Mad Cows by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online

vulnerable, she had to bite her fingers to stop herself from snatching him back. She bit them till they bled.
    â€˜Dah-ling,’ said Gillian, in a rare spasm of concern, ‘look on the bright side. A women’s prison – at least the toilet seat will never be up.’
    â€˜Take good care of him,’ Maddy implored, as they got to their feet.
    The handles of Gillian’s voluminous valise closed over their unusual cargo. ‘Next time you see him, he’ll heel when called.’
    Staff shortages meant that Maddy got back to her cell undetected. She lay on the narrow bed. A mournful clock tolled the hours since Jack’s departure. The humidi-crib atmosphere of the prison pressed in on her. She had kept back one small item of his clothing. It was all she had to remind her of her cherished angel. Aching body and soul, she buried her face in his miniscule cotton cardigan, breathed in his soft, sweet smell and wept, helpless as a newborn.

5
    The Standing Offer
    THE SKY LIGHTENED to a bitter, jaundiced yellow, to find Maddy bent over the tiny sink in her cell, applying hot flannels to her breasts. Until now, Maddy thought that only performance artists ‘expressed’ themselves. But no. Not just streams, but
Niles
of milk gurgled down the plughole. Every noise triggered her milk flow – distant car horns, clock radios, kettles, other babies crying. She could have opened a god-damned dairy in there.
    This was how the prison officer found her, baby AWOL, missing, presumed dead. Slynne was called; the harmonic wheeze of the cell-door hinge heralding his arrival.
    â€˜Apparently you’ve’ – he cleared his throat with mock theatricality – ‘
lost
your baby.’
    â€˜Have I?’ Maddy hammed. ‘Oh, well, he’s probably with my car keys then.’
    â€˜Have you killed it?’ His alert, rodent eyes scurried over her face scavenging for a confessional crumb.
    â€˜There’s nothing in the cell, sir,’ vouched the prison officer.
    â€˜Dismembered it? Cannibalized it, perhaps?’
    Maddy, feigning nonchalance, studied her interrogator. Brutal and brusque, he was also vain. That hungry hyena smile suggested an intimate knowledge of periodontal work practices. And there was something too solid about the hairline. A closer inspection revealed a Grecian 2000 stain behind his right ear.
    Slynne banged his fist on the wall. ‘What kind of mother are you?’ His grip on her arm was that of a jack-hammer operator. ‘You’re not even worried about your own baby!’
    â€˜Oh, I
was
worried,’ Maddy contended, wrenching free, ‘but then I thought, hey, why torture myself when you can do it for me?’
    â€˜Infanticide is a very serious crime.’
    Maddy felt her stomach fall through to the floor. This copper was a magnifying glass who would not go away.
    â€˜What rot!’ the voice was Dwina’s. She stood panting in the doorway. Having completed stages one and two of Basic Scarf Draping, she had now graduated to the reverse neckerchief foulard model. She shed her coat and fell on to the kettle. ‘It’s a recognized psychological post-birth trauma. I’ve run a workshop on this just recently. This woman is a Recovering Hormonal Addict.’
    Prison, Maddy was discovering, was full of recovering people. Recovering from smack, barbiturates, solvents, bad marriages. Inmates boasted membership of Nymphomaniacs Anonymous, Cake-aholics Anonymous, Men Anonymous,
Anonymous
Anonymous.
    Dwina placed a possessive arm on the back of Maddy’s chair. ‘If you’d attended my workshop, Detective Sergeant, you wouldn’t be so ignorant of female endorphins.’ She gave Maddy’s head a condescending pat, as though she were a child. Maddy flinched. Edwina Phelps was a candidate for ‘
Nice
-aholics Anonymous.’
    â€˜No baby’ – Slynne bounced on the balls of his feet – ‘no