Famous (4 page)

‘Gosh yes!’ agreed everyone else. ‘How people coped with all that washing I’ll never know.’

‘I use cloth nappies,’ admitted Jenny mother-of-two.

‘What, all the time?’

‘Well…during the day.’

‘God, I don’t know how you do it!’ chorused the others.

‘Bit of a problem lately though, because Tom’s poo’s all runny. It’s really rather yellow too.’

‘Have you taken him to the doctor?’ asked Rosie, mother-of-three.

‘Yes. Thinks he might have some sort of stomach bug. Doesn’t seem to be worrying him though.’

‘Could be dairy,’ suggested Rachel mother-of-one.

‘Sophie had that problem too,’ said Louise. ‘Turned out she was reacting to the cow’s milk I was giving her. Had to put her back on formula.’

‘Well our Jack’s going through a phase at the moment,’ said Natalie mother-of-two. ‘Just loves sticking his hand inside the nappy when he’s done!’

Oh dear God! Think happy thoughts, I willed myself. Champers, shopping, Thai takeaways.

‘Before you know it his hands are covered. He’s just so quick too.’

‘God, how does he manage it?’ asked Jodi, mother-of-one.

‘Buggered if I know!’

Ten minutes later and with the conversation still firmly on nappies and poo, I evacuated myself to the bathroom and took my phone with me. It was a SMS emergency.

Stuk n bb hell! Need evac! Ring asp. Prtnd seppy client.
x
I found Mands’ number and hit send.

I sat back down on the sofa. They were still talking about Jack’s uncanny ability to stick his hands inside his nappy.

Three minutes later my mobile rang and I excused myself from the room to a distance where I could safely be heard to say things like ‘Tell me you’re joking! and ‘When do they want it by?’ and ‘This afternoon? Bloody clients!’ and ‘Okay. I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.’

I collected my handbag and promptly made my excuses.

‘On a Sunday?’ said Laura. ‘God Sam, that’s not fair!’

‘No,’ I agreed, rolling my eyes for emphasis. ‘Story of my life!’

‘You’re going to work yourself to death if you’re not careful,’ she cautioned.

She was wrong. The only thing that was going to kill me at this point was sitting in her living room listening to ten women talk about nothing but nappies and poo.

I flew out the front door and went straight round to Mands’ apartment where she and Lizzie were waiting with a chilled bottle of wine.

The following morning I was still unable to get the picture of Tom’s runny poo out of my head. It appeared to be stuck there. I arrived at the office, unfolded the newspaper and set about digesting what useless information the country’s media had to offer. It was my routine to sit at my desk and read the newspaper upon arriving at the office every morning while simultaneously ingesting my first trim latte of the day, which I bought from the café on the corner. All I had to do was walk through the door and it was in my hands within nanoseconds. I didn’t even have to speak. The front page consisted of the usual parliamentary infighting, seabed claims, and more photos of genetically engineered cows, with the headline
Her Twin Sister is Her Mother
.

This story only made me happier than ever that I did not eat red meat.

I threw the sports pages directly into my rubbish bin. The only thing sport was good for, I’d decided long ago, was the ability to get a restaurant booking at short notice while the rest of the country stayed at home and watched a football match on television. I flicked straight to the business section, as I did every morning, only to find a picture of Lizzie’s ex-husband, Bryce the Bastard, staring back at me from page two.

I quickly scanned the accompanying story. Apparently Bryce was about to start up another e-media company. And make many more millions doing it no doubt, I thought. It had been a tough couple of years, said Bryce, especially with the price of divorce and all that he had subsequently endured.

But it was better to settle and keep the peace,
he said,
rather than drag names through the dirt. Even if one was undoubtedly being taken for a ride in the fun park.

What a complete and utter arsehole!

I had always hated Bryce and his analogies. He could never just say something without comparing it to something else that was completely and utterly irrelevant.

Oh dear, I thought. Lizzie was not going to be happy with this.

Lizzie was a hotshot young lawyer, working for one of the largest firms in the country. She was what my father called a real sweetie and a real beauty and she cut an imposing and alluring figure in her Keith Matheson suits, strutting off to the courtroom. Her parents were both artists. Her mother was a writer and her father a painter. Neither of them could quite fathom how their eldest child could have been born without an artistic bone in her body. In her younger years they had taken Lizzie to see numerous artistic channelers, in the hope they could coax some sort of child-like sketch or poem out of her. But she just wasn’t interested. All she wanted to do was watch Dynasty and LA Law and look at the lovely suits. Telling them she wanted to become a lawyer had been like telling them she wanted to become a crack dealer. She often said it was the sight of her parents still in their dressing gowns when she got home from school, busy painting and writing about the house, which turned her against the arts. It may have also been the fact she and her younger sister, Sara, often went without dinner because their parents hadn’t actually noticed they were home, or that it was indeed dinnertime. Subsequently Lizzie’s house had been a fantastic place for Mands and I to stay over on the weekends. We could safely walk out the front door and casually remark to her mother ‘just off to a club in town’ and she wouldn’t bat an eyelid, even though we were fourteen. She would just look up from her typewriter, cigarette in hand, and smile wistfully at us.

Five years ago Lizzie had made the mistake of marrying Bryce (or Bryce the Bastard as he is now affectionally known), fifteen years her senior and twice divorced, after representing him in allegations of fraud (she got him off and they promptly started shagging). She had also made the mistake of assuming that having an affair with a very married Bryce was somehow
different
and that he would never do the same thing to her, primarily due to the fact she was significantly younger. If anything, claimed Lizzie, she would be the one off strutting her stuff while he was busy eating his hot roast dinner through a straw.

Lizzie was a smart woman — as one of her two best friends I was the first to acknowledge this — but her sandpit logic in this matter had astounded me. She had forgotten this very simple rule: one could never hope to tame the penis of a rich middle-aged man. Especially when that penis was busy being dragged this way and that by every young hopeful striving to be the next Mrs Bryce Henrickson.

They had tried unsuccessfully for two years to have a baby, with the fact Bryce had previously fathered two children (both outside of his marriages) only fuelling Lizzie’s desire and unwillingness to accept that her eggs would remain unblemished. It was only Bryce’s affair with a South African model-cum-pole dancer that put a halt to Lizzie’s first session of IVF treatment before it had even begun. To rub red-wine vinegar into the wound, Bryce happened to be one of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, coupled with being one of the country’s biggest tight-arses. The
price
of divorce
Bryce referred to had been extraordinarily low, all things considered, and I still harboured deep remorse that Lizzie had not adhered to Mands’ and my advice and
hung his balls out to dry.
Unfortunately, she was too nice for that sort of caper and had no desire to soil her professional reputation. Unfortunately, that reputation was now taking a public beating at the hands of Bryce.

I finished reading the business section and prepped for my first meeting of the day, which was with the general manager of Yummy Mummy, the country’s largest cereal maker, and his PR advisor. I was in the awkward position of having to sound enthusiastic about cereal, when in fact I very rarely ate it, or breakfast in any shape or form. Much to my father’s disgust I was more of a coffee-on-the-run kind of girl. The fact we were meeting to discuss a media and advertising strategy to deal with the series of small metal chips found in Yummy Mummy’s cereal packets made me even less enthusiastic about cereal. As did the fact that a small child had recently undergone surgery to have one of the small metal chips removed from their oesophagus.

The sound of Debbie Harry’s
I Want That Man
interrupted us in the middle of the meeting, which seemed to cause a rather awkward silence. Especially when one was talking cereal with a fifty-year old, balding, hideous-tie-wearing man, and his virtual clone of a public-relations advisor.

It was my mobile.

Must remember to turn the bloody thing off, I thought to myself. And change that ring.

‘Sorry,’ I apologised, as I answered it.

‘Can you believe what the bastard said?’

It was Lizzie.

‘I’d like to shove his sterile testicles up his own arse!’

‘Aha.’

‘And then I’d make him eat them!’

‘Aha.’

‘He’s a lying piece of crap!’

‘Aha.’

‘Are you in a meeting?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope he gets a terminal disease. A sexually transmitted one!’

‘Aha.’

‘And that it makes his dick drop off.’

‘Aha.’

‘Ring me when you’ve finished.’

‘Okay. Bye.’

As soon as the meeting was over and we had successfully turned small metal chips into
an inevitable bi-product of the deregulation of health and safety standards on locally made machinery
and Yummy Mummy’s predicament into
thank God Yummy Mummy carries out its own safety-standard tests and does not rely on our inefficient industry tests and managed to avert this potential tragedy
, I rang Lizzie back. Of course, Yummy Mummy would be paying for the small girl’s surgery, hospital and rehabilitation costs, as well as providing her and her family with a year’s supply of cereal.

I prepared myself for another onslaught of obscenities.

‘Lizzie. Hi sweets.’

‘He’s a walking slice of syphilis.’

‘Yes, he is,’ I agreed. ‘And an utter arsehole too.’

‘Arsehole’s too nice. He’s not nice! He’s a dirty shit-eating arse-licking pig of a man.’

‘Feel better?’ I ventured.

‘No. I’d like to kill him. Very slowly. Hair by grey hair.’

‘What are you doing tonight?’ I asked, attempting to change the subject.

‘I’m in bloody Wellington. Bloody meetings.’

‘What about tomorrow night?’ I ventured.

‘Have to stay down here and go to dinner with clients,’ replied Lizzie.

‘On a Friday night?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘Can you cancel it? There’s a good party on which will make you feel better.’

‘No. I can’t. Bugger it.’

‘Well, Mands and I will pick you up from the airport on Saturday morning and we’ll go shopping. All day.’

Shopping always made Lizzie feel better. In fact, I had yet to meet a woman whom it didn’t make feel better.

‘Okay then,’ she sighed.

‘Take care, dolls. Get yourself sloshed tonight, and I’ll see you on Saturday.’

‘I’d love to shove a hot poker up his arse,’ she muttered.

‘I know.’

Poor Lizzie, thirty-three and one marriage down to a bastard like Bryce. At least the vows could have been wasted with someone who was actually good in bed. Life could be genuinely unfair at times.

I decided to pay my parents a quick visit on the way home from work. My mother came out to say a brief hello and then retreated back into her office to finish the newsletter. The newsletter was a weekly piece of male-bashing propaganda which my mother felt it was her duty to write and send out, being president and all.

‘Why don’t you stay for dinner, Sam?’ she said. ‘Your father’s cooking.’

‘Am I?’ said Dad, with a stricken look that suggested he had foolishly thought he was allowed the night off. No such luck.