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exasperation or stress – and asking who this Wagner geezer thought he was anyway, rambling on for longer than Ben Hur, giving people stiff bums and tired brains?
    She was so used to waking to the sound of Richard showering – a signal that the rush to create the perfect breakfast must begin – that it was a moment before she identified what had woken her. It was, she realized, the ring, click and buzz of the answering machine. A little early for a social call, which was the only sort she was interested in, but she got out of bed and checked the machine anyway.
    ‘Daisy, something’s come up – ’
    ‘Oh no, it hasn’t,’ she said switching the machine firmly off. She didn’t need Alan’s voice first thing on a Saturday morning, not when she’d heard it all week in the office. What she needed was some calls from her friends, an invitation to a party or two, and while she was waiting for that, a bit of self-indulgence. Now that it was no longer an offence to be a slob, she wanted to go the whole hog – milky Nescafé, the Sun and the blare of Capital Radio while reclining on her uncoordinated sheets. And for afters – yes, a bowl of Coco Pops with full-cream milk – none of your skimmed stuff – and a heavy lacing of white sugar, followed by toast made from steam-baked sliced muck from Gateways.
    She pottered off to the rabbit-hutch of a kitchen and five minutes later was back in bed with a steaming mug of coffee which, coming straight from the jar, tasted like nectar. The newspapers, despite being yesterday’s, weren’t bad either, mainly because for the first time in months she passed straight over the Guardian and the Independent in favour of the tabloids and read all the silly bits.
    Skimming through the papers was a regular item in her life, and when pushed she could get through all eight of the main rags in twenty minutes without missing anything very important. She took cuttings on most environmental articles, whether or not they related directly to Catch. Three years ago, when she’d started with Catch, she’d been lucky to find as many as three Green articles in a week of tabloid-reading. Now the office files fairly bulged with Green news, views and opinions.
    Anything on chemicals or toxicity was of special interest, of course, but then she usually knew when something like that was coming up. The press, being short on time and information, and lazy to boot, often contacted her for their facts. After she’d done all their work for them she’d give them an earful on the government’s environment policy – not a subject she ever felt reticent about – before spelling out Catch’s name in full – the Campaign Against Toxic Chemicals – and telling them to put it in big letters near the top of the article, preferably with an appeal for funds. They never did, of course, but she lived in hope. If she hadn’t been a dedicated career optimist she wouldn’t have been in this job in the first place.
    At eleven, when she’d exhausted the last gossip column, she finally got up and, pulling on some jeans and a sweater, went down the hill to Mr Patel’s to fetch the Saturday papers.
    She still wasn’t quite sure why she’d chosen to live here on the borders of Tufnell Park and Upper Holloway. To the east was a ragbag of two-roomed flats and bedsits and crumbling terraces that housed every nationality, and a few more besides. To the west, ranks of grey-brick villas undulated over the switchback of hills that led up to Highgate. Inhabited by writers and academics, classless Guardian -readers and women who did pottery – professionally, mind you – and precocious chess-playing kids, it was another continent after the conspicuous consumption of SW3.
    And Richard’s consumption had been particularly conspicuous – designer haircuts, hand-made shirts, car phones, restaurants six nights a week – though, pig that she was, she’d miss the food all right – and a BMW convertible, for God’s sake,