Nip 'N' Tuck (18 page)

‘Excuse me. But
I
’m not the one who’s burning my bridges before I even
get
to them. I don’t want to be judgemental, but destroying two years’ work? It’s obscene, it’s sick and it’s wrong!’

‘
Now go to your room young man and think about what you’ve done!
’ Cal said, imitating my voice, before tossing a lit match on to the pile of coffee-stained pages.

‘I’m pretty sure you could put the teeming fecundity of your imagination to better use than falling in lust with my sister. A living example of artificial intelligence – Brains by Mattel.’ Cal looked at me with surprise as the burning paper flared. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve known about your feelings for Victoria for ages.’

‘Have you now?’

‘Yes. And I hope you work out as a couple. Because you really deserve each other, do you know that? You’re just as full of bullshit as she is!’

‘Oh, really? It seems to me that
you’re
the one who’s living a lie.’

A huge Grand Canyon rift erupted in our friendship. We stood on either side peering into the dark chasm.

Just to put the cherry on the
Angst
Sundae, it was then I found the pair of scanty lace panties at the bottom of our bed.
Worn
scanty lace panties – crotchless.

Despite the mounting evidence (literally), Hugo promised that he wasn’t seeing the winner of the Pants Open. I kept calm. I didn’t pry. I didn’t spy … The fact that I had to call the ambulance on my mobile phone to free my facial protuberances from the glass of the car window where they’d frozen during a midnight surveillance of Britney’s Holland Park apartment was purely coincidental. But I was gripped by an even icier terror that I might really lose my beloved. This was a Romantic 999.

If I could just extract him from her clutches … Stalling seemed the best option because, surely, soon he would tire of her. Like key-hole surgery, I would have to carry out the operation delicately, from the surface. I practised what I’d say in the mirror. ‘There’s so much at stake, Hugo. The very least you can do is to give our marriage another try.’ Or ‘Perspectives shift dramatically with time. What may seem like insurmountable differences today often shrink to nothing with a little distance.’ It occurred to me that I should make sure that distance happened – all two thousand kilometres of it.

‘Holidays are like men – never long enough,’ sighed my sister, when I asked her to mind the kids for a week. ‘Hey! Why don’t I come with you? I need a place to recover from my lipo. Somewhere Sven can’t see me. He hasn’t rung for weeks. I’m getting desperate, darling, I have to make myself more attractive to him. Look.’ She hoicked up her Armani skirt and turned to reveal a sculptured buttock. ‘I ran out of money after one butt cheek. I have to save up for the other side.’

‘Oh, God, Victoria. Liposuction is so dangerous! What if they accidentally vacuum out internal organs you’re still using? A liver or a kidney or an ovary or something.’

‘You should try a little yourself, sweetie,’ she huffed.

‘Um … everything in my body seems to have a specific working function, you know?’ I scorned. ‘I don’t think there’s anything
spare
. And what are you gonna do with all the fat they’ve sucked out? Maybe you could have it sculpted into a statuette for Sven? Maybe that explains “The Blob”!? It‘s escaped liposuctioned fat, running free!’

‘It’s not funny, Elisabeth. I’ve lost my only asset – my looks. I used to sow wild oats.
Now
I’m just going to seed. Unless Sven marries me, my residential address will soon be a cardboard household-appliance carton,’ she moaned, trying to make me feel sorry for her. ‘Last
year
’s household-appliance carton!’

‘You are not coming, Victoria. And that’s final.’

‘But it’s my birthday,’ she pleaded.

‘I know. How old
aren’t
you today?’

She opened the book I’d bought her,
The Portrait of Dorian Gray
.

‘Okay, your husband’s leaving you,’ she stropped, ‘but
what am I going to do about my vagina
? I think it’s moving sideways. Because of all the lipo!’

‘Then you really will be Sven’s “little bit on the side”,’ I laughed lamely, but the laugh mutated into tears. That morning I’d noticed that Hugo’s blackheads had been freshly squeezed. On his
back
.

I told Hugo that we needed to have some time together, to revive our marriage. ‘Let’s go somewhere and get sun cancer!’ I fingered the heart-shaped locket in which I kept photos of our children – he’d given it to me on our tenth wedding anniversary – hoping to remind him of our shared history.

Julia and Jamie tumbled into the house then, back from their Little ’Uns’ Feng Shui or anatomically correct gingerbread-men cooking class – I’d lost track of what particular Hampsteady after-school activity it was that day. But, oh, the miraculous comfort of your children’s hugs and kisses, warm and wet as bath water. Hugo smiled, then agreed to book. And for once the Fuck-up Fairy was not waving her evil little wand, because he added three beautiful words as he stroked my hair: ‘Somewhere really romantic.’

‘
A medical conference?
Does it get more romantic than
this
?’ I clutched the plane ticket for Antigua in disbelief. Oh, thank you, Fuck-up Fairy. Have wand, will wave.

We were in a queue at Heathrow behind a heavily bearded Arab man who was rummaging through his bags looking for his ticket, or perhaps a bomb. All the check-in staff were away on a three-hour brunch break and our plane was leaving in twenty-five minutes.

‘But, Lizzie, you know I always have to go home two hours into a holiday because I can’t bear the tension of taking it easy. I thought with a bit of work to do every day I might be more relaxed about the vacation.’ Hugo beamed.

‘Yes, but
I
won’t.’ All those sloshed surgeons in the hospitality suite, stabbing me in the boob with their nametag pins; a whole week of conversing with chests that read ‘Illegible’ and ‘Indecipherable’. Ugh.

I thought I couldn’t be more disappointed until we boarded the plane to discover that Hugo had been upgraded to business class and I hadn’t. No. I was to spend the next eight hours squished next to a guy with a lawnmower in his cabin luggage which he couldn’t quite fit in the overhead compartment because his mini jet-ski was already crammed in up there, meaning that he was going to fly the whole way with a major horticultural appliance on his lap. On the other side of me was a man who introduced himself as ‘Glen, from the Margarine and Spreads Association. We deal with twenty-six per cent of the yellow fats industry. Spreading the word …’ He winked.

And it was then that my sister wafted by.

‘What the hell … Get off this plane immediately! You’re supposed to be looking after my children!’

‘You know I have an allergy to children. Aren’t I always frisking you on arrival for fingerpaintings or photographs?’ She shuddered. ‘They’re with Cal. They’re in the garden practising their gross motor skills as we speak, darling,’ she said, fluttering goodbye with bejewelled fingers, as her uneven butt cheeks, matchstick legs and askew vagina disappeared down the aisle.

Things were turning out to be romantic all right – about as romantic as a herpes underneath a mistletoe. But at least I’d pulled Hugo away from Britney Amore.

The best time to go on holidays was probably 1922. No Club Meds, no crowds, no oil spills, no karaoke, no jet-skis, no matching his-and-her genital thongs, no condominiums, no leisure coordinators, no flotsam and jet-set and no medical conferences.

The hotel comprised a necklace of hairy huts ringing a large thatched cabaña, which housed the bar, restaurant and dance floor. Beyond the hammocks, lazily laced between palm trees, lay the lagoon, a turquoise sea distantly semi-circled by foamy breakers on the coral reef. If it had been any more perfect, it would have been a Coca-Cola advertisement.

The view was only spoilt by the cosmetic surgeons. Most were of the comical-shorts-wearing variety. Over-exercised coffin-dodgers in phlegm yellow fitness-orientated clothing, with starved bodies and decrepit faces, trying to extend their lives with enemas and sunshine. Their wives had obviously succumbed to an excess of plastic surgery which accounted for their painful, pinched, expressionless expressions – as though tortured by secret cystitis. They oozed been-there-and-bought-that apathy.

The three of us stepped out of the taxi into air that was steamier than Jennifer Lopez. It was four-to-five-T-shirts-a-day weather. As the wall of heat hit me I thought it might be drier in the sea. But that heat was nothing compared to the thermo-nuclear meltdown I was about to have as I glanced up from my ‘Welcome!’ rum punch to see Britney Amore sashaying towards me, a frangipani in her flame orange hair.

‘Well, hi, y’all!’

21

Say Goodbye To Childhood, Hello To Adultery

THE SABRE-TOOTHED HUSBAND
Hunter flung her arms around Hugo, throwing her weight forward on to a set of perfectly pedicured toes, one waxed leg folded up flamingo-like behind her pertly rounded posterior.

‘You knew
she
’d be here?’ I fumed at Hugo, once my heart had started beating again.

‘No. I knew Sven was coming to drum up some business …’ he mumbled.

‘
Sven
’s here?’ As this was her first time in direct sunlight in her entire life, my sister was stumbling around like a newborn field mouse. ‘Oh, God! Hide me! Oh, God!’

‘Ain’t this gonna be
fun
?’ Britney crooned, pinching my husband’s bottom – her way of firing a warning shot across my marital bows; this conference was important for the clinic’s credibility and I wasn’t to make waves.

‘Ah-huh!’ I replied. About as much fun as having a personalized lap-dance from Ian Paisley. My marital waters were calm, all right –
calm as Lake Placid
.

‘W-where is Sven?’ Victoria asked, turtling her neck further into her collar and peering nervously over the tops of her shades.

‘Attending the birth of his next wife, probably,’ I replied, under my breath.

‘Get changed, y’all, and come down to
our
beach over yonder.’ Britney indicated the direction with a flick of an orange talon. Her smile was sewn on like a sequin. And it was practically all she was wearing, apart from a pint or two of cooking oil.

While we waited for our room to be made ready, Britney lay supine on a banana chair in her leopardskin bikini. She stretched out her honeyed legs, which ended in gold sandals about a mile away from her hips. As she giggled with Hugo, Victoria and I made totally unnecessary trips to the loo to gawp at her chest on the way.

‘She’s had them Done again, hasn’t she?’ I whispered, in awe.

‘Wait, let me have one more look …’ Victoria replied, making a quick saunter loo-wards. ‘Jesus. She could use her bikini top as a slingshot and fire Exocet missiles at Iraq!’ she reported back.

‘Iraq?’ I murmured. ‘Those tits could deflect meteors from outer space!’

Britney uncoiled to standing position, diamond ankle chain glistening in the sun. ‘So, come
on
, happy campers. Let’s go swimming!’

‘No thanks. We’re tired,
aren’t we
?’ I glared at my husband pointedly.

Britney Amore’s eyes slid down to my abdomen. ‘Course ya are, hon. I mean, in your condition …’

I sucked in my stomach so violently my neck got thicker.

Hugo cleared his throat. ‘No, um, actually we’re not having any more children.’

‘Well, then, waddle on over to the beach, gal, and get fit,’ she chided.

Clearly Britney Amore had been separated from Eva Braun at birth. ‘I’m not overweight, you know,’ I spluttered defensively. ‘I mean, for my height …’ Why did this woman have the ability to make me sound like a Mormon elder? ‘Am I, Hugo?’

‘Well, maybe you could do with a little suction round the saddlebags …’

‘I
was
on a diet, but I’m in remission,’ I said, tartly – a pretty Mae West-esque reply, seeing as I was halfway through a heart-attack. Of course, what I wanted to do was book my husband on an all-expenses-paid trip on a Russian submarine – but, determined to win him back, I merely smiled. Not much of a smile, really, more like open-face surgery.

As Hugo rummaged through his suitcase for his swimmers, I begged my sun-hating sister to put on her asbestos sun suit. ‘I cannot go to the beach with
Her
, alone.’ I shuddered.

Victoria pooched her lips defiantly. ‘I can’t let him see me like
this
! Have you seen my waist? If I’d known Sven was bloody well going to be here I’d have only drunk water for four days. Or maybe just had a bottom rib removed.’

I looked at my svelte sister and shook my head in disbelief. It was clear she was following the ‘Fabulous Karen Carpenter Dietary Secrets To A Thinner You’.

One of us had been adopted, definitely.

Cresting the hill behind Hugo and Britney Amore, I tried to put a positive spin on things. There are, after all, some good things about nudist beaches. First off, you never have to buy anyone a drink – ‘I’m sorry. But my money’s in my jeans’ pocket.’ Nor is it likely anyone will
ever
steal your vinyl sun-lounger. What’s more, it does away with the usual am-I-too-old-to-wear-a-bikini? trauma.

Britney Amore immediately peeled off her G-string to reveal a red patch of pubic hair topiaried into a heart shape, an all-over tan, and those pneumatic breasts. When she got out a mosquito coil, so many male conventioneers lunged towards her with their lighters ablaze that she was practically flambéd.

‘Come on, ol’ son.’ Sven playfully yanked my husband’s shorts down to his knees. ‘Don’t be shy.’

‘Oh, is
that
how the prison guards did it?’ I asked, clutching my clothes tightly to my sweating torso.

Gritting my teeth, I tried to shed my Speedos and dive-bomb face down on to the towel in one deft movement – which merely resulted in a grazed nose, a cracked rib and a bit of seaweed up my fanny. The next hour was agonizing. I lay on the sand, fantasizing about putting my clothes back on. Then, just to be really kinky, I fantasized about
other
people putting their clothes back on as well. After another hour I hissed at my naked husband. ‘Um, it’s a hundred and ninety degrees. What exactly is the point of this? Must we give third degree burns to
everything
?’