Nip 'N' Tuck (24 page)

‘I always thought I’d feel wise at forty. I mean, you should know a lot of stuff, right? At my age?’ My sister’s voice see-sawed. ‘But what do
I
know? That getting your four back teeth removed gives instant cheekbones. That’s it. You were right. I changed my exterior, but not my interior. Underneath, I’m still that vile, selfish brat I was at sixteen.’

I sighed. It had only taken her two thousand diets and twenty-eight surgical procedures to realize she’d be more beautiful if she read a book now and then.

‘And now even
you
hate me.’ Her mouth curled downwards. ‘And I hate it when you hate me.’ Her face caved in on itself and tears split down her lacerated cheeks. ‘Can you ever forget what happened?’

‘I’m told a lobotomy would erase the memory permanently.’

‘It meant nothing. I was eaten up with jealousy that you, my mousy little sister, should have this perfect family. This perfect husband. Getting Hugo into bed was just a way of proving to myself that he wasn’t so damn perfect. I didn’t do it to hurt you. But you caught us. God! I had no idea that ego-maniac had a thing about watching his own performance on video. And you were hurt and I am so so sorry.’ Victoria’s battered body was shuddering with sobs. Unexpected feelings overwhelmed me and, without thinking, I wrapped my arms around my sister.

‘Listen, Victoria,’ I urged her, ‘let’s skip the maudlin, self-indulgent accusations and go straight to the bit where we blame our parents. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘Typical,’ I teased gently. ‘Didn’t your therapist say that you never take responsibility for anything?’

‘Yes. And I blame our mother for that. She never met my growing intellectual, emotional and
haute-couture-
clothing needs.’ She managed a smile, despite her cracked lip. ‘Do you know what Sven calls his cock? The Incredible Hulk. I had to call it that too.’ When I laughed acidly, she overcame her fragility and hugged me fiercely. ‘How did
you
see through him?’

‘The “Hitler is Fab” tattoo kind of gave it away.’ I stroked her forehead, dank with sweat. ‘What are you going to do about Sven?’

‘Well, on the way here I walked into a petrol station to buy a can of gas. The attendant asked me which brand my boyfriend wanted me to get. I said my boyfriend didn’t know yet that I was going to set fire to him. I ran away while he was dialling the police.’

‘Immolation’s too good for that bastard. Sven – can’t live with him, can’t cut him up with a chainsaw and dispose of his body in black bin-bag liners ’cause the neighbours might notice.’ Then I asked the question I’d been dreading. ‘Who … who performed Marrakech’s operation?’ I braced myself.

My sister winced. ‘Hugo.’

Hugo?
A volt of ice went through my body.

‘If only we could do unto
them
what they’ve done unto
us
.’ Victoria took another gulp of Glenfiddich.

‘Yes!’ I fantasized. ‘We should give
them
plastic surgery and see how they bloody well like it.’ I snatched up the whisky and took a giant slug.

‘But who would we get to operate?’

‘Some surgeon could talk us through it over the phone.’

‘Yeah! The way they land planes in the movies when the pilot’s died,’ Victoria said animatedly.

‘How would we get them into the surgery?’

‘Kidnap them.’

I tossed back another shot. I would need to down the whole bottle to think
this
could ever work. ‘Trouble is, kidnapping requires a cool head, a hard heart, good timing and, if the police get wind of it,
Olympic sprinting
.’ I sighed. Freeing an arm from around her shoulders, I reached for the phone.

‘What are you doing?’

Suspecting that we were lacking many of the talents necessary for success as Criminal Masterminds, I began to dial 999.

Victoria’s face went ashen. She slammed her hand down to cut the connection. ‘No! For Christ’s sake! If we report him to the police Sven will have me killed.’ Her voice was eerily shrill. She wrenched the receiver from my hand.

I realized she was serious. ‘You mean he’d hire a hitman? I hate the man too, but is he really capable of that?’

With tentative fingers my sister probed her face. Her famously beautiful features now resembled a relief map of some war-torn wasteland. ‘I went to his house to confront him about Marrakech. I threatened to report him to the police for mutilating her and
this
was my warning …’

With the perfect timing that eludes most of life, there came from somewhere at the back of the house the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, then the spine-chilling crunch of heavy shoes moving across splintered shards. The whisky tumbler fell from my sister’s hands. My toes curled up like dead leaves in my shoes. The door thwacked open to reveal a hulking beast of a man, as hirsute as he was bulky, a rattlesnake tattoo coiled around his biceps.

Cystitis, childbirth, divorce – these are jewels in life’s crown compared to the sheer terror of confronting a psychotic hitman in your own living room. How did I know this man was dangerous? Well, call me Sherlock Holmes, but not even London is cold enough to be wearing a balaclava in June. There was also something potentially explosive, something barely contained about him. He approached, his movements jerky and violent. Body odour with a tang of onion (and was that car oil?) began to fill the room. A mossy tongue lolled in a lopsided mouth, the top molars all missing, save for one furry green fang.

As the creature I assumed was Sven’s hired hitman began to lunge towards me, I shank back, petrified – until I realized it was extending its hand to shake mine. ‘Bruce the Tooth,’ he said jocularly, in a thick, redneck accent. ‘Ex-con number 14567 Gainsville Maximum Security Prison. So pleased to make the acquaintance of you fine ladies. Gee, I’m sorry. How rude’ He ripped off his balaclava, to reveal a low simian forehead wormed with scars and a lank ponytail. He scrutinized my sister. ‘You ain’t Marrakech, are ya? You sure do look like her photo, but … You must be her sister.’ (Victoria’s battered spirits seemed to rise remarkably at this mistake.) ‘That gal sent the cash to hire me some good lawyers. They won the appeal – not only got me off of Death Row but proved me innocent. Marrakech done give me this here address. Apologies for the grand entrance. Force of habit,’ he rasped, in a ten-packs-a-day voice a couple of cartons shy of lung cancer. ‘I’ve come to thank her for savin’ me from Big Sparky.’ He ground his prognathous jaw and welled up a little. ‘If there’s anythin’ I can ever do for her, she’s only gotta ask.’

Victoria attempted to straighten her appearance. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but actually I’m her mother.’

The man broke into a one-tooth smile. ‘Well, then, ma’am, that there goes for you too.’

My sister and I looked at each other, our eyes widening. This guy could be the best thing since slim regulars. It was like finding the toy surprise in the cereal box.

‘Well, actually,’ Victoria said, ‘now you mention it, there is a little something …’

27

I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Almost Like You’re Here

MEN ARE PERFECTLY
agreeable and totally wonderful as long as you never let them within a ten-mile radius. After twelve years of marriage my only other insight is that, when meeting a soon-to-be-ex-husband, it’s best not to resolve your differences with firearms.

To this purpose I asked Hugo to meet me on neutral turf, a seedy hotel (patrons were kindly asked to check in their chainsaws at the door) in King’s Cross, an area of London culturally enriched by a diverse selection of prostitutes, escaped felons and British librarians. There was a greenish-grey tinge to the evening air as if it were about to rain. I waited for Hugo in reception, next to the spindly racks containing cheap postcards of London attractions.

When my husband pushed through the revolving doors, I looked at the handsome forty-five-year-old man I’d once loved so deeply – and was shocked to feel a profound pang of grief. When, I wondered, had it gone from ‘
Fuck
me!’ to ‘Fuck
you
!’? It was just one of life’s
hiakus
, like ‘from womb to tomb’. As Hugo approached, I looked down on our marriage as though it were a dead corpse on a mortuary trolley. We stared at each other blankly, like two people passing on up and down escalators.

‘Thank you for last night,’ I said, steering him into the dingy bar.

‘I wasn’t with you last night.’

‘That’s why I’m grateful.’

‘Is that the kind of sarcastic tone you’re going to adopt for the duration of this meeting?’ He called for coffee, then slid across the stained velvet banquette of the nearest booth and took in his sordid surroundings. The only other patrons were a couple of cockroaches the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger, sitting around cracking their knuckles, and a few million intestinal parasites.

‘Where the hell have you brought me?’ Hugo produced a monogrammed handkerchief and wiped the pock-marked laminex tabletop before gingerly resting his designer-jacketed elbows upon it. ‘Your solicitor called me today.’ His gaze lingered on me and he sighed. ‘Oh, Lizzie, dearest, where did our love go?’

‘To the Oxfam charity shop, with the rest of your stuff,’ I said, stiffly.

I slipped off my cardigan and Hugo’s eyes fell to my newly flattened chest. ‘They told me at the clinic you’d had an explantation. Why, for God’s sake?’

‘Well, curiously enough, the thrill of carrying around two pounds of cancer-inducing silicone in your chest cavity palls quite quickly.’

‘Do you know what those boobs cost me, Elisabeth? They’re etched on to my Visa bill for ever!’

‘You should have just left the price tags on them, then.’

‘It’s not just that I paid for your operation! I made a huge emotional investment in you and in our marriage. And now I’ve lost everything. Twelve years of wedlock and what do I have to show for it? An overdraft, a failing professional reputation and a broken heart. I’ve a good mind to sue you for the cost of those implants!’

‘Litigation. Ah yes, well, I’m glad you brought that up, Hugo, because there’s the little matter of my niece. Tell me, did you think Marrakech was going to be happy when she woke up with her big breast surprise?’

‘Your sister signed the consent form.’

‘Sven tricked her into it.’

‘What? I didn’t know anything about that!’ Hugo’s famously luxuriant hair began to clump in damp spikes on his increasingly pale forehead.

‘How is it going to look in court when Marrakech tells the jury how she was lying there, unconscious, when against her wishes, her trusted uncle gave her a breast augmentation? She’s only fifteen. My lawyer says you need to have her informed consent … not a form signed by an uninformed mother.’

‘Sven, her mother’s lover and agent, remember, came in during the operation and said, “Make ’em big and perky. She insists on becoming a top model.” So that’s what I did. I believed she wanted them.’

‘You
know
how much she hated having big breasts!’

‘For God’s sake, Lizzie, if
I
hadn’t operated on her—’ he broke off while the barman deposited our two cups of coffee – brewed, I suspect, at the outset of the Second World War – before whispering ‘– one of Sven’s butchers
would
have.’

‘Couldn’t you
see
that he might be lying?’ But I already knew the answer. My once honourable husband had turned into the kind of doctor who went blind once the cheque cleared. ‘Can you imagine the scandal? Dr Hugo Frazer, who cannot be named for legal reasons—’

‘Elisabeth,’ he interrupted, in clipped tones, ‘if you really want to torture me, ask me to renew our wedding vows.’

‘You know, maybe it would be good if you did some time in jail, Hugo. It’d be an effective weight-loss plan for you.’

Hugo sucked in his stomach. ‘You’ve got the house, the children and custody of the Merc convertible. What else can you possibly want?’

‘Actually I have a little surgical request.’

He slurped morosely at his stewed brew and grimaced as though drinking warm sputum. ‘What else do you want taken out?’

‘Not for me,’ I added hastily.

‘Well, for whom, exactly?’

‘Sven.’ I took a sip of my coffee, as scalding as the look my husband was now giving me. ‘Yes. Lipo, botox, a butt lift, oh, and breast implants.’

My husband spluttered into laughter, spurting coffee down his shirtfront.

I met his gaze defiantly. ‘I’m pleased to see that Sven’s predicament is affording you such hilarity,’ I said, in Hugo-speak. ‘We kidnapped him over six hours ago. He’s prepped and ready for surgery.’

My husband levelled me with a peculiar stare. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Yup.’

‘To say that you’re psychotic, Elisabeth, is to indulge in the drollest of understatements. First your hostile TV hysteria, in which you denounce me to the entire world, and now
this
. How could you ever think I would countenance doing such a diabolical thing?’

‘You do it to women every day. Including your own relatives.’

‘Breast implants on a man?’ he said, stupefied. ‘I can’t do it. It’s – it’s mutilation.’

‘
Exactly
.’ I lifted my T-shirt and pointed to the two-inch scars etched for ever beneath my breasts. ‘You
will
give Sven surgery.’

Hugo hunched belligerently over his coffee. ‘You can’t make me.’

‘No,’ I admitted, ‘but
he
can.’

I nodded towards the darkest corner of the deserted bar, where Bruce the Tooth sat slouched over his Budweiser. He tipped his baseball cap. You could dimly make out the slogan on his born-again T-shirt: ‘Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him’ – Job 13:15.

‘’Less you cooperate, Doc, things could get very Last Judgement,’ Bruce the Tooth called out, by way of greeting.

‘Is he threatening to
kill
me?’ Hugo scoffed, trilling his fingers impatiently.

‘Well, sir, I find “killin’” too broad a term. Let’s just say that there’s gonna be an arbitrary deprivation of life.’ Sauntering over to our table, Bruce the Tooth smashed a bloated fly with his fist, its innards splattering on to Hugo’s sleeve. He picked up the insect and dropped it into Hugo’s coffee cup. ‘I call it “goin’ postal”.’