Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista Read Online Free PDF Page B

direction. ‘Never mind him. You’ve done a good job tonight. Go and enjoy yourself.’ And with that hehauled himself to his feet and staggered off again, sloshing beer on to the floor and guests alike as he went.
    For a moment or two, all thoughts of Dan and the American went out of my head. I did a good job. I did a good job . Nicholas Hawksworth thought I had done a good job. That was something worth celebrating. From that moment on, the rest of the evening passed in a bit of a blur. With Nicholas’s approval gained, I was finally able to relax, hit the bar and mingle.
    Ali eventually tore herself away from the Frenchman for long enough for us to have a bit of a dance, the American woman disappeared and everyone finally seemed to forget that their jobs were on the line just long enough to enjoy themselves.
    Officially, the party was over at 10.30 (it was just supposed to be cocktails, after all). Dan and a couple of his trader friends, Mick and James, ushered me into a taxi at around midnight. Back at Dan’s place in Clerkenwell I went straight to bed, while the boys stayed up playing poker. Dan came to bed at three. He slipped his arms around me and started kissing my neck.
    ‘It was a great night, Cass,’ he whispered to me. ‘Feel like celebrating?’
    ‘You have to be up in two hours,’ I groaned, by which I meant, I have to be up in four hours.
    ‘So I’ll sleep for an hour.’ He slipped the straps of my camisole off my shoulders.
    Sometimes he can be very persuasive.

4
     
    Cassie Cavanagh has had 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