Confessions of a Sugar Mummy by Emma Tennant

throws herself on the sofa or at the feet of her teenage husband, Gloria who has divorced four times and thrown a party to celebrate each time), here is How to Avoid Being Like Me, i.e. giving it all away before you’ve even got it and suffering Regret:
    Find out more about the Object of Your Affections before you proceed. Any murderers, crooks etc. in the family? Any neuroses, well-known to others but not to you, i.e. anal retentiveness (taking your gifts andtidying them away so they can never be seen again, OR changing locks on the door of the apartment you thought you were going to share with him), or binge-spending, using the Sugar Mummy’s credit card for pretended dinner
à deux
ingredients (oysters, pheasant etc.—how can you refuse?) and in fact making a beeline for Turnbull & Asser in Jermyn Street and snapping up a dozen fabulously expensive shirts.
    Bigamy—or polygamy—a picture rises in the mind of a line of Sugar Mummies, all thinking they are this one’s one and only S M, and all wanting a refund on their investment.
    Relationship with his real mother. This is crucial. Does he hate her—as so many sons seem to do (at least those of a certain age reared on D H Lawrence and the fearsome influence of F R Leavis). If his mother is alive, does he refuse to talk about her or go and visit her? Do you find Bates Motel flashes occurring frequently when you bring up the subject of maternal relations and he maintains a twitching silence? If so, as soon as you areestablished as his next Mummy—well, need I say more?
    These are just some of the risks associated with jumping into the role too soon. (On the other hand, if you wait for a relationship to mature before committing any cash or valuables to a shared scheme with the Loved One, he will have aged and you will have lost your love for him.)
    All this takes me back to the coffee I allowed myself with my friend Henrietta before setting off to discover the hidden bargains of W9. Alain will pick me up at the Notting Hill Coupole at 12 and we won’t have too long, so I reckon, before his need for a drink steers us away from whichever ‘cheerful’ (cheap) or ‘well-appointed’ (has a bathroom) flat we are going to inspect. I need time—God do I need time, more than sex by now, so I realise—to work out just what I
am
prepared to spend and how much, if anything, Alain actually wants from me. I confess I have no problem with Henrietta seeing Alain when he draws up in the red car. At our age, her glance at me will say everything. (Perhaps it will turn to a look of admiration: the Manolos have magically slimmed my legs and the new Diane Furstenbergwraparound has taken about a mile off my hips!)
    But things don’t work out quite like that. Henrietta is sitting outside La Coupole, puffing a verboten (indoors) cigarette into the Ladbroke Grove traffic fumes. Maybe she’s decided that indignitas, hacking to death with a foul cough, is the best way to go, or perhaps her business is doing so badly she can’t afford the trip to Switzerland, the loving medical care and the costly final cocktail? Who knows? But I do feel sorry for her—I mean, she looks so
old.
    â€˜He’s trying to find somewhere to park’, Henrietta says, blowing a blanket of smoke into my face. ‘I had to give him three pound coins.’
    â€˜Who?’ I’m irritated already that a woman I worked with, doing up those horrible little houses in North End Road, and then graduating, thanks to my superior taste, to South Ken and almost up to Holland Park, hasn’t noticed my transformation. It must have been maddening to the Devil, I can’t help reflecting, when one of his supplicants sold their soul in return for eternal youth and no one commented on how great they now looked.
    â€˜Why, Alain of course’, Henrietta says while I gaze frostily at her and order a café-au-lait (it is French here; at least the