be there or what they would be wearing, I’d just been imagining myself chatting away happily to cool, arty yet wonderfully friendly people all night. So I was somewhat taken aback when almost the first person I encountered at the party was none other than Nicholas Hawksworth.
    ‘Hello there!’ he said, clearly just as surprised to see me as I was him. ‘How are you?’ He kissed me on both cheeks. Surely he couldn’t be drunk already, it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. ‘What a surprise! How do you know Bill and Gabs?’
    Oh, God, this was the point at which I had to admit that I was part of the hired help, along with the au pair and the gardener. I wondered whether they were invited, too?
    ‘Actually, I haven’t met Bill,’ I said. ‘I … um … I know Gabriella a bit …’ I tailed off.
    ‘How did you meet? At her gallery?’
    ‘No, um … I haven’t been to her gallery yet.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I walk the dogs,’ I said, slightly louder than I had intended to. ‘That’s what I do these days. I’m walking dogs.’ There, I said it.
    ‘Good for you,’ Nicholas said. ‘Tough market out