Sugar Mummy (36 page)

'Well, I overslept.'

'I called and you weren't there.'

'I know, I didn't get in till half-past three.' This time it
doesn't sound so funny.

'Well, you can't blame them, then.' Very logical.

'Marion, it wasn't just that. It was all the other time I took
off work, going shopping and things with you.' Marion is silent for a moment, letting
the full patheticness of this little whinge sink in.

'My fault? Andrew, you didn't have come to New York and Paris.'
I sigh and look down at the table for a moment. Logical again.

'I know, I'm very grateful and I had a wonderful time but since
I've been going out with you it's been just one thing after another.'

'What? Like presents, foreign trips, pocket money? Great sex?
Stuff like that?' says Marion, taking an olive stone out of her mouth as if someone
were about to give her a prize for finding it. 'Andrew, you wanted to get fired.'

'What?'

 
'You know you did. You
kept pushing it until finally they fired you.'

'Oh, bollocks.'

'Don't say that to me. You hated it, you kept telling me how
much you hated it and now you're free of it. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest
of your life. That is what people kept saying to me when I left Edward.'

'It's hardly the same.'

'It's exactly the same. Life is what you make of it and you were
never going to do anything in that crappy little office. Besides,' she says, taking
my hand, 'have you ever thought of it from my position? How embarrassing it's been
for me?'

'Eh?'

'Andrew, what am I supposed to tell my friends? That my lover
sells advertising space at some sleazy tabloid?'

'It's not a sleazy tabloid, it's a broadsheet with the second
highest ABCI readership in the country. Oh, for God's sake, who cares now? Look
Marion, the thing is I've got no money.'

'I know, I was thinking about that,' she says kindly. What did
she say? Is she finally going to give me some cash? I decide to push it a little
more.

'I've got rent to pay, food, all kinds of stuff.'

'Well, that won't be a problem, you’ll be living with me from
now on, right?' Oh, yes, of course. That'll solve everything.

'Yeah, but there are other things. I can't just live without
money.' I'm just inches away from grabbing her by the lapels of her jacket and yelling
at her: YOU GOT ME INTO THIS MESS, YOU MAD BITCH, NOW YOU GET ME OUT OF IT.

'I know,' she says, folding her arms on the table. 'Listen, I'm
going to make some sort of arrangement for you. You'll have your own cheque book
and bank account just to tide you over. Besides, you'll need to get a new suit,
a more fashionable one than that awful thing you've been wearing since I met you,
and some other new things.' I don't believe it. Could this be it? Could this finally
be what I've been working for all these months? At last I might get 'that ice'.
Is this the deal? I've finally sold out completely, hit rock bottom, shown to myself
that basically I'll do anything for money and now I'm finally getting some of it.
The champagne arrives - perfect timing.

Chapter
Eighteen

I feel rather hungover when I wake up. Marion is in the bath.
I can hear her splashing around gently and humming to herself. The bedroom is beginning
to smell of her luxurious bath oil. I turn over, duff up the pillow a bit and then
find a cool place for my feet. The upside of getting the sack is that I don't have
to go to work today. I don't have to put on a suit, get that fucking Tube and suffer
that Tube smell: aftershave, shampoo, stale alcohol from the night before (or this
morning?) and perhaps a smothered fart from a hastily eaten breakfast.

And - this is the real relief - I don't have to worry about finding
an excuse for being away from the office or what kind of welcome I can expect when
I do get in there to face Debbie. I'll miss seeing Sami every day, though. But we'll
keep in touch. I'll give her a ring and we'll go out for a drink or something. Or
I'll take her somewhere nice for lunch with Marion's money. We'll definitely see
each other. She could meet Vinny. They'd get on like a house on fire.

I get up and walk into the bathroom to see Marion. She looks
up at me and smiles sweetly.

'Hi, honey.' That reminds me that we made love last night. It
was pretty good too - fast and passionate, ripping our clothes off (not that I'd
actually dare rip anything of Marion's but she didn't tell me to hang anything up,
which is pretty devil-may-care in her book) and then slowly, like we didn't care
whether we climaxed again or not. Amazing what a powerful aphrodisiac the promise
of a cheque book can be. Especially when you begin to associate sex so closely with
money.

'Hiya,' I say and kiss her gently on the lips. She splashes some
water around her and leans back, closing her eyes.

'What are you going to do today?'

'No idea,' I say, sitting down on the loo. 'Absolutely no idea.'
She lifts her foot out of the water and puts her big toe with its perfect, pink
shiny toenail up to the bath tap which is in the shape of a golden dolphin. It spews
a few drops of water which drip down over her foot.

We both look at it.

'I do have nice feet, don't I?' I nod. 'I have a meeting this
morning with my lawyer about my residency or something. Honestly, the amount I spend
in this country, you'd think they'd be begging me to stay.' I smile. 'We could have
lunch somewhere and then go to the bank and sort things out if you want.'

'Sure,' I say casually. I'm genuinely very laid back about this,
partly because I can hardly believe it's happening and partly because somehow I
believe it isn't. Something is bound to go wrong.

'I do want to help you, you know that,' she says, taking my hand.
I smile. 'I know you haven't had all the advantages in life that I have.'

I get into the bath water after her and then have a quick shave.
Anna Maria has coffee, orange juice and warm croissants waiting for me downstairs.
Marion is sitting at the table, reading the International Herald Tribune by holding
it at some distance from her and tutting. It's nearly half-past ten and I really
could get used to this.

Marion sets off to her meeting at just after eleven, leaving
me two twenty pound notes to tide me over until lunch. I spend the morning reading
the papers and some old copies of Vanity Fair and watching the cable channels on
her telly. I look in the fridge to see if there is anything else to eat.

Marion's fridge is so different to mine and Vinny's. Not only
is it smaller and sparkling clean but all it contains is a carton of orange juice
and one of semi-skimmed milk, a box of Belgian chocolates, some strawberries and
some grease proof paper with Parma ham in it.

At any one time our knackered, smeary old English Electric fridge
in Fulham will harbour: two bottles of drinkable milk, one packet of cheese, a half-eaten
kebab/pizza/Indian, an open tin of baked beans which has formed a buffalo hide skin
on top and a lump of butter still in its sliced-up packet, dotted with toast crumbs
and going transparent with age around the edges. There will also be something sinister
in a jar or open tin in the back that predates history and that we will have to
draw lots to remove and take straight outside and throw in the bin. Or over the
wall into the garden of that ghastly Sloaney couple next door who are always having
barbecues and talking loudly about good prep schools.

I polish off the strawberries, even though I'm not hungry and
mooch about the house, wondering what to do next. I pick up an American magazine
but then realise I've already read it. I decide to go for a walk but realise I can't
find my keys so I stay at home.

I ring Sami's number at the office but it is engaged. Then I
ring Paperchase in Tottenham Court Road but put the phone down before they answer
because I just don't know what to say to Jane. 'Hello, you know I said I'd finish
with that American woman? Well, I've moved in with her instead.'

Shit. Give it a month.

At just after twelve Marion rings from the car to tell me she'll
see me at Cibo in Albermarle Street at 1.15 p.m., which certainly beats a sandwich
at my desk. Poor Sami will be trying to decide whether to queue at the sandwich
shop round the corner with its sweating margarine tubs of tuna and processed chicken
roll or the grimly claustrophobic office canteen which opens at noon and runs out
of anything worth eating at 12.01. Ice-cream scoop of Smash, anyone?

Even though I've stuffed my face all morning I'm starving by
the time I arrive at the restaurant and the risotto sounds good. Marion is not there
yet so the waitress brings me a copy of the Standard with my beer. I'm just reading
about a really hip new men's shop in the Fulham Road, which I'll check out as soon
as I get my money, when Marion arrives. We double kiss which seems odd since I only
saw her two hours ago but never mind, that's Marion.

'Fucking lawyers,' she mutters, patting her hair into place as
she sits down.

'Bad meeting?' I ask.

'Oh, you know what they're like. Telling you what you can't do,
how they can't help you and then charging you the earth for it.'

'What was it about this morning? Your residency?'

She looks up at me from the menu. 'Well, mine's probably OK because
of a corporation I've met up here and because I spent quite a bit of time abroad
recently but it's poor Anna Maria.'

'Anna Maria? What's the problem?'

'She was working for her own country's embassy before she came
to work for me so that was all cool but apparently it's a real pain in the ass if
she's working for a private individual.'

'Why?'

'Because she just can't, basically. She doesn't have a green
card or a work permit or whatever it's called. As soon as the authorities catch
up with her she'll have to leave and go back to Ecuador.'

'Where?'

'Ecuador, South America. It's where she's from.'

'Poor Anna Maria.'

'You can say that again. Imagine swapping Belgravia for a mud
hut halfway up the Andes or wherever. Have you seen those women's skin? Like an
alligator's ass.'

'That's awful.'

'Andrew, you have no idea how these people live. Moisturisers
and exfoliation are a totally alien concept to them.'

'No, I meant just having to go back there. Poor Anna Maria, what
a crap life. Can't she get a work permit or something?'

'Well, she could but it would take months and she'd have to leave
the country while they do it for some dumb reason and I just can't live without
her. Even then it would be pretty unlikely because she doesn't have a skill that's
in demand or something.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Well, the only thing we can do is get her to marry a Brit.'

'Right. That way she'd get British citizenship.' Marion is looking
at me again and suddenly it hits me. 'Hang on a minute. You want me to marry her?'
Marion looks sweetly at me. 'Oh, no.'

'Andrew, it would really help.'

'Yeah, but I can't.'

'Why not?' says Marion quietly. Yet again she has asked one of
those simple innocent-sounding questions which are completely unanswerable.

'Because ... because I just can't. I'd be caught out. You probably
go to jail for something like this.'

'No,' says Marion, reaching for an olive. The waiter arrives
and we give our orders. I've lost my appetite slightly but I go for the risotto
anyway. For once Marion doesn't tell me what I should have.

'It's so simple,' she says when the waiter has gone. 'You just
go to a Registry Office and then send all your paperwork - marriage certificate,
passports, birth certificate - to the Home Office naturalization department in Croydon
and then they send back her passport a few weeks later lifting her residency restrictions.'

'You've worked this all out then.'

'Of course.'

'That's what you were doing at the solicitor's this morning.'

'It was one of the things we discussed.' There is another heavy
silence between us then Marion says, 'Look, I'll give you five thousand pounds.'
It catches me off guard slightly. Five thousand quid would be very nice.

I line up my cutlery and then slowly polish my bread knife with
my napkin. I could divorce Anna Maria as soon as possible afterwards. No one need
know anything about it. Apart from the police. I was reading the other day about
how all the official computers in the country are secretly being connected to each
other. I'd be paying for a shirt with a credit card one day when the store detective
would arrest me for fraudulent marriage.

Even if I did get away with it legally, how would I tell my wife-to-be
in five years time or whatever that we can't get married in that idyllic little
family church because I'm actually divorced. ‘Who from?’ she'd gasp, putting down
the wedding list. ‘Oh, nobody, don't worry, she didn't mean anything to me, darling
- I just did it for the money.’ ‘Oh, that's all right then, what about pink for
the bridesmaids?’

No, I can't do this.

The waiter brings our first courses and we claim them in silence.
Then I say, 'Marion, I just can't.'

'OK,' she says quietly.

'Oh, for Christ's sake. Can't you find someone else? What about
Mark? He'd do it.'

 
'Fraid not,' says Marion.

'I'm sure he would.'

'He's already married,' she says irritably, stabbing her gamberoni
in the eye and pulling its tail off.

'Already married?'

'Yeah, to Arabella della Schierra's hairdresser.'

'Really?'

'Yeah - no! Wait a minute, that was last time. They divorced
around Christmas. Now I think it's Victoria's manicurist. Sweet girl. From the Ukraine
or someplace. Mark's made a lot of money out of that,' she adds temptingly. He's
also made a lot of money out of shagging old women in front of their husband; and
getting sucked off by old men in the Hyde Park Hotel. I'm still not enthusiastic.
Marion is talking again. 'I think Mark normally charges £5,000, that's why I suggested
it, but since it's you and I'd like to do you a favour in return what if I double
that? Make it £10,000? I'll pay it into your bank account this afternoon.' I swallow
hard. Ten thousand pounds. That's six months' salary at a stroke, tax free. I poke
at my risotto for a moment. Ten thousand. God, that would be useful, so useful.