Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

time to eat so much as a blueberry muffin all day, anything even vaguely alcoholic would increase the chances of me going arse over tit down the stairs.
    My anxiety was only increased by the sight of Nicholas barrelling towards me, stuffed uncomfortablyinto a tux that looked a size or three too small for him. His face was redder than usual.
    ‘Where the hell did you find the caterers, Cassie? The food looks . . . bizarre,’ he spat the word at me, ‘and the waitresses look like . . . well . . . like they’re all on smack.’
    Actually they looked like models but I imagine that Nicholas’s taste runs closer to glamour model than supermodel.
    ‘The food does not look bizarre, it looks extraordinary. That’s the whole point,’ I said, realising that in my irritation I was speaking to him in a way that I might live to regret. ‘It’s modern Brit with a twist. Did you really want us to be serving up the same tired chicken satay and smoked salmon blinis that they serve at all of these events?’
    ‘I like chicken satay,’ he replied gruffly, grabbing a tiny, beautifully crafted foie gras club sandwich from an admittedly anorexic-looking waitress as she slithered past us. He munched on it, glaring at me.
    ‘Humph,’ he spluttered. ‘Bloody good actually. And you look nice. But I still think the waitresses look like drug addicts.’
    That was a compliment! That was two compliments in one sentence. Tempered by one criticism, but still nothing short of miraculous coming from Nicholas. I breathed a sigh of relief. My nerves started to ease. I started to forget about how much my feet hurt. I drank a Kir Royal. Things were looking up.
    The venue certainly looked the part, with heavilysubdued, ice-blue lighting, artful arrangements of white orchids on the tables and a huge, faded projection of Wall Street playing across the feature wall. I had initially been a little bit nervous about the film idea (was ‘greed is good’ a valid mantra in 2009?), but Nicholas loved it. The dance floor, on the far side of the room, was illuminated orange and screened from the rest of the room by a row of tall, leafy plants. To the left of the room were huge doors opening out to the stone steps which led up to the garden, an elongated rectangle of perfectly manicured lawn, subtly lit with dozens of tall church candles. Hiring the garden as well as the main venue was probably not completely necessary in October, but Ali, a confirmed pack-a-day girl, insisted that without a convenient smoking space there would be mutiny among the guests. Plus it offered a location for discreet canoodling.
    And then the guests started to arrive. I had stashed the list of names and photos which Nicholas had so kindly given me just over twenty-four hours to memorise behind the little reception desk at the entrance so that I could glance it at from time to time. Mercifully, there was a surprising number of women and ethnic minorities among the early arrivals, and they of course were a great deal more memorable. Then things got a little more shaky – it’s amazing how similar men of a certain age look when they’re all in black tie, particularly when you’ve never met any of them before and you’re on your third glass ofchampagne. Fortunately, none of them seemed in the slightest bit interested in actually speaking to me, so as long as I could get the names right I didn’t have to remember anything else about them, such as where they worked or how many children they had.
    But there always has to be one, doesn’t there? Some guy who’s already been to another bar for a sharpener or three and who decides he’s going to make witty conversation with the girl on the door. In this case it was Paul Fitzgerald, an unbearably cocky hedge fund manager from Thornton & Bishop whom I had met before at one of Dan’s parties and who decided he would engage me in a lively debate on the pros and cons of quantitative easing – his plan clearly being to embarrass the dumb brunette on the door in front of his friends and, as luck would have it, in front of her boss, since Nicholas had just shown up at my side and was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot like a child in need of the toilet.
    ‘So, what did you think about the Chancellor’s announcement today, love?’ he asked, with a sly side ways glance to his friends, who all smirked appreciatively. ‘Is £75 billion enough to counter deflationary and systemic financial risks? Or are you one of those girls who