When the fun never starts

"Never again," says Marion the hairdresser, waving her scissors dangerously close to my ear to emphasise the point. "Never, never again."

After a life-skills refresher course, she had endorphins to spare, leading to an evangelical desire to give her colleague Janet, the excitement-averse, mid-mouse colourist whose idea of adventure is a different sandwich filling at lunchtime, a taster of life on the edge.

So she organised a girl's night out at a local restaurant. It was to die for, she says, but only in the sense that you'd rather die than ever have to do it again.

I ask what made it so awful.

"Well......" begins Marion, and my heart sinks. She's clearly emotional - I can tell, because now the scissors are shaking - and has an awful lot of hair still to cut.

"Things didn't get off to a good start, because I was a bit late. Janet was already upset because I refused to make the restaurant booking for 4.30 pm and she'd had a couple of hours to kill."

"How did she spent the time?" I ask.

"Oh, reorganising her sugar packet collection. She spends hours agonising about whether it's better to maintain the pack integrity by keeping the sugar - though it does discolour the paper - or removing it grain by grain through a tiny hole. And then there's the sub-sets - you know, airline packets, hotel packets, and whether you cross-reference them by language or design components -"

"- I think I've got the gist. Several gists worth, really. Thanks."

"So when I arrive at the mad impetuous hour of 7.00 she's already really twitchy. 'I was hoping you'd come soon, because of ordering drinks,' she says.

"'Just ask the waiter,' I say.

"'Oh, you ask him, I'm too shy.' So I do, and when he comes over, I ask him to turn this outside heater off - it's much too hot for it. And he does. And Janet says, 'Oh, thank you. I was boiling.

"Then we look at the menu. And Janet says, 'I wanted garlic mushrooms for the starter. I didn't want anything else. I know they do them, but they're not on this menu. They must be on the lunchtime menu.' And she's beginning to sound a bit tearful, so I say, 'Why don't you ask the waiter?' she says, 'Oh, I can't. You do it' We get the waiter back and explain that this is a special treat for my friend and is there any way they could give her a starter from the lunch menu and they get the chef out and finally agree.

'Then we order the main courses and Janet whispers that she's a bit short of money and perhaps she'll just have something from the children's menu. I offer to pay for her but she says no, she couldn't possibly, she doesn't want to be in my debt. The waiter comes over to take her order and explains that she can't order from the children's menu because she's not a child. And she looks tearful again, so he gets the manager. The manager gets the owner, the owner, who's obviously just wishing we'd leave says 'Fine, give her a child's portion,' and they go away again.

'She's ordered steak. She looks at the menu again and says, 'It says minute steak. What does that mean?' I say it means it's not cooked for very long. She says, "Oh no, I hope that doesn't mean it's going to be all bloody and red or anything. Could you ask if they can make sure it's well-cooked?' 'You do it,' I say. 'Oh, no, I couldn't,' she says. We get the waiter over again.

'Then she sees the sauce it comes with. It's got blue cheese in it. 'I don't like this sauce,' she says. 'Well, don't have it.' I say. 'Yes, but now the steak's going to be well cooked, it might be much too dry,' I'm so cross I start to say, 'Just breathe on it, you're being so wet it'll moisten up a treat,' but I bite the words back and say, 'Why don't you ask for some melted butter.' "

Marion's scissors are now jigging around so much I'm surprised there aren't fragments of my ear clinging to them. "I think I know where this one's going, Marion," I say, and we both chorus:

"'Oh, I couldn't Marion, could you do it instead?"

"By the time I've organised the pudding - something that's not on the menu, the tea - Janet's brought her own bag - and the bill - Janet kicks up a huge fuss and makes me query every single item - I can truthfully say I never want to see her again. And you can almost hear the cheers go up as we leave. I have to walk Janet home - she's frightened of the dark.

"We get to her door, I say goodnight and she says, 'That was such fun, wasn't it? I really, really enjoyed it. Let's do it again.'

"And the saddest thing," finishes Marion, "Was that I think she really meant it."

The beginning

The day after my youngest child falls out of a tree and gashes her hand so spectacularly we have to rush her to A&E, my friend Janet calls in a panic. She'd dreamt that something terrible had happened to us.

A week later, my husband phones me from work. "They're about to make me redundant," he says. His voice is so diminished with shock I can hardly hear him.

We should have seen it coming. His firm has such an industry-wide reputation for revolving door recruitment that it's on several headhunter's black lists. In the five years he's been there, he's already outlasted three managing directors and a brace of top sales honchos, giving him top Duracell bunny status for longevity. Then, a few weeks ago, a senior colleague started shadowing him like an ace detective, meeting his clients, presenting his sales figures and taking such an interest in the minuteae of his life that we half expected him to pop out of the wardrobe every morning and advise Francis on his choice of ties.

The letter he's received telling him that his job 'may' be at risk - I love that 'may' - is a formality. It invites him to a meeting to discuss his future in two day's time. The outcome is a forgone conclusion. All that matters now is how big the pay off is going to be and how long it's going to keep us going.

At least we're in a slightly stronger position than last time round - six years ago. Then, our youngest child was a baby and I'd abandoned what seemed like the impossibility of managing a nanny, two full time jobs and having any time to do more than give the cat a bedtime kiss (she was frequently the only one up when I got home) and wonder what the children looked like when they were awake. Then, it took him over a year to get a new job.

Now, all three children are at schoool and I have a part-time job teaching music at a local school. It's secure and reasonably well paid but inevitably restricted as far as overtime and career progression is concerned - there's a limit to how many Disney tunes you can teach a bunch of seven-year olds in a week, and I think I've reached it.

I cancel the book club meeting which was organised for the following evening. The family is in official mourning for my husband's career and the niceties must be observed. Filling the house with a bunch of cackling women swilling wine and swapping PTA anecdotes may provide temporary therapy for me but I don't think it will do much for Francis. And, let's be honest. I now feel that, like somebody who's been diagnosed with a non life-threatening but disfiguring condition, our new status will set us slightly apart. At every social gathering from now on, we'll feel as if we're the have-nots to everyone's haves, the couple who are living in a parallel world, the people who'll hear about good news - promotions, bonuses, new cars - at second hand, everything tactfully toned down so we're not acutely conscious of the gap between us.

A friend comes round. She's brought a card for Francis. "Everyone thinks you're a c***" it announces, in bright primary colours. There's a badge, too, with the same word. "Do you think it'll cheer him up?" she asks. I'm not sure - but shouldn't think so. She's laughing so much, though, that I think maybe it's just me.

When Francis walks in, she presents it to him. He makes a good show of laughing when he opens it but later on, when she's gone, he has another look at it. "It's true," he says,"I am a c***. You only get made redundant if you're rubbish, and that's what everybody's going to think."

Oh, dear. I should have followed my instincts on this one. He spends the rest of the evening sunk in gloom. We go to bed. At 3.30 am we're both awake, eyes staring at the ceiling, each aware of the other but not saying anything.

The next morning, I phone Janet, to ask if she's had any more dreams about us. If some force greater than both of us is exerting a form of psychic control over our lives, I want to know about it. She hasn't. It may not be much as rays of sunshine go, but it's all that's on offer at the moment.