Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

the weekend from hell
    Friday was horrible. Truly horrible. I don’t know whether it was because he’d had almost no sleep, or because he was so hungover, or simply because he had been on a winning streak for weeks and everyone’s luck runs out eventually, but things went badly wrong for Dan.
    I didn’t even know anything was up until I got a text from Ali in the afternoon. I’d been so busy catching up on all the things that had been put to one side while I’d been party organising, I’d barely looked up from the desk all day. Plus, the success of the party notwithstanding, I was nervous about Nicholas – he’d spent virtually all day on the phone in his office with the door shut, a clear sign that something was wrong.
    Around three, my phone buzzed on my desk.
    think Dan may be in trouble
    from: Ali
    Nicholas’s office is at one end of the trading floor and my desk is just outside it. Dan is right down at the other end, so I can barely see him from where I sit. I asked Christa, who is PA to Nicholas’s second-in-command, to cover my phone for a moment while I popped out, and I quickly walked the length of the floor. I couldn’t actually go up to him and have a conversation, of course, not during trading hours, but I’m pretty good at reading him, even if he does have the best poker face on the floor. But you didn’t have to know him well to judge his mood today – it was written all over his face, which was deathly pale and covered with a sheen of sweat. His head rested on one hand; his second phone dangled over his shoulder while he barked into the first one.
    I returned to my desk.
    what’s going on? I texted Ali.
    not sure bad call maybe
    you doing ok? I asked her.
    just about breaking even
    I rang my sister.
    ‘What is it?’ she snapped when she answered. I could hear kids shrieking in the background. Celia has three of her own, but is frequently to be found looking after as many as five or six; because she’s a ‘full-time mum’, other mothers, part-time mums presumably, take advantage of her, apparently. (I once made the mistake of referring to someone as a working mother. ‘All mothers work!’ Celia said icily. ‘Some of us just work harder at it than others.’)
    ‘I can’t come tonight, Celia. I’ll come up tomorrow,but I cannot do tonight.’
    ‘Cassandra, you had better be outside Kettering station at seven forty-two this evening or I will personally drive down to London to kill you.’
    ‘For God’s sake, why? Why do I have to be there tonight?’
    ‘Because I’ve made arrangements and I’m not changing them now. Whatever it is that is so much more important than your family will just have to wait. I’m not arguing about this.’
    And with that she hung up.
    Dan didn’t go to the pub with the rest of the guys after the bell rang, he stayed at his desk. Once the office had emptied out I went over to speak to him.
    ‘How bad?’ I asked.
    ‘Pretty fucking catastrophic,’ he said without looking up. ‘The tip I got, last night, you know from that guy at Midas? Well, either he was trying to stitch me up or he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because I went heavily short on Lloyds TSB and Aviva and they’re two of the biggest gainers of the day. Jesus, Cass, I’ve fucked up, I’ve really fucked up.’ He took my hand in his. ‘Can we go home, babe? I just really want to go home.’
    Caught between the rock of disappointing my parents and the hard place of exacerbating Dan’s misery, I foundered.
    ‘What is it?’ he asked, looking up at me. ‘You still got work to do?’
    ‘I can’t, Dan. I’m really sorry, I have to go home. To Kettering, I mean. I meant to tell you yesterday but we never really got the time to—’
    ‘Right,’ he said, withdrawing his hand from mine and getting to his feet. ‘All right then. I’ll see you when I see you, I guess.’
    ‘Dan, please don’t be angry with me,’ I pleaded, but he was already walking away, his head bowed, looking more dejected than I can ever remember seeing him. I felt awful, heartbroken. By the time I caught the six fifty-two from St Pancras to Kettering, heartbreak had turned to rage. I was furious with my sister. How dare she guilt-trip me into going to this bloody party, into leaving my boyfriend at the very moment he needed me most? Silently I fumed for the next fifty-six minutes, planning exactly what I was going to say to her when I saw her.
    Frustratingly I had to rethink my opening