Mad Cows (15 page)

The only thing worse than taking the consequences is bumping into one of them. The glass doors of BBC reception hissed open on pneumatic slides. Blinking like a newborn field mouse, Maddy stumbled out into the daylight. She immediately collided with ten or so journalists, hunched into brown leather jackets, a pack of wildebeests, stampeding across the car park towards Alexander Drake. Her heart stopped with a lurch. As did her body. Her legs started to shake. She
seemed
to be simulating some Elle Macpherson exercise video minus the music.

Alex looked relaxed, dark eyes dancing, hands placed nonchalantly on low-slung hips. A reporter from the
Express
enquired why the voting public should trust the sort of bloke who makes a living out of watching mosquitoes hatch their larvae?

As he paid his taxi driver, Alex gave the rich, throaty laugh she remembered so well. His teeth, when he smiled, were fluorescent.

A
Daily Mail
journo enquired about his character. A bit of a problem, thought Maddy, in that he didn't seem to have a great deal of it. Who would have thought the light of her life would turn out to be such a bad match?

Alex did the slow smile. He was boyishly tousling his hair when he spotted her. He gave her the sort of look usually reserved for a strangely vacant person you see sauntering into a fast-food restaurant wearing a ‘Life Sucks' T-shirt and holding a chainsaw. Maddy contemplated her options. It was a very short contemplation. A complimentary chocolate mashed into his photogenic face was the best she could manage under the circumstances – Death by Toblerone. Flashlights sputtered like popcorn.

By the time ‘Group 4' realized she was gone, Maddy was in the back of the taxi Alex had just vacated, going through Esther's handbag on her way to White City tube station. From there, she'd go to Hatton Garden to
pawn
Petronella's bracelets.

Using the heads and shoulders of cameramen and warm-up comedians, ‘Group 4' scrambled up a ladder for better visibility, giving national television a perfect view of her support knee-highs. The producer's voice rose to a castrato pitch of panic. ‘Where thuhfuck is she?' All across the television studio came the clamorous cry of ‘Madeline Wolfe!' – elephant calling to elephant through the jungle.

Maddy was too relieved to be frightened. Oh, how she looked forward to getting up at the crack of noon; food which wouldn't introduce new bacteria into her intestinal tract; the feel of a man's body pressed into hers; the smell of her baby – to kiss his sooty eyelashes and tangled, silky hair. She left the dazzle of outdoors and was swallowed up in the warm and noisy gullet of the Tube. This was one old rat who was getting off the bloody exercise wheel.

Part Two: Teething Troubles

‘[A boy] models himself on his father, he copies what his father does, he picks up habits from his father . . . The modern father is a full-time parent, not a part-time stranger, and everyone in the family benefits from this.'

Dr Miriam Stoppard's
New Baby Care Book

14

Baby, I Want You

EVERY WOMAN WANTS
to be wanted – but not by the entire Metropolitan Police Force.

The newspaper report was succinct. ‘Prime Time' said the headline. ‘A Holloway remand prisoner absconded from BBC television studios in London last night, after an unprovoked assault on well-known naturalist, Alexander Drake. She was taking part in a programme on crime.'

It was not a big story. Maddy was not, after all, exactly Mata frigging Hari. It wasn't as if she had the cops on Chalk Outline Duty or anything. But still, she had to be careful. She thought about getting out of town; a brief holiday at Frostbite Loch or Sewerage Bay; a little lying-low time at one of England's walk-down-this-street-at-night-and-you'll-be-raped seaside
resorts
. . . but that was not the way to find Jack and Gillian.

Where did people go when they went missing? Maddy had no bloody idea. Perhaps there was one giant condo where Lord Lucan, the crew of the
Marie Celeste
, the missing aircraft of the Bermuda Triangle and Bill Clinton's credibility, were all hiding out together?

During her first week on the run Maddy gave blood regularly. At least you got to lie down somewhere warm, drink hot tea and eat biccies. Five gallons later, Maddy felt it was time for a new plan – only she was too light-headed to make one. She did determine to steer clear of hotels and hostels. Her mother's maiden name, her age,
her cervical cap size
, all were available at the prod of a terminal. So she ended up sleeping rough at the Bullring – a windswept desolate patch of concrete beneath a busy traffic roundabout by Waterloo Station.

Maddy retreated to an empty refrigerator box in this shanty town of cardboard and blankets. It showered sporadically during the night. Rain dripped through her cardboard roof as if it were a Melitta coffee filter. Pavement cracks and corduroy ridges in the cardboard provided impromptu acupuncture. As multi-footed insects feasted on her flesh, Maddy tried to remind herself just who was the dominant species.

Regent's Park seemed a more attractive address, but she only lasted half a night. The trouble was that life
was
not like Winnie the Pooh. Real animals don't want to befriend you; they want to
eat
you, instantly.

But always, no matter where she was – soup kitchens, churches, the blood bank, St Martin's Day Centre, the Homeless Shelter above the Odeon in Leicester Square – she would check for escape routes, exits, back doors and side alleys. She tried to look enigmatic – not a look which came naturally; Madeline Wolfe was about as inscrutable as a telephone book. Every footstep had her turning, hands rising in surrender.

She had to find Jack. And fast. Her mourning-sickness was getting chronic. In cafés, she'd started reminding men she'd never seen before to wash their hands after going to the toilet. She needed help and she needed it now. Twelve thousand miles from home, there was only one person she could turn to.

Maddy couldn't think of a less appealing rendezvous. A David Koresh Memorial Barbecue held more allure. But what choice did she bloody well have?

In the witching hour of a moonless night, Maddy made her way to Maida Vale.

15

The Sperm Liqueur

MADDY LOUNGED ON
the edge of the bed and observed her ex-lover. He lay naked, half sheathed in a sheet, papers and documents strewn around him. Tortoise-shell specs made a slippery descent along his perfectly sculpted nostrils. His warm, salty smell was so familiar to her. Maddy felt a low spasm of lust. What was the jail sentence, she wondered, for assault-bonk of a sleeping ex? Resisting the urge to sink her teeth into his flesh, she placed her hand firmly over his mouth and shook him roughly.

Alex's bleary-eyed and vacant look accelerated into a panicked stare. His body jolted awake. ‘Who are you?' he gulped through her closed fingers.

‘You're kidding me? You haven't seen
Fatal Attraction
?' Alex shrank back. ‘It's me, you great drongo.'

‘Who?'

‘
Me
.'

Alex scrutinized her incredulously. His body may have relaxed, but his eyes went Tarmac-hard. He pulled the sheet up around him, resurrected his glasses and humphed up on to the pillows. ‘Congratulations, Madeline. You have just reached a personal best in psychotic behaviour.'

Maddy couldn't contain a splutter of inappropriate laughter.

‘And what the hell are you wearing?'

‘What?' Maddy had forgotten she was travelling under an assumed mane. She discarded the merino perm wig and shook free her now neck-length red hair. Alex coyly contorted into his jeans beneath the sheet, catapulted to his feet and, tugging on a T-shirt, strode to the door. ‘As I've already had a wife-ectomy, perhaps you'd be kind enough to exercise your man-hating vendetta elsewhere.'

‘You and Felicity . . . you're really divorcing?' As he'd told porky-pies about everything else in his life – this was a man who couldn't lie straight in bed – Maddy was disinclined to believe him. But following him into the kitchen, she noted the signs of batchelorhood – the Quentin Tarantino video on the table, the old Grateful Dead albums scattered on the carpet. It was the contents of the fridge which finally convinced her. It was empty, bar a couple of beers, a cracker-barrel cheese left unwrapped and cement-rendering at the edges
and
a few petrified lumps which could once have been salami.

‘If you've never seen a dozen divorce lawyers in a feeding frenzy, don't feel deprived,' Alex snapped, slamming the fridge door in her face. ‘Thank you for dooming me to a life of laundry collection from late-night dry cleaners.'

‘Pig's arse, Alex. You didn't leave your wife for me, but to spend more time being embraced by the media.'

‘Ah, the Chocolate Incident.' He poured himself a large whisky. Maddy waited to be offered a drink. When none was forthcoming, she confiscated the entire bottle and trailed him into the living room. The large bronzed scrotum (otherwise known as a Bafta statuette) lay on the carpet where she'd knocked it during her aerodynamic ascent through his window. ‘Yes, thank you for humiliating me in front of the national press,' he stated in a brittle voice. ‘I suppose that was just a precursor to the police bursting in and accusing me of harbouring you.'

‘Alex, my charge sheet should be on the best-seller list, for
fiction
.'

‘Of course! And absconding makes you look completely innocent. Jesus!' He glanced furtively out the window before closing it. ‘Did anyone see you come in?' He bolted the wooden shutters. ‘Your photo will be out on the goddamn lines! Tell me, do you always make friends this fucking easily?'

‘Tell me, do you always behave like such a fucking
deadshit
when a friend's in trouble? Not just a friend, but the
mother of your child
. . .'

‘Don't give me that mother of your child crap,' he snarled, creaky-voiced from sleep. ‘I begged you not to go ahead with that pregnancy.'

Maddy cradled the whisky bottle. ‘No wonder I hate all men.' The fight was draining out of her.

‘I failed my first two kids, if you recall,' he justified. ‘Parenthood. God, I don't have the qualifications; I just haven't a bloody clue how to make models of space stations using old shoe boxes, at short notice on a school night.'

Maddy kicked off her shoes, flumped on to the sofa and sighed resignedly. ‘Look, a lot of sewage has flowed underneath the bridge since then . . .'

‘Huh! I'd say
your
river's got too big for its bridges.' He paced in front of her. ‘Stealing wallets! Jesus Christ. Let me guess . . . you thought the
change
would do you good. I mean, what the hell did you have to go and . . .?'

‘The point is . . .' Maddy dismissed him with a wave of her hand. What was this? She asked herself. International Forgive, Forget and Turn the Other Cheek Day? No, it was just that she was running on empty. ‘I had a baby. It was fate . . .'

‘Ah, so
that's
what you want . . .' Alex said, with a world-weary groan. ‘The moving finger writes and having writ . . .
issues one
.' He folded his arms petulantly. ‘The Child Support Agency is a Suicide Act.'

‘What?'

‘All over the country men are gassing themselves in their cars or stringing themselves up – hounded for payments they can't make. What do you call four divorced fathers with overdue CSA payments? A mobile.'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous. I know you better than that, Alex. You're the type of bloke who thinks a paternity suit is the latest look in leisure wear from Armani.' A hint of a smile flared in his eyes. He quickly extinguished it. ‘It's not like you're unique, or anything,' she added. ‘Giving up any claim to your child is a trait directly traceable to the Y chromosome.'

‘Not according to Felicity. You should see my alimony bills. That bitch has screwed . . .'

‘I don't want your money. I don't even want you to hide me.'

‘Oh.' That stumped him. ‘Well, what do you want?' he asked in a quieter voice, sitting opposite her.

Maddy gulped from the whisky bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Find Gillian and Jack for me.'

‘Where are they?'

‘I don't know. Somewhere in Britain.'

‘Oh, that narrows the field . . . You called him Jack?'

‘He looks just like you.'

They locked eyes for a moment, before Alex got to his feet and stretched languorously. There it was again – the low voltage electric charge in her groin. ‘I'll
get
you some of Flick's old clothes if you like.'

Maddy watched him stand on a chair and reach into a cardboard box on the top shelf of the hall cupboard. His T-shirt rode up, offering a tantalizing glimpse of mohair median strip descending beneath his belt buckle. Maddy felt her crutch moistening in-subordinately. This was not going to plan. ‘You've lost weight.'

‘Is it any wonder? The “Lose Your Wife, Kids and The Love of Your Life Overnight Diet”, by Alexander Drake. You could have killed me, you know.' Alex dismounted and sat back down. He crossed his legs; the delicious bulge in his groin disappearing into the conniving denim. ‘It's true. Medical opinion now states that you can actually die of a broken heart. Something to do with secretions of stress hormone.' He balled the jeans and shirt he'd scavenged and over-armed them in her direction. ‘Nothing Verdi's Violetta or Shakespeare's Ophelia didn't know.'

With a great moan of relief, Maddy groped at her waistband and shucked the heavy skirt. It spilt around her ankles, a pool of tweed. She shook off the jacket with alacrity. Lassoing it over her head, she sent it flying with a whoop of freedom. She was so used to undressing in front of him that it wasn't until she'd also raised her blouse, lariat-style, that Maddy registered this behaviour was no longer appropriate. Alex was letting his eyes travel the length of her
prison
-issue-underweared body. She caught his gaze. He looked away.