Free Diary of an Unsmug Married by Polly James

usually look and sound quite so unsettled. I can’t actually think of anyone in the Party (Pete Carew included), who’d have either the energy or the desire to usurp him, but then I don’t share Andrew’s long-standing belief that they’d all stab him in the back as soon as look at him.
    ‘I don’t want you or Greg talking to anyone from the Party from now on, Molly,’ he says. ‘Not even the staff – you can’t trust any of ‘em.’
    ‘But they’re in an office in the same building as us.’
    Andrew glares at me and almost crashes into a woman with a pushchair standing at a zebra crossing. I decide it’s safer to shut up, to prevent the deaths of innocent pedestrians, and live to enjoy what remains of the weekend.
    Now I wish I hadn’t bothered, after Max and I have dinner with Susie and David this evening. We’re celebrating David’s company having just been sold – for three million pounds.
    To give him his due, David does resist the temptation to remind me that I warned him he’d never make a penny if he set up a courier company, on the basis that the market was already saturated; but he does say,‘Molly, you are the biggest waste of potential I have ever known.’
    I may not see David very often since he became so bloody successful, but he’s still supposed to be my best friend. Max says I should have asked him what he meant, but I say I don’t want to know.
    SUNDAY, 13 JUNE
    I’m feeling a bit fragile after last night’s drinking session with David and Susie, and this isn’t helped by a newspaper article that Dinah sends me in an email.
    The report refers to the mass-murderer who went berserk with a shotgun, the one that Greg was so sure would be wearing a shell-suit at the time; and seems to imply that the man was driven to the brink of insanity by falling for a young Thai woman, who allegedly encouraged him to send her loads of money and then dumped him when he ran out of cash.
    Dinah doesn’t go into any more detail herself, except to say, ‘There goes our inheritance, and our social standing.’
    I don’t bother to reply, as Dad doesn’t own a shotgun as far as I know, and God knows what Dinah expects to inherit anyway. When a man’s been married as many times as Dad, there’s not exactly a limited number of children and step-children to share the proceeds of one small bungalow and a (probably fake) Rolex watch.
    My mood doesn’t improve when Josh informs me that today is the day that he and his girlfriend Holly celebrate their third anniversary. What is wrong with young people these days? Why don’t they make the most of their freedom?
    I say as much to Max, who agrees rather too wholeheartedly, though cunningly out of earshot of Josh. I can’t stop once I’ve started, though. Since when are you allowed to even have anniversaries of when you started going out together? Anniversaries are supposed to be treats in recognition of hard labour at the coalface of marriage, not trivialised in this way!
    The one thing that I do not say is ‘Congratulations’, and now Josh is in a mood with me. Max does and is, as usual, the favourite parent. Creep.
    I assume that this craven behaviour is what Max is referring to when, much later, he sidles up to me in bed and tells me that he’s sorry – but, as usual, I’m wrong. He’s trying to prepare me for bad news instead: that he will be away on a business trip to Germany on our anniversary. I go ballistic, but he says he doesn’t have a choice, and that the company are talking about redundancies.
    He seems so worried that I don’t have the heart to keep moaning. I wonder if that’s why he’s off sex?
    MONDAY, 14 JUNE
    My first priority this morning is to make a few calls to see what I can do to help poor little Mr Meeeeurghn – who turns out to be in a bail hostel because he has just got out of prison. More details are being sent by post, and are designated strictly confidential.
    I have no one to share this development with, as Greg has