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ours was wrapped in newspaper as we’d run out of wrapping paper, while this one is in beautiful handmade and recycled paper with perfect hospital corners and a ribbon. “Horrible materialism,” I say to Joel later. “Horrible material,” he says, pointing to the patchwork of silk remnants that makes up the party bag.
    I’m thinking about Mitzi’s larder later that evening, as I sit in bed flicking through the latest Lakeland Plastics catalog. Just looking at its storage solutions section offers me the promise of a well-ordered home and I turn down the pages of color-codedTupperware that will revolutionize my cupboards. Family life is a constant storage challenge in search of a solution.
    22 ) Has a constantly growing collection of glasses by his bed. Each has a different level of water left to stagnate within and it looks like he’s trying to get enough to be able to do that music hall turn of rubbing the rims to make different notes.
    I stare at Joel. Even in bed, he’s untidy, flinging his limbs across it, mummifying himself in the duvet and throwing off pillows. His face is sandpapered with stubble. His face is crumpled in a frown.
    23 ) Checks his BlackBerry in bed. Is important enough at work to be given a BlackBerry, while since my part-time downshifting career choice, I don’t even get given a company mobile.
    He senses that I’m looking at him. He mistakes my disgust for lust and leans over to me.
    24 ) Checks his BlackBerry in bed and then expects me to have sex with him when he puts it down.
    25 ) Checks his BlackBerry while having sex with me, on occasion.
    “Piss off, J.” He looks wounded. “I’m tired and you can’t just switch me on like a BlackBerry.”
    “It’s work.”
    “It’s Saturday night.”
    “Exactly.”
    “It’s just not that sexy to use your BlackBerry in bed.”
    “But reading about Tupperware is the height of eroticism, I suppose,” he says, gesturing at my catalog.
    “It’s work, too. The difference is that it’s work I have to do when I get home from my job.” I roll away from him, feeling so angry that my skin tingles with it. I’m not quite sure why I do or where it comes from.
    My life is going down the drain, and it’s a drain clogged with swollen Shreddies, solidified globules of grease and a dried-up piece of Play-Doh.

2
    He Takes the Rubbish Out
    On my way to work, I pretend that I’m a single glamorous woman, soy latte in one hand, expensive buckle-laden statement handbag in the other (only one part of this image is factually correct and it’s the one that cost ₤1.90 from the café).
    My office is some sublet space in a large industrial warehouse. Our floor is shared between other two-bit/four-people television production companies fermenting in the media brewery and we feel like the tent-city of offices: displaced, floating, chaotic. The other areas of the building are used by a very cutting-edge advertising agency and some vague “media consultants.” The reception area is most unreceptive, all unpainted concrete and ironic retro office furniture, while the still-remaining Christmas tree, which is black and decorated with white cube-shaped baubles, only serves to make it more so.
    I get into the lift with one of the advertising girls, who wears clothes that I think are described in fashion-speak as “directional.”
    “Which floor?” she sneers. I am just about to answer, when she looks me up and down then presses three, correctly, for me and the panoramic penthouse for herself.
    “Thanks,” I mutter. For what? Judging that my mom uniform of smocky top and not-that-skinny jeans could have only belonged to what’s known as the dowdy floor in this building.
    I arrive at the sanctuary of the dowdy floor and plonk myself down next to Lily with some relief, even if she is the most fashionable and youthful beacon in this area of the building. She even has the name of a coltish young supermodel (or a toddler—a florist couldn’t have as many