FIDELMA COOK

Well-groomed, hair expertly cut and coloured and dressed in neither high nor low fashion, the woman sipping her cappuccino in the lull between shops seems to epitomise middle-class refinement.

Her left hand wears only an engagement and wedding ring, her ears sport pearls by day, diamonds by night and her fixed, somewhat distant smile has an almost contemptuous tinge of self-satisfaction as her eyes sweep over the neighbouring tables and their occupants.

And no wonder. Around her feet lie at least 10 large, and - more importantly - small carrier bags, bearing stark black logos on thick paper; grosgrain ribbons or soft cord pulled through eyelets and sealed with an important house sticker.

Outside the atrium shopping mall, the beggars and the Big Issue sellers shiver in the cold and when she leaves they will price her from head to toe, softly asking for a donation or a sale. She can obviously afford a little something, they suppose.

Of course, she gives graciously, although it is a bit of a scrabble to find a pound and some change in the tiny purse inside her silk-lined, kid-leather handbag. But it's Christmas, after all, and those poor souls need all the help they can get. The Salvation Army choir and the lingering melodies of piped carols help alleviate the numbing pain of so many presents to carry to the car park.

But the pleasure she will enjoy from the gift-giving will not last long. After bringing a little bit of joy with Jo Malone candles, White Company linens, Louis Vuitton purses and the Smythson diaries, the familiar envelopes and their nasty little return PO box numbers will arrive, always quicker than expected. Then she must make sense of those little computerised receipts crumpled in the corner of that lovely leather handbag.

And suddenly the depressing news items of global recession, falling house prices and a credit crunch, penetrate. Her whole life is a fraud. She is actually one of the 4.4m people in the UK still paying off last Christmas through her credit cards, and she has just done it all again.

She has no real money, only the ability to obtain credit at an enormous add-on cost.

And worse than that, people like her - the middle classes - are the worst credit offenders.

It seems that, on average, most individuals have gone £660 into debt to cover this Christmas. God, if only it were just £660, she thinks. Worse than that, she can no longer console herself with the knowledge that her bijou flat, or suburban house, is rising in price daily or with the belief that, if necessary, she can remortgage with a better interest rate.

Everything is on the slide and there are even letters from credit card companies dropping her credit level in the future. (And she has been such a good customer! Usually after Christmas they add an extra thousand or two to her limit.) She can't even console herself that her husband/partner can bail her out because middle-class life no longer follows such sexist mores. Besides, he is opening his own ugly PO return box-marked envelopes - just a week after opening her Asprey's "surprise" cufflinks.

It doesn't matter that between them they have a large income, including perks, healthcare, and company cars. They have built up a house of cards that, because of problems in America, it seems, could be blown down at any second. And it is so unfair, they think: after all, their combined credit card debts total a mere £45,000 . . .

Serves them right, some will think, but only those few - increasingly few - who live their lives by the old-fashioned coda of neither a borrower nor a lender be. For debt is no longer the province of - how shall we put it - the unfortunates. It is no longer a shameful situation brought about by financial mismanagement. It is simply a fact of life.

Look at the recent tale of former television face Ed Mitchell, who earned well over £100,000 a year and allegedly lost everything to be forced into a dosser's life in Brighton after building up £150,000 in credit card debts divided between 25 cards.

Admittedly, his problems were exacerbated by alcoholism, but last week he pointed out how our society's preconceptions regarding the homeless are now in many cases totally outdated.

"There's still the view that homeless people are dosser tramps," he said. "That's not the way it is any more.

The 21st-century tramp is now white collar. I'm speaking for the tens of thousands of people who are going to go through what I've been through."

Two years ago Rosie Millard, the former BBC arts correspondent turned buy-to-let investor went broke, admitting she survived by shifting her debts from one credit card to another.

Once, rather than admit to such shame, the middle-class debtor would have gone into the library and done the decent thing.

Middle-class values were once grounded in prudence, in a distaste of debt, in saving for the things one wanted.

The working class and the upper class allegedly were always beyond such worries, careless of paying bills at the upper end; while at the lower, simply incapable because no-one offered them credit. They turned to moneylenders simply to eat, not to shop. Debt was anathema to the solid bourgeoisie. Solvency conferred a a position of strength, from which they could offer credit to those above and below them. And so they grew.

But then along came a certain Margaret Thatcher, who shattered the puritanical maxim, "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be" by ushering in an era that allowed the middle class to be both. An era of stupendous selfishness was coupled with great moral self-reinvention - necessary for the pursuit of instant gratification.

The rot actually started 40 years ago when the first credit cards plopped through the doors of the favoured. Today, outstanding debt on cards stands at close to a staggering £60bn in the UK alone.

God knows, I've spent my share of it. Like Ed Mitchell and Rosie Millard and other thousands of users, I have robbed Peter to pay Paul, pulling one credit card to pay off another, applying for a fresh one to start all over again.

More than 25 years ago, when I was already burdened by a hefty mortgage and rising interest rates, American Express came up with an incredible solution, aimed at those already living beyond their means.

The details were never quite clear to me, but the outcome was. An overdraft facility of up to an astonishing £30,000 was made available to me at my bank, despite the fact that my then-relatively modest overdraft showed no signs of decreasing.

Over the next five years I used up two £30,000 overdrafts - ultimately selling houses to pay them off. And still the credit kept coming because, on paper, being a high earner, there was no sound reason that I couldn't keep paying.

And, like countless others blithely spending this week, I justified my splurges with the thought that it wasn't "real money" and so long as one could make the most basic of payments per month, the game would never be up. After all, it wasn't as if the money was going on me. Most of it disappeared shoring up the trappings of the most bourgeois of "values": school fees, the annual skiing holiday, the weekend of entertaining. Necessary basic needs provided by the scrawl of a signature.

But now, as we tremble on the verge of a worldwide recession and the money men do their own sums and realise they no longer add up, it seems the game is finally up.

Jobs are no longer guaranteed; salaries are being cut, perks abolished; houses are no longer as safe as they were; understanding bank managers have been replaced by call centres where all that matters is the black - or, rather, red - last number on your anonymous file, not your winning smile and honeyed promises.

And come the first week of next year, when the credit card bills arrive with the vulgar speed generated by computers, we'll no doubt cast around for someone to blame.

"It wasn't my fault", we'll bleat. "They made me do it - throwing cash at me when I was vulnerable". And then they had the cheek to ask for it back.

So spare a thought for that well-groomed lady with the designer bags at her feet as she sips her cappuccino. For any day now, her little house of cards is about to come tumbling down.