Mad Cows (12 page)

‘Look, fluff-grazer, this is not going to work. As I told your mama, pets I can deal with. When you've had enough, you simply put them out the cat flap.' Gillian offered Jack his milk bottle, but he couldn't suck and breathe at the same time. He vomited then, all down his front and started to cry. She felt a twitch of anxiety. ‘I think, kiddo, it's baby-flap time.'

To avoid the accusing vulnerability of his small face, Gillian padded into the black-tiled bathroom. ‘The point is, you're sick. And I don't know how to look after you.' Jack howled more insistently. ‘You are! You've got a temperature. Your dummy is melting. See?' She held it aloft around the door frame. ‘It looks like some kind of Dali creation.'

Jack, still bawling, gave her one of his dubious ‘Cut the crap, face-ache' expressions. Gillian wondered, briefly, whether babies could smell fear.

‘I'm too old for this, I really am.' Trying to contain the rising panic in her chest, she returned to the bathroom mirror to plump up her hair and stopped short at the sight of her reflection. ‘It's hideous, this . . . dwindling. Consider, if you will, child, my sex life.' She uncased her concealer and trowelled a thick beige stroke across the bags beneath both eyes. ‘The woman in dominant position, astride, is naturally my preference. But I realized recently it makes my face fall forward. Ten chins. Now, suddenly, I find myself
bleating
– rather pathetically I might add, “No. No. I like the
miss
ionary. Missionary is
fine
.” And yet lying on my back, my tits fall to the side, despite the silicone.'

Dropping her fluffy, monogrammed hotel robe on to the milky tiles, she dusted blusher between her breasts, before hoiking them indelicately into a cantilevered bra. ‘My whole life I've insisted on leaving the lights on for added eroticism. But that, dear Jack, was before cellulite.' She eased herself into a pair of thickly deniered tights to hide her spider veins. ‘I saw it! Crinkling. In the ceiling mirror. Now it's – “No, no. I like the lights off. Lights off is good.” Yes, if you're Stevie-fucking-Wonder.' She spooned sugar into her cappuccino and watched the foam sag symbolically.

The baby, lethargic once more, looked at Gillian in a grave, official way. It put her instantly on the defensive. ‘It was only supposed to be for a few days. That was almost three weeks ago! I've done everything I humanly could.' She slipped on her designer jacket and gazed despondently at the epaulette of vomit on her left shoulder. ‘Period cramps I can cope with. But
style
cramping? Well, there's just no pills for that one, sweetie.'

The chandeliered Savoy foyer was thick with earnest Japanese tourists famished for some olde worlde cardboard cut-out culture. The cashier's mouth dropped open when Gillian, claiming she'd lost
her
credit cards, offered to leave her child as collateral.

‘Your small son?' he asked astonished.

‘Yes. As a deposit. While I pop to the bank. I'd leave my wedding ring' – Gillian pretended to tug at her jewellery – ‘but it's welded, you see. Unlike my husband.' She flashed one of her man-hunting smiles, the sort she usually reserved for sexual safari. ‘It
is
a rather large bill. And as we know' – she applied her vocal Vaseline with arch vivacity – ‘size does count. I wouldn't want you to think I was fiscally challenged and contemplating absconding.' She became aware that she was absently stroking Jack's foot, and stopped immediately.

‘Now, remember,' she lectured the cashier, suddenly stern, ‘there are different types of cry, the—' Gillian cut short her regurgitated lecture and set her lips resolutely. ‘Have the porter collect my bags.' Jack looked up at Gillian with such trust – just as she handed him over to a complete stranger.

The cashier, claret-red with bewildered blushes and polite to the point of insignificance, was too flustered to reply before Gillian had strutted through the revolving doors, past the grey top-hatted doormen and out on to the Strand. She did not look back. The mystified menial placed the carry cot beside the cash register and called Housekeeping. Unbeknownst to him, nestled inside was a note addressed, ‘Return to Sender: Ms Madeline Wolfe, c/o Holloway Prison.'

* * *

The sense of relief was intoxicating. Gliding sinuously through the pedestrian flow on this smoggy May morning, Gillian mulled over a plethora of possible indulgences. Back to the Concorde lounge to pick up a rich ride to New York? Some brass-rubbing? (Gillian's term for rubbing shoulder-pads with wealthy art dealers at Sotheby's.) Or was it only a leisurely stroll to the real-estate offices of Belgravia. Then the plot would thicken . . . preferably to a country estate in Dorset. Oh, how she liked a man with charming manors. These delicious thoughts occupied her all the way down the Strand, past the Reform Club and up St James's to Piccadilly. First, she thought, a glass of icy champagne at Fortnum & Mason's and a perusal of the morning papers.

By the time she got to the Lifestyle section of
The Times
, she was wondering why she wasn't enjoying herself. This was just the beginning of her Hedonistic Hit List, and yet the whole experience was strangely leeched of joy. The kid would be better off with his mother. It was Darwinism. Survival of the fittest . . . not that he was very fit at the moment. Which was why he needed proper care! Care she couldn't give. After all, it was only supposed to be for a week. It wasn't her fault. She'd tried, she really had. It's just that she wasn't the type. A lifetime of boarding schools and step-parents will have that effect on you . . . Gillian body-surfed on a wave of self-pity. The job offers she'd had to refuse! The dates she'd had to turn
down
! Lamented the winner of the Long Distance Cross Bearing Competition . . . Then why did her stomach feel as if it was being trampolined on by sumo wrestlers?'

The newspaper headlines dissolved. She kept seeing Jack in that Raj-Prince Mode of his, losing interest in some toy, then stretching out his hand and simply dropping it as though there were four million servants just waiting to pick up after him: Gillian could relate to that. The way he'd see something he wanted and get that steely, Margaret Thatcher ‘I've got to have it' look in his eye. A character trait of which to be proud. The way his face lit up when he saw her – as though she were the Sex Goddess of the Universe, even when she was hung over, hadn't shaved her pits or washed her hair. The haystack smell of
his
hair.

Before she knew what she was doing, her Charles Jourdan high heels were in her hand and she was running, sprinting back through Trafalgar Square. A blind, panic-stricken terror tore at her entrails all the way. She barrelled through the revolving doors of the Savoy, heaving for air. She blinked like a neon sign. For Christ's sake. Where was he? And then she saw him, being passed around the clucking staff. They were making the same coo-ing sound as the puréed pigeons which her high-speed dash had left plastered all around Nelson's column. Seeing Jack stretching his tiny arms towards a chambermaid left her gutted.

‘What have you done to him?' she jack-hammered,
in
disc-jockey delivery. ‘Can't you see he's sick?' She pushed aside the armada of uniformed flunkies. ‘Would someone please call a doctor?' Whispered asides, like rustling insects, surrounded her. ‘It's the air-conditioning in that poky little room. If he's caught pneumonia, I'll sue!'

The threat of litigation had staff backing off faster than Bob Geldof from a bath tub. ‘Would madam like to see something in our suite range?' entreated a flummoxed desk clerk.

Something in the range of – Gillian checked her purse – twenty-two pounds fifty would be more appropriate. ‘What I'd like to see, you moron, is a paediatrician.'

Pretending to retreat to change Jack in the restroom, she exited instead down the side corridor to the banqueting rooms on the river and out on to the Embankment. She thought moving target. She thought rifle sights. She thought hunted quarry. She thought – you soppy donut.

‘Some advice for Life,' Gillian said staunchly, as she offered Jack a spoonful of pâté in the luxurious drawing room of a penthouse apartment on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. ‘In a restaurant, never order anything described as a “medley” or an “extravagance of”.'

Jack, dosed up on Calpol and smothered in Vicks Vapour Rub, replied happily in his native Lithuanian.

The private doctor her wealthy friend had ‘on call'
had
taken Jack off milk and put him on to water and weak juice. Gillian had amended this prison diet to include smoked salmon, liver pâté and zabaglione. (The Harley Street quack had advised against solids at this young age, but what would
he
know? Jack had a
palate
, didn't he?)

‘Never put your face in the sun or have anything to do with a man with a pierced nipple or a gold chain in his chest. Don't believe in love. And, if seriously considering suicide, make sure you look your best. Let us remember, Jack, dear, how we had to consider our options, shall we? They were: one – a spending spree on tranquillizers in the local pharmacies; two – finding a convenient lonely railway bridge I can easily scale at the sound of an oncoming train, or three – parting men from their money with the art of . . . genital persuasion.'

Jack surveyed her with sombre censoriousness.

‘Do you mind? I do
not
need a prudish, sanctimonious stare from a person who sits in his own faeces all day, all right? Now, as I didn't have enough money for a root tint and couldn't trust the London constabulary to dress me in something flattering for the casket, we decided to take up a long-standing offer from an old school chum of mine. So be
nice
.'

Annabelle Crump entered on cue, bearing a silver tray cluttered with Royal Doulton porcelain and
petits fours
. Her mutton-dressed-as-lamb attire was accentuated with a scarf, the knotted ends of which
met
atop her forehead like two floral propellers. The only thing she was taking off, however, was a BBC broadcaster's voice.

‘I say, you're not doing this to exorcise your personal problems with Mummy and Daddy, are you, Gilly?' The exaggerated roundness of her vowels echoed the rotundity of her girdled form. ‘Can't bear those gels who get addicted to the degradation.'

Gillian wondered if this was the time to remind Annabelle about the end of school ‘Come As The Person You Most Detest Party' when nine people had come as
her
. ‘What's spurred my career change,
Bel
,' Gillian recalled how she hated having her name amputated – ‘is a desire never again to frequent the sort of restaurant where the carpet sticks to the soles of my shoes.'

Annabelle's propellers quivered with catty curiosity. ‘You're broke?' Her pudgy fingers squeezed around the teapot handle.

‘Let's just say that the attention I give to my debt is unremitting.'

‘The Lloyd's crash?' Gillian's silence confirmed her guess. Annabelle guffawed with such relish that she spilt the tea. ‘And now you've come to me . . . You were such a prig at school, you know. That relentless, niggardly mockery of yours used to drive me insane.'

‘Well, you'll be pleased to know that beneath my apostolic demeanour . . .'

‘You're a slut, like the rest of us.'

Gillian handed Jack a plastic non-chewable book. He looked like somebody else's husband, disappearing discreetly behind his copy of
The Economist
. ‘Does Mark Thatcher say he's an arms trader? No. He says he's in High-Tech Hardware. Does Nick Leeson say he's a thief? No, he says he's in banking. And I am having a brief dabble in philanthropy.
Amorous
philanthropy.' Gillian's teacup gave an irritable rattle as it returned to the saucer. ‘Haven't you got anything more robust than tea?'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know . . .
Heroin
, perhaps?'

Annabelle's man-handled thighs swished together as she minced to the drinks cabinet. Gillian remembered how she and her school friends had applied thigh-reducing cream to one of Annabelle's legs while she slept. Despite the fact that such a cream would have to contain a flesh-eating virus to have any effect, Annabelle had believed their endless taunts that she'd forever more have one thigh thinner than the other.

The posh ‘finishing school' they'd attended had lived up to its name; it had finished them off for life. Their tutelage had primarily consisted of how best to avoid paying tax on inherited wealth – a skill which had made them about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Trained to ensnare ‘saccharine daddies' (i.e. sugar daddies, without the sex) Gillian had been prepared
emotionally
for prostitution. At least this was what she told herself as Madam Annabelle set down the glass of
whisky
within Gillian's reach and opened her client book, gold embossed with the words ‘Elite Escorts'.

‘What about starting with a French chap? Businessman. Regular.'

Gillian shook her head. ‘Wellington was the last Brit to have a satisfactory encounter with the French.'

‘Saudi Arabian oil sheik?'

‘What about language?'

‘They all speak sterling, Gillian.'

‘Who else?'

‘We got a call from an Australian computer company. A conference. They've ordered five girls. Mean but clean, I'd say.'

‘We're not doing anything illegal, are we, Annabelle? Jail definitely does not appeal.' Gillian panicked, thinking of Maddy. ‘I do
not
wish to spend time in the company of women who care nothing for Dolce and Gabbanna.'

‘You're not breaking the law,
I
am,' snapped the Madam, all of a sudden professional. ‘Which is why I take forty per cent of the reasonably large fees I can probably still obtain for you despite your age.
You
only have to worry about wonderbra-ing those sagging tits of yours into submission.'