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envisaged. There were two witnesses: Meena and Gerry, an old war-correspondent friend of Luke’s, who had a red nose from too many nights in bars and a scar on his cheek where a melanoma had been cut out. Luke’s parents were dead.
    Louise said she would have loved to attend but she was chairing a huge conference in Glasgow that week. ‘You understand, don’t you, cherub?’ As usual, she hadn’t waited for a reply. ‘Got to go, sweets. Hope you have a lovely day.’
    Afterwards they had lunch at Orrery in Marylebone High Street. The food was probably delicious but Poppy didn’t really notice, so awkward were the vibes between the four of them. The others got very pissed until Meena eventually threw up in the loo and had to be put in a taxi and sent home. Gerry stumbled off into the afternoon. She and Luke got in their own taxi and went back to Maida Vale. To Poppy’s relief they made far more passionate love than they had for several weeks, after which Luke fell into a deep sleep. When he woke up they ordered an Indian and ate it on the bed, giggling and feeding each other bites of naan almost like in her early coffee-ad fantasies. So Poppy had gone to sleep on her wedding night reassured that now the fairy tale was about to begin.
    The Demise of the Trophy Wife
    Golddiggers who take their rich husbands for a ride are on the verge of extinction, says hannah creighton.
    Not so long ago it was a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a kick-ass job must be in want of a trophy wife. These divine, docile brood mares were the perfect addition to the mansion, the Maserati and the holidays in Mauritius.
    But how times have changed. According to recent research the earnings gap between married couples is narrowing. These days men are bored with stay-at-home parasites and are looking for high-fliers. To paraphrase Jerry Hall, whores in the bedroom, masterchefs in the kitchen – but also queens of the boardroom. Some have interpreted this as a victory for the feminists, along with burning our bras. Sadly, however, the truth says something much less appealing about our sex. Powerful men, I believe, have only just latched on to the downside of the stay-at-home wife. Either marry a woman prepared to pay her own way, or end up spliced to a spoilt, lazy, bloodsucker.
    I can feel the finger pointing at me. OK! I put my hands up. I, too, used to be one of those stay-at-home wives I am laying into. My husband, Luke Norton, was a distinguished foreign correspondent who, in the dying days of our marriage, became the anchorman for Channel 6’s Seven Thirty News and consequently a household name.
    We lived with our three children in our glorious family home in Hampstead, North London and I didn’t go out to work. But there the resemblance between me and the trophy wives ends.
    I was of a different generation, you see, the Cosmo generation who believed in ‘having it all’. We children of the 1970s were brought up to understand this meant running a home, entertaining regularly, raising charming children, keeping our husbands happy and having some sort of career to keep our brains ticking over and our bank accounts seperate.
    I confess I failed at the last hurdle. Although I had a high-flying journalism career before I met Luke, I found the challenges of three small children too difficult to combine with the logistics of a job. But, feeling guilty I had not managed to be a ball-busting career girl, I worked doubly hard to make sure I raised happy children, who lived in a beautiful house, played in a glorious garden and who sat down to eat nutritious meals every night. When my husband came home there was an equally nutritious meal waiting for him, plus a large glass of wine. I listened to his tales of office in-fighting and Boy’s Own derring-do and told him how brave and clever he was. I never shared my own anxieties about arguments with builders or changes to the school run. I thought this was part of the pact: I kept the home