Mad Cows
Authors: Kathy Lette
About the Book
The brilliant sequel to
Foetal Attraction
.
Every woman wants to be wanted. Just not by the Metropolitan policeâ¦
Washed up in London and trying her best to raise her new-born son alone, Madeleine Wolfe is looking forward to taking her mind off things with some retail therapy â even if her budget stretches to prunes rather than Prada. But her day out takes an unexpected turn for the worse when she is mistakenly arrested in Harrods for shopliftingâ¦
Detained with baby Jack in Holloway Prison's Mother and Baby Unit, there's only one man Maddy can turn to for help clearing her name: the father of her baby and ex-lover Alex.
Things have been bumpy between Maddy and Alex to say the least â there's the wife and children he omitted to mention for starters. He's also in the middle of launching his political career and needs to protect his wholesome image. But he won't let Maddy down when she needs him most⦠will he?
Contents
6. There's a Baby In My Bath Water!
8. Taking The Bitter With The Suite
9. Anything You Say Will Be Distorted Beyond Belief And Used Against You
12. Relying On The Kindness Of Passing Serial Killers
13. Shoot-out At The Single Mother Corral
19. The Blue Eyeshadow Brigade
20. Ging Gang Gooly Gooly Gooly Gooly Wash Wash
28. Stop The World! I Want To Get Back On!
32. If You Can't Stand The Heat; Order Take Away
33. A Few Nappies Short Of The Full Load
MAD COWS
Kathy Lette
To Georgie â with love, Calpol and disposable nappies
Redwood Says Single Mums Should Have Babies Adopted
Tory MP John Redwood sparked fury last night by telling single mums: âIf you can't afford to feed your kids â give them up for adoption.' The Conservative leadership challenger said, âMaybe the girl should consider letting a couple adopt her child to provide the home the baby needs.'
News of the World
, 13 August 1995
Part One: After Pains
âYour new baby can go everywhere with you so long as you are composed and well-prepared. If you are well-organized and self-assured, outings with your baby can be a great joy, and the sooner that you start after bringing the baby home the better.'
Dr Miriam Stoppard's
New Baby Care Book
1
Giving Suck
âMOTHER NATURE'S A
mingy, stingy, two-faced bitch
,' muttered Madeline, as she re-adjusted her jumbo-sized sanitary towel, hoicked up the baby papoose and hobbled painfully into Harrods in search of prunes to ease her post-natal constipation. â
We're talking Lady Macbeth with PMT and a Kalashnikov
.'
In the marbled foyer of this castellated and cupolaed folly, as magnetic to London tourists as Mecca is to Muslims, Maddy caught sight of herself in the mirror. An alien from the Planet Yuk stared back at her. Her misshapen body oozed from a floral jumpsuit which she didn't remember buying.
âDon't worry, dear,' the midwives had promised, âafter baba's born, your body will just
snap
back!'
Yeah,
right
â in time for the Ms Osteoporosis Spinal Curvature Contest.
It was one month since the birth and her tummy still dangled downwards â a fleshy colostomy bag. And
hips
. She'd never had hips before. Two flabby sidecars rode pillion with her everywhere. What she needed were some control-top pantyhose; but for her
whole body
. Her distended breasts were so sore that it hurt to walk against the wind. âWalk!' Now
there
was an optimistic word. âList' was more appropriate. The nurses on Maddy's ward had instructed all the mums to empty only one breast per feed. The result? A lopsided tilt and alternate bra strap indentations only surgery could bloody well remove.
Madeline took a left through Cosmetics and continued her angled shuffle toward the food hall like a saddle-sore John Wayne in a B-grade movie. As if vaginal haemophilia wasn't enough, the âwings' on her Kotex had slipped their cotton moorage and adhered to her pubic hairs. With every step she was giving herself a full bikini wax. Oh well. At least it distracted her from the pain of the episiotomy scars. During the slicing of her perineum, the surgeon had uttered the worst word possible in the English language: âWhoops.' She now had a goddamn blood clot the size of Roseanne Barr in her underpants.
Wincing and mincing, Maddy inwardly cursed all those beatific Madonna and child paintings. In not one of them is Mary crying in agony from cramps, cracked
nipples
, mastitis, constipation, haemorrhoids â or âbottom grapes' as her friend Gillian so quaintly called them â hair loss, tooth decay, nor the sets of crippling contractions triggered by the baby's sucking. This was what Maddy had meant about Mother Nature being scungy, grungy and totally bloody two-faced. Yep. God was laughing when he made women.
âFree skin analysis?' A manicured hand holding a tantalizing vial of transparent unguent stamped âTester' fluttered in Maddy's face. âTake control of your life,' purred the svelte shop assistant, beaming euphorically.
Maddy rocked back on her heels. âHey. I've just had a baby. I can't even take control of my urine flow.'
The bionic beam dimmed. Good one, thought Maddy. Readjusting her baby's hot little body in the pouch, she allowed herself a moment of complacent congratulation. Harrods, her big treat, was Maddy's first excursion since Jack's birth. After all those months of cerebral hibernation and hormonal collywobbles, her brain was at last coming back into orbit. She squared her shoulders. She commandeered the perfume tester. She aimed the nozzle at her neck and sprayed liberally . . . realizing too late it was hand-bloody-cream. Daubing at the beard of jism-like blobs frothing lobe to lobe, Maddy resumed her sleep-deprived Boris Karloff lurch towards the food hall. Boy, she thought. Am I a girl who knows how to have fun, or
what
?
The Hampton Court maze has nothing on Harrods. Bewildered, Maddy trudged past the Eiffel Towers of fruit â jellied, candied, brandied â the obelisques of rare biscuits and braided bread. She cast a greedy glance across the exotic fare before selecting her humble packet of prunes.
A boa constrictor of shoppers coiled back from the cash register. She joined the tail end and was just hoisting up the waistband of her maternity knickers (now
there
was a good look â undies in which you could hold a revival meeting) when she became aware of a dropping sensation on her foot. She glanced suspiciously towards the taxidermied geese and garrotted grouse which dangled from the ceramic ceiling. It was a full minute before she realized that the culprit was
her own tit
. A wet ring saturated her shirt fabric through which a small geyser of milk spurted forth. People were glancing at her, disconcerted. She was like some escapee from
The Exorcist
. Any minute now, her head would do a 360-degree turn in a blur of lime slime.
âUm . . . Haven't quite got the supply and demand thing going yet,' she explained lamely to the pin-striped men who cleared their throats and crabbed away from her to other queues.
Fan-fucking-tastic, whinged Maddy to a morose flock of tuxedoed penguins advertising the freezer section, I'm incontinent at one frigging end and constipated at the freaking other. Her leaking breast
had
now started to throb and she dimly remembered the midwives' advice that frozen peas made a soothing ice pack. Excavating a packet of Birdseye, she hastily bandaged them into her bra cup. Lemme tell you, it takes a lot of effort to achieve this much
savoir
-bloody-
faire
, she philosophized. Now, to find another goddamned till . . .
It was early closing and shoppers were manoeuvring towards counters with the grace of Iraqi tank commandoes. A sudden wave of people whirlpooled in Maddy's direction and she heard a woman's ragged cry: âStop! Thief! My purse!'
In the crush, Maddy stumbled. The jolt woke Jack, who whimpered in fright, then let out a lacerating howl. Maddy's milk haemorrhaged. This clutch-started more womb contractions. Her other boob began to weep, in sympathy. The need to give suck created a Saharan thirst. Sweat soaked her anxious armpits and beaded her face. She seemed to be having her own
weather
, for Christ's sake. Panic gripped her guts as she strove to regain her balance and the mêlée propelled her in the wrong direction. Protecting Jack's tiny head with one hand and lashing out with the other, Maddy beat a path towards the exit. She heaved out into the foyer, lowered herself on to the mottled marble steps, gritted her teeth and offered up her tender nipple to Jack's electric-pencil-sharpener grip.
â
Modom!
' The inverted scrubbing brushes of the
doorman
's epaulettes quivered with indignation. âHarrods has strict dress standards.'
Maddy had become blasé about breastfeeding. She suddenly saw herself through his eyes: the milk stains, the grey maternity bra with the aesthetic appeal of an orthopaedic shoe. âThat's the worst thing about lactation,' she smiled, apologetically, âthe havoc it wreaks with your dress sense.'
The doorman looked her over with a flat, expressionless face. âStrict dress codes are about remaining
dressed
. The nearest lavatories are on the first floor.'
âThe nearest lavatories charge a pound a pee. Besides,' she said, âwould
you
eat in the toilets?'
The doorman ground his atavistic jaw. âStore policy don't allow knockers.'
Young and bitter with a pimple plotting an appearance on the bridge of his nose, this was a guy who'd dived in the shallow end of the gene pool. âStore policy allows you to sell the bloody nursing bras which makes public breastfeeding more discreet,
don't
it, zit-features?'
Any hint of professionalism evaporated. âYeah, well, tough titty, Aussie. Time to go walk-about, yer mad cow.' In case his request had been too subtle for her, Grizzle-guts clinched her elbow and winched her skywards.
Inserting a finger between the baby's velvety lips, Maddy broke his seal on her pap. Jack's barely formed
face
twisted with fury. He let rip with a scream which sounded like a plane coming into Gatwick. His bowels opened with the suddenness of a bomb-bay. An ominous yellow stain appeared on his babygro and seeped on to Maddy's hand.
âJust let me change him,' Maddy pleaded, âand then I'll be on my way, OK?'
The doorman obviously late for his Charm Class, shoved her towards the doors.
Maddy, clutching the baby with one hand, fumbled her blancmange of a mammary back into its elasticated hammock. Hey, just call me suave, Urban Sophisticate she thought. It's a
gift
. Wheeling around, she delivered her parting shot; a frisbeed, sodden nursing pad. It found incongruous sanctuary on the gold-braided ottoman atop the doorman's shoulder before flopping between his mastodon feet.
Out on the street, the low, leaden sky was soggy with rain. A Jag with a grinning platinum number-plate splattered them with grimy spray. Maddy, shielding Jack from toxic farts of taxi exhaust, darted through the drizzle into the claustrophobic warmth of the Tube station. She fed her ticket into the mouth of the chrome carousel, perfectly positioned to reopen a woman's episiotomy stitches. She was just contemplating the less painful option of pole-vaulting over the barrier, when her arm was wrenched up behind her back. She spun round, knee raised in Mugger Mode, but the artificially âcasual' clothes â the
too
-new trainers, the ironed jeans, the tan leather jacket that had never been in the weather . . . Uh oh. Maddy knew of only one species which dressed in sheep's clothing.