Heather is three. She wears a Disney princess dress and is now barefooted as she attempts to navigate the space between the mattress, television and kitchenette. “We sleep in the kitchen any time we have visitors,” her mother assures me hurriedly. Heather will sit on my bed this evening and attempt to brush my matted hair and “make me pretty”. She will giggle, roll around the bed (which is in fact more hers than mine) and succeed in allowing me to recognize her mother’s wealth, her mother’s blessing. In the morning her mother will pour peppermint oil into a diffuser and for a moment the atmosphere will be pure enough to make me think a studio flat adequate accommodation for a small family. Only for a moment though.
Somewhere in London there must be an office in which the creative team of the Financial Time’s “How to Spend It” work. In that office, displayed beneath a banner that reads “Target Market” I imagine there to be a photograph of Paul’s house – beautiful, sparse and strange. He returns to his home very late on Friday evenings. In the house he sits alone, watches trash television and smokes a joint. He tells me that he has “lived with a few girls” and that he “manages a billion dollars”. In his cupboard there is ketchup, coke and champagne. Paul’s coffee table books are about Ferraris and Rolexes. The engine of Paul’s ostentatious car alerts me to his coming and goings. When I hear it I feel at least a shred of pity for him. Only for a moment though.