Confessions of a Sugar Mummy by Emma Tennant Read Free Book Online Page B

do?
    Just as you might imagine. Before Molly had a chance to come round and hear the extraordinary events of the day, I:
    Selected the Emma Hope sandals with lace bands and wedges.
    Put on my gold hoop ear-rings (drew blood as I had forgotten that my left ear hadn’t taken kindly to being pierced centuries ago and had closed up).
    Put on three dresses in succession and ended up with black Ghost trousers and long, beaded top (vintage, Portobello Market).
    Tied up hair (dirty, no time to wash) with Sonia Rykiel scarf bought at Agnes B.
    Loaded on enough rings to knock out a mugger: antique silver, Peruvian crystal, sham amethyst, memorial Victorian ring with name ‘Alice Turner’ inscribed in gold on black background (don’t know who she was, bought in Chelsea Antiques Market, butAlice you’re going to see something tonight if you’re still hanging around somewhere), eyeliner, Touche Eclat, eye shadow in turquoise and dusty pink wrinkle remover.
    You might say that all granny left out was her glass eye. But I don’t care. I’m going to find Alain in the house in Notting Hill.

Art for Desperate Housewives

14
    Dawson Place is one of those neighbourhoods—it’s too posh to call it a street—with long, low houses painted a glistening white,
Desperate Housewives
gardens and the occasional strolling security guard, Alsatian and all, where you feel you’re going to meet David Lynch
(Twin Peaks)
when the female residents of this Hollywood on Notting Hill district emerge with pets and Upper Gold credit cards to go shopping—or at the very least you’ll bump into Pedro Almodóvar, ready to film your nervous breakdown.
    What the hell am I doing here? Up in W9 I could be Anne Bancroft—music-loving and with a hint of an intellectual inner life—and Alain, hard to getaway with but just possible I suppose, could be the eager young graduate Dustin Hoffman.
    Here, you’ve had to have seriously made it. Stopping outside the most likely house (well, the tile Alain had brought to my flat in his battered Vuitton bag had an address scrawled on the back, so it must be here), it’s possible to witness the rewards for an artist in the Saatchi bracket even if it means peering through the Banham gates on the windows to glimpse the Art inside.
    Wow! The sheer size of the plaster sculpted baby on view in the window of the raised ground floor! Truculent expression, huge head, mouth like a cavern caught in mid-bellow—who would want that? Don’t call me a philistine, I love Rothko and I put my name down for an Ellsworth Kelly at the Serpentine Gallery, but the edition of ‘Red Curve’ ran out before my name was reached. It would have looked good in a flat I was doing in Fulham (but maybe that’s a bit of a put-down, Kelly is now too accessible).
    No, I love Art … but the equally huge, purposely smudged acrylic of the Queen dressed up for a glitzy seaside trip, purple-frosted Dame Edna shades and all—I mean, what’s the point? Until you see a tiny Polaroid of Princess Di stuck on the side of thesunglasses and a tear painted on the powdered cheek of the queen—well, again, what’s the point? Then there are the fish tanks and what look like dead dogs (neighbourhood pets?) floating inside … Where’s the space for the people here to sit and enjoy themselves?
    While I’m standing on the pavement and feeling like a pickled shark in formaldehyde, some movement down in the basement of Claire’s cousin’s mansion becomes apparent.
    I lean over the railings and stare down. A man is walking around a small room which is the antithesis of the showy art gallery above. If it’s Alain, I say aloud, if it’s Alain I can suggest a drink somewhere (not here certainly) and put my new plan to him. Then we can go on somewhere for dinner—I’ll rent a car and we can drive out to the country, it’s midsummer after all.
    Such