Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

over the table and slipped his hand into mine. ‘You’re not being rubbish company at all. Feel free to moan all you like. It does sound like your employers are a bit disorganised.’
    ‘They are,’ I agreed, ‘and the thing is, I’m actually concerned that they’re not particularly good businessmen! It sounds ridiculous – Rupert was a corporate financier, for God’s sake, he should know what investors are after – but the whole thing just looks amateurish. I mean, I’m sure the business model is great, but the first impression that investors get when they come to that office is awful. They really need an extreme makeover on that place if they want to get anyone to put any money into the business.’
    ‘Have you told them that?’
    ‘No – I can’t. Not only am I the new girl, but I’m the nobody. The dogsbody. The coffee-making milk monitor.’
    He laughed. ‘Your boss is an approachable guy, isn’t he?’ I nodded. ‘So you should speak to him. State your case. I bet he’d be prepared to listen. He’ll probably be impressed that you’re taking the initiative.’ He reached over and pushed my hair away from my face. ‘You shouldn’t sell yourself short.’
    We didn’t talk about work after that. Well, not my work anyway. His work was much more interesting. Technically, Jake was still a student – he had six months to go of his digital media course at Goldsmiths – but he was spending around half his time working as a photographer.
    ‘Any more fashion shoots?’ I asked him.
    ‘Not this week. The InStyle shoot was fun, but fashion isn’t actually what I’m interested in. I’d much rather do reportage photography, you know, real world stuff.’
    ‘Are you saying fashion isn’t the real world? Sacrilege.’
    ‘Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t turn down more shoots if they offered them to me. And not just because I get to spend the day hanging out with hot naked girls,’ he grinned. ‘The money’s really good.’
    ‘What about paparazzi-type stuff? Not interested in hanging around outside Chinawhites in the hopes of getting a few pics of Big Brother contestants and glamour models?’
    He pulled a face. ‘Definitely not. I’d be hopeless at that anyway – I wouldn’t recognise a Big Brother contestant if they slapped me in the face. I don’t watch that crap.’
    I remembered how Dan used to have Big Brother on all the time, even when he wasn’t really watching it, just as background. I think he had it on just in case one of the girls took their tops off. Sitting there with Jake – gorgeous, interesting, intelligent Jake – I suddenly couldn’t remember a single good thing about Dan. What was it I had liked about him so much? It couldn’t just have been the fact that he was good-looking and bought me stuff. Surely it couldn’t have been that. I’m not that shallow.
    ‘What are you thinking about?’ Jake asked. ‘You’re staring into the middle distance there. Am I boring you?’
    ‘Not at all,’ I said, leaning in to give him a kiss. ‘I’m having a brilliant time.’
    We talked about his family: his parents were Englishbut lived in Wales. His father had been a journalist on The Times , now he taught journalism at Cardiff University; his mother was a curator at the National Museum. He had one sister (older, a sculptor) and one brother (younger, studying engineering in Manchester). They all sounded terrifyingly interesting. I dreaded the inevitable ‘And what about your family?’ question.
    ‘What about your family?’ he asked, right on cue. ‘Any brothers or sisters?’
    ‘One older sister, Celia.’
    ‘What does she do?’
    ‘She’s a mum.’
    ‘Really?’ he sounded genuinely interested. ‘You’re an aunt? You don’t look like an aunt. You’re much too young and beautiful.’ I rolled my eyes at him. ‘Seriously, how many kids?’
    ‘Three. Tom’s five, Rosie’s three and Monty is … oh, about nine months now. They’re all really gorgeous actually. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But they are.’
    ‘You and your sister get on well?’
    ‘Not really. Well … I don’t know. We’re very different. There’s a lot about her that annoys me – and vice versa – but I do admire her sometimes. She’s incredibly grown up. Very sorted.’
    ‘I’d like to meet her,’ he said. And he meant it. And I realised that I wouldn’t mind introducing Jake to my family at all. I wouldn’t be embarrassed. OK, so his family sounded much more