Meet the headhunters

We're getting to know the recruitment consultants. When they ring, they sound identical to the caring salespeople who have dedicated their lives to finding out how I am today. It's ironic, really, that they are all employed by banks, power companies, supermarkets and charities, instead of by NHS direct, which really should care how you are today, but patently doesn't.

The effect, though, is that in order to establish just whose jolly voice is on the end of the line, I'm having to play 20 questions to find out instead of just uttering a short, bitter laugh down the phone and then hanging up.

It could be Lucy, the enthusiastic headhunter, who loves Francis and his super, super experience, but doesn't appear to have read his cv, and keeps inviting him up to her website to admire her big and bouncy job opportunities, none of which bears any relation to his actual experience.

Sometimes it's friend-of-a-friend Nigel, who is beginning to worry me more than Francis. He's so frightfully nice that, although his company hasn't got any suitable jobs, he's taken to cutting other people's ads out of the appointments sections of the press and urging Francis to apply for them.

Then there's Charlotte, the posh headhunter, who may well have hundreds of juicy, melt in the mouth posts just waiting to be plucked, but whose accent is so Home Counties that it's virtually impossible to tell.

So we are pinning our hopes on Nicola, the terrifyingly efficient headhunter whose own interviews with prospective candidates are famed in the industry for being ten times more intimidating that anything an employer can come up with. Francis has to call her today and, in preparation, is wearing his smartest shirt, as it's rumoured she can pick up background dressing gowns and stubble using nothing more than advanced business acumen.

Meanwhile, Francis has organised his life so that he does the school run and then disappears for the rest of the day, arriving in time for an evening meal. It's certainly putting Leo off the scent. Yesterday, he saw the solicitor who is now renamed 'my' solicitor - perhaps I'll get one, too, if they're doing a buy one, get one free offer this week. Francis' severance letter from his company is, says the lawyer, the basic sort - as opposed, presumably, to a scented, polysyllabic version on Smythson stationary that plays 'So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye,' when you open it.

I have visions of Francis secretly dressing up in a suit and tie and playing office workers all day, eating sandwiches in a park somewhere and having conference calls with tramps in a simulacrum of office life. But having quizzed him minutely and, I like to think, tactfully, this should remain a vision as he does have various bona fide meetings all this week and well into next. Only after that will I need to contemplate scouring the local swings and roundabouts with a big sign saying, 'Francis, come home.'

Mind you, if I had any choice in the matter, I'd prefer to sit in a playground, minding my own business and reading the paper, secure in the knowledge that somebody else was on squalor watch back home in the witching hours twixt school run and bedtime and having to deal with the high pitched calls of"Mumm-EE! Mumm-EE," that echo round the house like hunting calls.