Sugar Mummy (16 page)

I nod and try to smile.

'He just rings up and says you'd better come over for Sunday
lunch this weekend. Last week he just shouts "get over here now", because
he's had a row with my mum or something. "Get over here or I'll stop your money."
But, like, why should I? You know what I'm saying?'

'No, it's up to you, isn't it?'

She looks across at me for a moment. Have I said the wrong thing?
'Yeah, it's up to me.' Her mind wanders for a moment. 'I just hate him. I really
hate him.'

'Sure.'

'He doesn't get on with any of us. I've got this boyfriend slash,
you see-'

She stops for a moment.

'Sorry?' I seem to be losing it. Or is she?

'Sorry?' she says.

'Sorry, you were saying you've got a boyfriend slash something.'

'Yeah.'

I laugh irritably. 'Boyfriend slash what? You mean boyfriend
slash best friend or something?'

She looks at me again. 'No, that's my boyfriend's name Slash.
He's in a band.'

'Oh, right.'

We both look down at our wine and then she says, 'Look, I'm sorry
I just want to be with someone tonight. I hope that's OK. I just don't want to be
on my own.'

'Sure.'

She sniffs, takes a long drag and begins to tell me about her
brother who has just come back from travelling and has been staying in the flat
with his mate.

'What a mess,' she says at last. 'My dad'll go mental when he
sees it, yeah?'

'Not surprised. I mean, will he?'

'Yeah, mental.'

There is another pause and she drifts off again, obviously thinking
about her old man. I decide I'd better try and earn my money.

'What does he do?'

'Who?'

'Your dad.'

'What does he do?'

'For a living.'

'Oh, erm, office furniture.' She mentions a brand name and I
nod because it sort of rings a bell. Imput my hands down into my lap and look down
at my watch discreetly. Twenty to three.

'He's South African,' she adds, as if that explains everything.

'Oh, right. When did he come over here?'

'In the fifties. "I had twenty quid in cash, a half-full
suitcase and the address of my mother's aunt in Ealing," she says in a convincingly
rough South African accent.

I laugh. 'Very good. The accent, I mean.'

She looks at me and then smiles for a moment. Amusement? Pride?
Either way I'm just glad I've made her smile. 'It should be. I've heard it a million
times.' She flicks her ash into the ashtray. 'He used to clean Tube tunnels.'

'Clean tube tunnels?'

'Yep. Bet you didn't know anybody did that. They need to clear
away litter, all the fluff from people's clothes and shit. Could cause a fire.'

'What a crap job.' Not like media sales.

She laughs. 'He wanted a job that was so fucking horrible he
wouldn't end up doing it for the rest of his life.'

'Then what did he do?'

'He met a man in a pub in Kilburn. He wanted to shift some stolen
office furniture. So he bought it off this guy for a tenner or something and hasn't
looked back.' She takes a sip of wine. 'Hasn't looked back since.'

'He must have shifted a lot of office furniture.'

'Tons of it. He's five foot nothing but he's built like a fucking
fire hydrant.' She takes another mouthful of wine and tops up our glasses, slopping
it on the table. 'He used to stack it up to the ceiling of this warehouse in Southwark.
He had to cover it with plastic sheets because of the damp running down the walls
and the rain coming in through the roof. Then he'd put on a suit and visit all these
offices around the City flogging it.'

'Made a lot of money?'

She sniffs. 'Fucking minted it.'

'Sounds so easy.' She ignores me. 'Then what?'

'He decided he wanted a wife, yeah? The best money could buy.
Started moving in the posh circles, you know? Ascot, Henley.' Sounds good to me.
'Load of fucking wankers. That's when he met my mum.'

'Really? She's ... ?'

'Posh? Yeah, fucking posh. Went to Benenden? You know? The public
school? Used to go out with a lord. She showed me the cutting from Tatler or wherever.
Pretty too. You know? Not like movie-star looks but beautiful cheekbones. Doll-like.'

'What did her mum and dad think about her marrying-?'

'Some rough-arsed foreigner with a chi) on his shoulder the size
of a plank? What do you think? They didn't speak to her for twenty years,' she says
matter of factly.

'Fucking hell.'

She sniffs, flicks more ash off her cigarette. 'Yeah, well, you
gonna sulk, you may as well do it properly. I remember when they came to stay once.
I knew something was going on because my mum was behaving weirdly. Kept rowing with
my dad, well, even more than usual. Dressed us up one day in our best clothes. I
said, "Are we going to a party?".' She laughs again. This must be good
therapy. Now I'm earning my money - if I ever actually get paid. 'A party! My mum
looked like she was going to be sick. She told us to go and sit down in the living
room and watch children's telly or something. Half an hour later she brought this
old couple to meet us. He had a really disgusting red nose, I remember that. She
said "This is Grannie and Grandpa."'

'What did you say?'

She shrugs her shoulders like it's an irrelevant question. "'Hello"
or something. Went back to watching telly. I'd never met my dad's parents so I didn't
really have a clue about grandparents. I thought it was like getting a new teacher
at school or a new nanny or cleaning lady. Big deal.'

We both look down at our wine. She has nearly finished her glass.
I pour some more. She murmurs, 'Cheers.'

'I hope you don't mind me going on like this,' she says, staring
me in the eyes.

'No, 'course not. It's what I'm .. .' - paid for? - '... here
for.'

'Sorry, it's just that I've got to go and see them this weekend
and they'll be at each other's throats the whole fucking time.'

'Where do they live?'

'Surrey. My dad had it built. The locals call it Dynasty Towers.'

'Tasteful.'

'Very. The evenings are the worst. He gets so drunk. Starts telling
my mum about how she thinks she is so grand because of the way she talks and the
way she holds her knife and because she wanted the children to do French exchanges,
piano lessons and go to university, you know all that shit. He always ends up telling
her she thinks she is so grand but she owes everything, everything to him, from
the clothes she stands up in to, I don't know, the car she uses whenever she tries
to leave him. Then he'll start on us - how we owe everything to him, including life
itself. We think that because we've gone to posh schools and mixed with the right
people that we're better than him now but we should never forget who put them there
in the first place, blah, blah.'

While she is talking a thought occurs to me. There are two sorts
of people who have money, serious money, I mean. Some people inherit it, which leaves
them soft and rotten and pathetic so they turn to drugs and act like life has done
them a terrible disservice. Then there are people who make it and that turns them
hard and angry - too mean to spend it themselves and too bitter to give it to anyone
else, like Paul Getty installing pay phones in his homes.

For both these kinds of people, money is a terrible affliction.
It makes a disgusting, ugly mess of their lives. I, on the other hand, offer another
option, a third way: I would be a perfect balance, I could spend it so well. My
whole lifestyle - clothes, houses, cars, holidays, parties, whatever - would all
be in the best possible taste. I would be the prime example of how to live and spend.
A human advertisement for gracious living. I would become a sort of wealth performance
artist. All I need is someone (and somehow I'm beginning to think it's not going
to be Marion) to provide me with the raw materials - the cash to prove it and I'll
be well away.

I come back to her as she is telling me about a family holiday
in Barbados where her dad held her brother's head under water, nearly drowning him,
while the other holiday-makers on the beach watched in horror and nearly said something
to someone.

After she has been talking for a while, I look down and say 'Oh
God' sympathetically. I scratch the back of my left hand and discreetly look at
my watch. It is nearly three forty-five. I've got work tomorrow. I'll give it till
four and then I'll go.

*

Suddenly I wake up with a hot, sharp pain down in my neck. My
cheek is stuck to the table and my left arm has gone to sleep. As gently as I can,
I peel my face off the sticky not-soscrubbed pine surface and drag myself up, wincing
in pain. Every muscle in my body is pinched tight. I stretch and shiver and breathe
deeply. I feel faint for a moment.

The girl is still asleep opposite me. I blink and roll my eyes
and feel the pain from my neck move up into my head. I am tortured from a weird,
unnatural sleep full of sad, violent dreams. The girl is out for the count, snoring
gently, her eyes more red and swollen than ever, her mouth slightly open. How often
does she end up doing this? Falling asleep pissed after crying and damning her father
to people she doesn't know? I look around for something to put over her shoulders
but I can't find anything.

I decide to make for the door. The fresh morning air revives
me slightly. All around curtains are closed. I look at my watch, it's six-twenty.
I suddenly realise that I haven't got a cheque from her. I can't wake her. But I
really need that money. I have to give £50 commission to Jonathan anyway. If I get
the cheque I will be a hundred and fifty quid better off (minus taxi fares). If
I don't, I will be fifty worse off (plus taxi fares).

I've got to do it.

I walk back into the house, deciding that brisk and business-like
is the best approach. Nothing to be embarrassed about, it's just a commercial arrangement,
after all.

She is still out cold. Oh, shit. I can't do this. I groan and
breathe out heavily, half-hoping it will wake her up. I just can't do this. I walk
out again into the hall and consider for a moment. The wreckage looks even uglier
in the daylight through the curtains. And the stink is worse. My stink. I've contributed
to this, I'm part of it now. I realise I am standing on a broken CD. How weird,
I've never seen a broken CD before. I didn't know you could break them.

Oh fuck! That's it. I didn't come here in the middle of the night
to listen to this pathetic girl's stories and pay fifty quid (plus cab fares) for
the privilege. Fuck it, you've got to be tough in this business.

I march back into the kitchen and cough loudly where the combined
smell of rotting rubbish, booze, stale cigarettes and sleep almost makes me retch.
She stirs slightly, but that's it. 'Excuse me.' Nothing. I say it again louder.
She stirs slightly and then looks up at me, squinting, trying to focus. 'Sorry to
wake you, but, er, I've got to go and, er, you know.'

She sniffs and frowns, obviously trying to remember who I am
and what happened last night.

'I'll need a cheque,' I say quickly.

'Hey? Oh, yeah, right.' She straightens up, pushes her hair back
and looks around her. She begins a pathetic attempt to find her cheque book while
I stand, hands in pockets, casually looking out of the kitchen window. After a few
minutes I suggest that it might be in her bedroom. Or the living room. Or under
that pile of magazines over there. Oh, shit - this is hopeless. In the end I stumble
around the flat, swearing softly and throwing things left and right, looking for
anything that she could use to pay me - credit card, cashpoint card, anything.

Finally I find a couple of credit cards behind a pizza flyer
on the mantelpiece. I choose the one with the latest expiry date and fill in my
credit card slip. I put £200 on and ask her to sign it which she does in silence
with big childish letters.

The chances of it going through all right are minimal but by
now I don't care.

She looks up at me through bloodshot eyes as she hands back the
slip.

'I, er ...' I mumble, folding it and putting it in my back pocket.
'Well, it was nice to, er ... I hope it's not too bad this weekend, you know, with
your dad.'

'Mmmm, no,' she says and sniffs. I say, 'Thanks, bye.'

It's nearly seven as I head for the Tube.

It takes me days to get over my night of hell with Erren and
her father. I notice that we do actually have some of his swivel chairs in our office
but there is no one I can talk about it to even if I'd wanted to. They're the really
cheap, uncomfortable ones that everyone pushes around to other desks and only the
people who are last into the office in the morning - like me - end up sitting on.

*

Jonathan rings me the following evening as I'm tearing off to
go to Marion's and thanks me for the job I did the previous night.

'I knew you were right for it. I'm conscious that things have
been quite quiet recently for you,' he says, a note of concern in his voice.

'Yeah, I know, I've been quite busy with work,' I say, although
why I'm offering him an excuse I don't know.

'I thought that American woman might want to you see again.'

'Er, yeah, funny that. Mind you, I think she said she was going
back to the States for a while so perhaps she's just not around,' I say confidently.
This obviously sounds plausible to Jonathan.

'Probably, most of our clients are international,' he says. 'Anyway,
well done, mate.' He laughs. 'They're not all like that, promise. I tell you what,
next: really glamorous, high rolling job that comes in is yours.'

'Sure, I just wondered about-'

'There is one woman I was talking to who's going to Rome for
business next week,' he says. 'Hates travelling alone. Just wants someone to carry
her bag at the airport, sort of thing, take her to dinner while she's there. I'll
put you forward for that.'