Altar Ego by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online

Anouska was busy chewing over other things.
    ‘Oh God, doll,’ she sobbed into her espresso. ‘I’ve had the most hideous morning.
    I wasn’t too alarmed. The woman thought she’d had a tough childhood because she’d had to walk three feet to her Dad’s Volvo for the drive to primary school. ‘Why?’
    ‘Tressida’s just found out she’s got ME and Tabitha’s got ovarian cancer.’
    ‘What? Two It Girls at one blow?’
    ‘If
they
can be given charity balls to organize, why can’t
I
? Because I’m not married, that’s why. Not even engaged …!’ Her haywire hair corkscrewed from her cranium, as though she’d had a million brainwaves simultaneously.
    ‘It won’t take long. Literature’s full of Willoughbys and Wickhams prowling for heiresses …’ I daubed cappuccino froth from the tip of my nose and abstemiously pushed away the doughnut remnants. ‘You’ll meet your perfect man one day, Annie.’ She should too. Anouska had been on more laps than a portable PC.
    ‘Perfect!’ she shrieked. ‘Who said anything about perfect? Interestingly flawed would do. Vaguely bearable.’
    ‘Two corpses short of a serial killer, even, in the case of Darius.’ What shocked me about Anouska was not how much she expected from a man, but how little. Her latest representative of the Ring-Buying Sex, Darius Gore, possessed everything that makes the English upper class so interesting: an attic-dwelling, Hitler-sympathizing sibling, a recent political scandal and looming bankruptcy. If there’s one thing the Nouveau Poor need, it’s a niche with the Nouveau Riche. After leaving Vivian’s mother, Mr Johannes de Kock made a fortune in armaments, meaning that Anouska fitted the bill, literally.
    Somewhere in the dim recesses of Anouska’s strange brain, it suddenly registered that raising the marriage topic with me was akin to asking a paraplegic if he was running late. ‘Um …’ she curled one leather-trousered leg up beneath her butt. ‘You know I don’t agree with what you did, doll, but it must have taken a lot of bottle.’
    ‘It did. Moët Chandon.’ I polished off the doughnut in one bite. ‘I know everybody thinks that what I did is totally immature, but hey,’ I grinned, ‘at least I’ve never deluded myself into thinking I’m an adult.’
    She pushed her plate towards me. ‘Do you want mine as well?’
    I shook my head virtuously. ‘Look, I’m not a bad person, Annie.’ (I noticed that she didn’t rush to agree with me.) ‘Okay, I’m not Mother Teresa … But, hey, I’m probably somewhere between her and Hitler … right?’ No response. ‘Well, aren’t I?’
    She stared at the floor directly in front of her Charles Jourdan sandal.
    I inhaled her untouched doughnut with the speed of an industrial Hoover.
    The second blow to my confidence came in Selfridges, at the make-up counter, awash with deeply sensual scents, shapely bottles and exotically coloured vials.
    ‘Doll, you’ve just bought a one-way ticket to disaster and you’re worried about skin elasticity?’ Anouska had whined as I dragged her into the colonnaded edifice in Oxford Street,
    ‘Yeah, but at least I’ll look good on the way … Night cream, please. Light.’
    The Estée Lauder make-up assistant appraised me, sucking her teeth as though about to make an urgent, whispered phone call to a surgical dermatologist, ‘
Light
, madam?’
    Madam?
    ‘I think it might be time we moved on to a more … nourishing cream. The Super Strong Ultima Extreme for Mature Skin is very good …’
    Mature?
    She swivelled the magnified mirror towards me and I was confronted by an elephantine version of my own face. ‘Wrinkles. Etched either side of your mouth. This cream contains marine algae to boost circulation and …’
    ‘They’re not wrinkles. They’re fellatio lines,’ Anouska explained helpfully. ‘App
ar
ently.’
    ‘Freckles, dry patches, blotches, loss of pigmentation, broken capillaries … A neck cream would also be