Confessions of a Sugar Mummy (5 page)

‘Yes, four fifteen', Martin finally manages.

Of Stefan Mocny's
riad
I remember little. An ordinary Victorian terrace house had been opened up on a street overlooking the canal. Stefan spoke of a learning curve and the need to throw ‘a further hundred' at it. A fountain tinkled in the atrium. The tiles looked like—well—Moroccan tiles. Are we both phoneys, Alain and I? Or is my new plan the only way I can count on seeing him again?

What happened today makes me think of May, who brought me up because my mother was driving ambulances in the war—that was how the story went anyway. May's sayings stay with me and pop up when a real bastard of a day comes heaving over the horizon: ‘It never rains but it pours', ‘turning up like a bad penny', ‘give him an inch and he'll take a mile' and about a hundred others that are really boring but always spot on, in an irritating way.

Well, ‘no use crying over spilt milk' is the first that comes to mind just now, and I can hear May's voice as she says it, when surveying, from her chair in Heaven, the way my lunch ended. (Is Alain no more than a puddle of spilt milk? The idea cheers
me up, but not for long. Who wants to place their love and affection in the ingredients of a blancmange?)

Then there's ‘make your bed and you'll have to lie on it'—something like that, anyway, and I can remember May with pursed lips telling me it was I who was responsible for my decisions—not her, not God, just me. And it was a saying I particularly hated because it left you so alone in the universe and as uncomfortable as this horrible bed was going to make you feel. The words came to mind because—typically enough—I'd no sooner returned from inspecting Stefan's
riad
than the bell went, Martin from Crookstons was on the doorstep, and thundering footsteps on the stairs showed only too clearly that Gloria and Wayne had spent a more profitable lunch hour than I had, and in my bedroom too. (No, they hadn't made the bed either.)

Rules for a Sugar Mummy (would-be) in reacting to the Real Thing:

Don't show annoyance at the fact you have just shelled out for what appears to have been the most pricey mozzarella in Italy, while Real Sugar Mummy has swooned in the arms of her young husband. Your outlay
(no pun intended) can only diminish, as you keep a sharp eye on costs, while Real S M will be faced with high expenses and a strong sense of disappointment if she cuts down late in the day.

On no account try to change your Look and imitate the Real S M, as you probably have a completely different figure, complexion etc. and would not ‘for love or money' (May again) be able to find an Object of Desire at all. Remember the thwarted Sugar Mummies in the park with their recalcitrant ducks? You'll be one of them—or, to carry the nursery imagery a bit further, you'd be a Princess whose Frog would never, ever turn into a Prince.

So here I am, leading a huge retinue of men up the stairs of my dingy maisonette in W9. A few months back, no estate agent would condescend to stay more than two minutes in the place I had made my home. Now, the bumpy, battered walls are made of gold, the creaking banister is ‘oak-lined' and the grubby kitchen is ‘an opportunity for renovation'. My bedroom will be described as ‘en suite, overlooking
the green trees (and dog shit, I might add) of Palmer's Park'. We all look away from the rumpled bed as we crowd in—that is, Martin Crookston, Stefan and his assistant Bill (who looks like a Hitler youth commandant) as well as two other men (one short and same size all the way up, from feet to bald pink head, resembles a walking penis, who is an architect working for Stefan; the other is a builder with cleavage, who stoops over and shows his bum at every possible opportunity).

Martin, who can barely squeeze into the testosterone-filled space (but I'm not interested, I've been ditched by Alain the Mysterious Sexless Wonder), is paying me compliments as if I've done up the Alhambra and am giving him first whack at selling it on a commission of ten percent. ‘I've some people who would like to come round tonight', announces Martin. ‘Six-thirty OK, Scarlett?'

‘Fine', I say. After all, the sooner the better, if I'm going to get my plan off the ground.

‘The asking price', Martin begins. I notice that all the men fall silent at this and I wait, as they evidently do, in a state of barely controlled tension. Stefan flicks and unflicks a posh-looking fountain pen; Penis starts some wild electronic measuring of ceiling and window frames; Bill stares fixedly with
his Luftwaffe-blue eyes out of the window at the dismal little park.

‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand', Martin intones.

Good God, the price has gone up by a quarter of a million pounds since last night!

Stefan and his party are visibly relaxing.

Then a head comes round the door (‘it never rains but it pours') and a tall, slim figure in shorts and an expensive shirt edges in a few inches. ‘Excuse me …' and he looks at Martin Crookston in the kind of familiar way Englishmen reserve for sodomy or property, ‘I'm Nyan', this fabulous figure announces. ‘I hope I am not too late to say that I wish to make an offer on this flat.'

If you get an offer like mine on your previously almost unsaleable flat, you find you're a Sugar Mummy all at once to any man who happens to be around at the time.

Stefan Mocny stared at me as if I'd just breast-fed him and he still wanted more. Bill from Nazi Youth stood to attention like a son who's been sent away to school too young and sees his mother as a wing-commander in charge of his penalties and rewards for the rest of his life. Penis and Bum came up close so I had to edge away from them to the door, but there, more seriously demanding than any of the above, were Martin from Crookstons and ‘Nyan' whom I saw, now the setting sun had finally gone
off the much-vaunted park, was about seven feet tall and had red hair and a ghostly white skin. He must be the banker upstairs.

Well I didn't have time to wonder what this exotic albino millionaire must be wondering about me. Had he heard me calling Alain's name, to see if the Jane Eyre test works—remember: ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!' which the poor governess hears when she's about to give up and go and live as a missionary in India, and her reply, called back across the empty moor to Mr Rochester: ‘I come' (could this have been misinterpreted by the banker as a wanker's cry?).

Martin suddenly stepped forward and pulled me out through the door onto the landing. Despite a hasty shuffle from the men now trapped in my bedroom, we were now alone on the landing together, Martin from Crookstons and I.

‘Mr Nyan has made an offer for your maisonette here at Saltram Crescent', intones Martin—as if this was just one of my properties, but I suppose he deals frequently with people blessed with what is known as a portfolio: a large number of flats and houses all meant to go up, and soon discarded if they go down, a sort of bi-polar investment strategy.

I can't have understood how precious time is to those who, like Martin, aim to sell as many places as
possible in the manic phase and stick out the depression in a sun-filled hideaway, because I'm told again, quite angrily. As Martin speaks, the door bursts open and Stefan Mocny appears, Penis and Bum behind him and no sign of Nyan (I can't help indulging the paranoid thought that he's going through my papers, to see what I pay for insurance or, worst of all, how much the flat cost me all of six years ago).

‘Seven hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine', Martin snaps for the third time. Then he turns menacingly towards me and says ‘
a very
good offer', as if I've been let off a jail sentence and told I'm going on a free holiday instead.

‘Scarlett!' In comes Stefan, just seconds before the looming figure of Nyan collides in the doorway with Rudolf Hess on parole, i.e. Stefan's assistant Bill. I can't help wondering how Bill's mother—or grandmother, it must have been; it's difficult to get the generations right as you grow old—could have found a German to give her a baby, unless of course she'd been a spy …

That's the trouble with me. I can't help daydreaming at all the most important points in life—like going out with someone you might, just might,
like. Or hearing about a gigantic offer on your flat, one that can change your life forever. Maybe I'm in shock … that's what this odd, fuzzy feeling must be.

Through all the fog I can see, however, that Stefan is now standing closer to Martin than a few seconds ago. He's totting up the price of the house when it's a ‘family house' (although few families would be able to afford it) and I even hear him say to Martin that he ‘could make something of this'. It's become clear by the way Martin nods and pretends to consider this suggestion from Stefan that they know each other well already.

A silence falls. Nyan has elbowed aside Penis and Bum (survival of the fittest I suppose) and even blue-eyed Bill finds himself at the back of the queue.

Panic. What the hell am I meant to do?

Of course I know what they want me to do. If I say ‘yes', Stefan will make a mint by transforming poor old Saltram Crescent into a cross between a Dominican monastery, a mosque and a rajah's palace. Employment, obviously, for Stefan's workforce—perhaps unsurprisingly there have been no commissions since the
riad.
Alain had told me that, laughing, back in La Speranza (self-deprecating of course); he meant his tiles had put people off. He even went on to joke that there had
been massive complaints to Brent Council from the pebble-dashed dwellers of All Souls Road and Ravensworth Terrace.

So my acceptance would keep a lot of people in work. It's already clear that Martin from Crookstons is going to benefit from this arrangement as well. As for Mr Nyan, his pale eyes would twinkle if they could. ‘There's a real shortage of family houses in W9', Martin is saying, as I still linger on the landing. ‘It's what everyone is looking for.'

Yet I feel a pang. Here is where I thought I might make a go of an Independent Life (don't ask), and it's good to have friends (well, mainly Molly) and the laundrette and the park, even if it sucks—it makes me feel healthy to go round it twice and clock up a few miles.

Aren't you meant to think of things like that when you're selling? What about the human side? Is Money really so ice cold that I have to choose between freezing to death and being rich or actually getting colder as I grow old with not enough to heat my bedsit from a lousy pension?

‘I'm sure Alain will want to design tiles especially for this project', Stefan says. (He must have noticed the way I looked at Alain at lunch.) Maybe that helps me come out with my answer.

Before Stefan can go on about a new learning curve—before Nyan can say how many hundreds of thousands need to be ‘thrown at' my flat—and, most of all, before I can outline my plan to Alain—I just know I have to have time.

‘I'll think about it', I say.

After that offer from the guinea pig on stilts (which is what the banker upstairs Mr Nyan looks like, and now I've thought it I can't get it out of my head. If he tries to come down into my flat again I'll feed him a lettuce) I'm desperate to get all these men out of my private quarters and relax while planning the next move.

It occurs to me as I take my mobile off the charger in the sitting-room that there are certain emotions a Sugar Mummy must never allow herself to suffer from. If she gives in to them she deserves the worst of fates for one of my breed: that is, paying all the bills, giving loads of TLC, at least as much as a house ‘in need of total
restoration' would require, and receiving nothing in return. Nada. Nought. Ground Zero. And it looks as if that's where I'm going. I've been far too soft and sympathetic and understanding to a goofy wastrel (well, he
is
attractive, even Molly granted that) who wants to have his (undoubtedly hash) cake and eat it; and too stoned to make a pass (for this must account for the odd ‘nothing's-going-to-happen' atmosphere around him) unless I'm too old, hag's arm etc. for sex, and in order to tolerate my company at all he has to be drugged to the eyeballs.

This is the clever tactic adopted by those picked out as the darlings of Sugar Mummies: keep them guessing. Are you too disgusting or nearly repulsive—or acceptable in a certain light? Millions of women with creams and lighteners and brown-blotch-on-hands removers spend their money and a large portion of their lives trying to work out which category they belong to.

And I'm one of them. Pathetic, isn't it?

No surprise, then, that Messages on my phone shows Inbox Empty, as always. I have to be the one to make the calls. Why should I? I've had an empty inbox for as long as I can remember, and now I've made a packet (about to anyway) from this dreary
piece of real estate people are going to be ringing
me
. But am I really like that? Do I believe that there's no real friendship in the world—that people ring someone simply because they've come into some money? Of course not. Scarlett, this property boom and stupid infatuation are together doing you no good. Sell the flat and give a high percentage of the proceeds to charity. (Ha! Wonder if I'll remember that when the time comes.) Get rid of Alain—there, I've said it! But how?

Rules for turning back from the trainee Sugar Mummy into a decent, respectable older woman whose main treat is Sunday lunch with stressed relatives, admiring their grandchildren, or other blameless activities such as making meatloaf for same stressed relatives (seldom appreciated, unfortunately) or knitting:

Lose a sense of compassion. If the candidate for being a recipient of a Sugar Mummy's love and affection has been thrown out of his home by parents or girlfriend it is
not
up to you to provide somewhere for him to live. Nor should you throw away your pension (or proceeds from a hefty property sale) on private medicine. If he dies while waiting for
an NHS appointment/operation, it is
not
your fault.