Lifestyle issues

We are drunk on the sofa of our room in Soho House Berlin. It is the biggest and most gorgeous bedroom I have ever seen, with a giant's bed and a double shower. "Let's play princesses," I suggest. He is googling garden hose accessories. In our drunken good humour we have booked the most expensive villa in the South of France for two weeks in the summer and I text the eldest to tell him the good news. "The one with the computer-generated pool?" he replies. Last year we were the victims of holiday brochure wide angle lens swimming pool trickery of the most savage order and he is still shaken.

Photoshopped pool: needs slight clockwise rotation

An alternative, and more expensive, destination is sought and found. We recognise the name of the owner as someone known to my father who dabbled with property ownership in this part of France until he discovered that chucking money at the hair-brained business scheme of any muppet sobbing into a pint was a surer way to lose vast sums of cash at speed.

I call the owner of the second house. This is out of character on every level but the champagne is wearing off and, rather than spiral into the usual self-indulgent sobbing drawl that colours/ruins all events in which I a) drink very much indeed b) catch a glimpse of my husband in a work context (he made some baffling calls on the way to the airport), I am going to assert myself in a businesslike yet engaging manner in order to secure a discount on the basis of our common history.

Ten fairly demeaning minutes later (his memory of my family is vague and populated by characters I have never met: I suspect there may be more than one ex-investment banker with colonnial ambitions called Nigel in the St Tropez area) I agree to pay the published tariff, plus a couple of hundred quid extra for housekeeping ("Absolutely, it's no holiday for me otherwise..." I hear myself tweat compliantly).

It is a spectacular fail. An hour later he calls back to ask me to change our dates so that he's not left with an 'orphan' week that would be difficult to let at the beginning of the holidays. For fuck's sake. I agree. It merely means taking the children out of school a day early, and missing a hospital appointment, and that our housesitter won't be available. Not a problem.