Nip 'N' Tuck (9 page)

‘My offer still stands, Marrakech,’ Sven said, trailing after her. Honestly, the man was more adherent than a stay-fresh mini pad. ‘I’d be happy to give you the lay of the land.’

‘Let’s just hope that’s a figure of speech and not a sales pitch,’ I confided,
sotto voce
, to the chicken breasts. I gave one a tentative prod. It had the consistency of a Pamela Anderson implant but it was warming up vaguely, thank God.

‘You simply cannot let this opportunity pass you by, Marrakech,’ Victoria insisted. ‘Your beauty is a gift.’

‘Yeah? Well, I want a refund. I wish I were really plain so that people would treat me, you know,
normally
.’

Even though she’d had her hair snipped to a monkish Still-Born-Again-Christian crop, Marrakech was as stunning as ever.

‘Besides, after I leave St Paul’s I’m thinking about going to Oxford to do a Ph.D. on human-rights abuses in the American Correctional Services – it really sucks over there. What do you reckon, Aunty Liz? Should I be a model instead?’

Hugo glanced at me sharply. I dodged the oil spitting up from the pan. ‘Well, sure …’ I said, chug-a-lugging his vintage
vino
.

My husband breathed a sigh of relief.

‘… if you want a career where you starve yourself to death, wear stupid shoes and get bossed around by men with huge beer bellies and miniscule brains,’ I concluded.

My husband’s tufty eyebrows beetled in annoyance.

‘I agree with Aunt Lizzie. Modelling’s bollocks. It’s, like, the worst job in the world.’

‘Not the worst,’ I put in. The guests all looked at me expectantly, hoping I might now redeem myself. ‘Manually masturbating caged animals for artificial insemination would, technically, be a tad more repugnant.’

My niece chortled – a reaction not remotely shared by the others, especially my husband, who was mouthing, ‘
Power Couple
,’ and ‘
Domestic Goddess
,’ at me, with narrow-eyed annoyance.

‘Beauty is a curse,’ Marrakech said emphatically.

Britney gasped. ‘But, hon, a woman without beauty is like …’ she groped for an analogy ‘… is like … well, it’s like
Macbeth
without the balcony scene!’

The other guests assumed tactful expressionless faces but Marrakech actually laughed out loud.

A suffocating silence filled the room. To break the tension, Hugo began shepherding guests into the dining room. I was so rattled I’d already downed a bottle of wine on my own, which meant that I was feeling too happy to remember to put the rice on. Oh, well, I groggily rationalized, nobody really likes rice anyway.

As I circumnavigated the round table at a trot, depositing glasses, placemats and butter dishes, Sven tried to introduce the aftershaved offering he’d brought in lieu of the customary bottle of wine. The solarium tan, the bottle-tinted hundred-pound hair-cut, the Versace suit and diamond ear stud, the flawless dentition bar one glistening gold tooth – the man had international money launderer written all over him. ‘This is Tony “Knuckles” Milano – a
potential investor
,’ he stressed. Investor in what? Landmine victims? I was distracted by Hugo’s desperate demand for the placement. Shit! The placement! I improvised, ensuring a mad Musical Chairs scramble for seats, which allowed Britney to insinuate herself into the seat between Sven and Hugo, and Victoria to slide in next to Sven. Before I could hyperventilate over these two particular disasters, I realized I’d forgotten to put the dishwasher on earlier, meaning we’d have to resort to the second-best porcelain – a motley crockery collection comprising little chipped plates with bunnies running around the edge, complemented by a canteen of blunt butter-knives.

Back to the kitchen I trudged. Panicking, I heaped half-cooked food on to everyone’s plates, except Victoria’s of course: she declined to eat. (‘Go on,’ I urged her, placing spaghetti strands vertically on her plate, for a more slimming effect, ‘you can always regurgitate it later.’) I finally collapsed into my chair to hear Sven holding forth.

‘Yep, the fad for plastic surgery is sweeping through post-forty-year-olds the way a fart sweeps through a jam-packed elevator. All the experts now agree that beautiful people actually do have a better life than the “fuglies”.’ For Signor Milano’s amusement he translated. ‘Fuckin’ uglies.’

‘Ap
par
ently we beautiful people are more loved.’ Britney batted her long lashes in a perfect neutered puppy-dog impression. ‘We even earn more. Up to twelve purr cent. That’s what Hugo told me,’ she added serenely.

Victoria raised a told-you-so eyebrow at her daughter, who was shredding her paper napkin into confetti in her lap.

‘What do
you
earn, hon?’ Britney asked me sweetly. ‘Oh, shoot! That’s right! I heard you lost your job. Silly ol’ me. I forgot. Too old weren’t you? … An’ now you’re tryin’ to stop Marrakech from havin’ a job too.’ Everybody looked at me. I felt like a parachutist in a skirt who’d forgotten to wear knickers.

‘At least we know how she gets herself to vomit up her food,’ Victoria whispered to me, while I tried to retrieve my jaw off the parquet floor. ‘She just listens to herself
talk
.’

But then it was my sister’s turn to flinch as Sven rewarded his girlfriend with a peck on her luscious lips and Britney adhered to his mouth with a smack of sticky fuchsia lipstick. Victoria speared a bit of chicken from my plate and shoved it unceremoniously down her throat. My sister, eating solids? I gave her a look of astonishment. ‘I’m eating to compensate,’ she mumbled between chews.

‘What for?
Hunger?
’ What others saw as a cryptic superiority in my sister, I knew to be nothing more than a sad and desperate irresolution – coupled with starvation.

Hugo, smiling, bent towards my ear. I thought he was going to thank me for going to so much trouble. Instead he hissed, ‘Elisabeth, this chicken is still frozen in the middle! Go back into the kitchen and
do
something!’

A drunken lurch to the kitchen and a rummage through the freezer produced nothing but a packet of themed fish fingers in the shape of Disney characters. ‘What the hell?’ I muttered vengefully and, while waiting for the chicken oil to reheat in the frying pan, dumped the fish fingers into a Pyrex dish and nuked them to death in the microwave.
Chef will be serving the fish tonight in a lovely sauce we call haemorrhage of ketchup
.

‘What
is
it?’ Britney, the cookbook writer, asked moments later, peering dubiously into the bowl I placed before her.

Sven prodded one with a jewelled forefinger. ‘Braised bag-lady’s tampons?’ he hazarded.

‘The dietician said I should put some weight on,’ Britney smugged. ‘I try, I
really
do but …’ She shrugged in defeat, before presenting me, rather pityingly, with a copy of her damn cookbook.

My husband gave a bewildered shake of his noble head.

I met the collective critical gaze of my guests defiantly. ‘It’s a … Seafood Medley. A concoction of batter cunningly fused with marginally aquatic foodstuffs and configured into comic characters. Post-gourmet,’ I ad-libbed, ‘
Cuisine ironique
.’

‘Eatin’ to excess takes ten years off your life anyway,’ Britney pronounced superciliously, pushing away her plate.

‘Aye, but it’s the worst ten years, isn’t it?’ said Cal, tumbling through the dining room to fetch glasses of water for the kids. I pulled him into the chair next to me. He rocked back and pivoted on two chair legs, one cowboy-booted foot cocked across a denimed knee. ‘It’s the incontinent, droolin’, depressed years. I mean – who needs ’em?’ Cal gave a crooked smile, his fluorescent-toothpaste-coloured eyes crinkling with kindness.

I laughed. The candlelight gave an underlay of gold to his mussy red hair, which surely even Victoria must notice. ‘You are allowed to smile, Vick, you know. Go on. He’s funny.’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘It will only lead to lines.’

The potential Italian investor glanced at his Rolex.

‘Which brings me neatly to the point of tonight’s little soirée,’ Sven spieled urgently, desperate to get the conversation back on track. ‘All women want to live to a hundred, but not past the age of thirty-five. Baby-boomers are being nipped and tucked and sucked and lifted—’

‘And chopped off?’ Marrakech sliced her knife savagely through a lemon. ‘If I didn’t have these humungous tits, people would take me seriously.’

Sven was openly salivating … and it couldn’t have been over the themed fish fingers. ‘You see?’ he gloated. ‘Every woman wants to be different from how she is. Younger or prettier or smaller titted or
bigger
.’ He looked at me pointedly.

My eyes slitted venomously. Is there anything quite so annoying as having your physical shortcomings criticized by a man who should be imprisoned for persistent chest hair exposure? Hugo shot me a wary look. Yeah, yeah,
Trophy Wife
, I reminded myself, biting my tongue.

‘Do you know what the cosmetic-surgery industry raked in last year? In the States alone? Three hundred and fifty billion,’ Sven trumpeted. Tony ‘Knuckles’ Milano stopped looking at his Rolex, which cheered Sven up enormously. ‘They reckon money makes you miserable – but I reckon I could be miserable quite happily. What do you think, Hugo? Wouldn’t you like the
chance
to see whether money could make you happy or not?’

My husband, oblivious to Sven at that moment, seemed to be pretty damn happy already. His head was bent towards Britney in a pianissimo aside. Britney was stifling hysterical laughter. You would have thought it was Billy Connolly whispering in her ear-hole. She pulled Hugo’s hand towards hers as she rocked back with mirth, ensuring that my husband was buried up to his eyeballs in cleavage. I felt the heat of anguish burn into my face. As he hauled himself out of there, wearing a grateful smile, I was Joan-of-Arced in jealousy. If that actress didn’t get her hand off my husband’s thigh the only ‘cast’ she’d be in would be made from plaster after I pulverized her.

‘Jaysus. Is that
her
?’ Cal tossed his head in Britney’s direction. ‘How the hell could anyone get into such a tight pair of pants?’ he whispered to me.

‘A glass of champagne usually does the trick,’ I grumbled back.

‘But cosmetic surgery joints, we have them all over Italy,’ said ‘Knuckles’ Milano. ‘Once Interpol gets your mugshot, a new face is quickly advisable. So why fly to Harley Street?’

‘Because we’re a Longevity Clinic. With a whole anti-ageing ethos. Including cryogenics. Quite handy for gunshot victims,’ Sven jawed on.

‘Ugh. Isn’t that where they freeze your noggin?’ cringed Marrakech.

‘Oh, yes. I give very good head.’ He winked at my niece. ‘Neuro-suspension for fifty thousand bucks. A hundred and twenty thou for the whole bod. Plus, for the living, the ultimate in professional plastic surgery, with the services of renowned, world-famous cranio maxillo facial surgeon,’ Sven verbally drumrolled, ‘Dr Hugo Frazer!’ He spoke my husband’s name in the sort of reverential tones usually reserved for the miracle of birth or the Second Coming.

The pinch of salt I’d discreetly been adding to Cal’s meal became an albino mountain. ‘Hugo, don’t tell me you’ve been taking those mind-altering drugs again?’ I joshed.

My husband pushed away his untouched plate and busied himself in opening more bottles. This dinner was starting to resemble a Kennedy family reunion. Being on call, though, he was the only one not drinking.

‘You are joking, right? Hugo? You used to say that on the integrity scale cosmetic surgeons are ranked right down there with syphilitic ulcers and politicians.’

Britney uncapped a red lipstick shaped like a bullet and took aim at her Cupid’s bow. ‘Beautification of the body is among the oldest established practices of mankind,’ she parroted, pausing to run Jungle Red over her lips. She was rewarded with another kiss from her fiancé, prompting my sister into an even more frantic food-spearing frenzy.

‘Hugo, why don’t you just fall into an open sewer and drown slowly?’ I was beginning to understand that ‘drunk’ is the future of ‘drink’, but pushed on regardless. ‘It would be a more dignified end to your career than working with
Sven
.’

Sven canted a brow. ‘Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial,’ he quipped, smiling wickedly at Marrakech.

On Sven’s far side, Britney was convulsing with laughter at Hugo’s latest whispered witticism. Suddenly my Serious Spouse had turned into Billy Connolly, Robin Williams and Steve Martin all rolled into one hilarious bundle.

‘So, how much investment would you need from offshore?’ persisted Mafia Man, swigging back another full glass of Montrachet. Under the table, Sven gave Hugo a stealthy but self-satisfied thumbs-up signal.

My husband – going into business with Sven? As a supportive, loving, caring wife I just had to say something – something like YOU’RE FUCKING INSANE. But determined to be a Leading London Hostess with the Mostest, I dipped my remark in disinfectant and said, instead, ‘But don’t you think all this worry about wrinkles is slightly ridiculous?’ A sea of blank faces turned towards me. Except Hugo, who was strafing me one of those I-Married-a-Moron expressions. ‘I mean, wrinkles are a result of laughter …’

Sven scrutinized my face before concluding. ‘My dear, nothing’s
that
funny.’

As the rest of the guests chortled, Cal leant into me and asked in a steely voice, ‘Do you want me to punch his lights out?’

‘Ya know, hon,’ Britney simpered, ‘a face-lift would simply transform you!’

‘Yeah. From a woman in her late thirties to an extra in
Planet of the Apes
. How could you let Sven talk you into something like this without first talking it over with me?’ I beseeched my spouse.

‘Actually, it was Britney’s brainwave that we go into business with your hubby,’ Sven clarified.

Britney? Wasn’t Sven pulling her strings? I’d presumed that the actress was so ventriloquial, her fiancé might just as well have put his hand up her ass and started working her mouth. ‘It was Britney’s idea?’ I gasped, reappraising her.