Mad Cows by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online Page A

Mother and Baby Unit. Let’s see how her “endorphins” go down with the nonces.’
    Edwina Phelps’ hand halted in mid-air, post-pat. ‘The Nonces?’
    â€˜Paedophiles and perverts,’ stipulated a voice located somewhere behind a cigarette. ‘Most loathed people in prison. Segregated so the other inmates don’t waste them.’
    Dwina angrily workshopped a cup of coffee, rattling a spoon into a chipped enamel cup. ‘Over my dead body.’
    Maddy thought that maybe she wouldn’t enrol Dwina in Nice-aholics
just
yet.
    â€˜Oh, well,’ retorted Slynne. ‘Everything has its price.’
    â€˜No corpse, no crime. The baby is missing.’ Dwina replaced the spoon in a sugar bowl, encrusted with brown granulated balls. ‘Not dead.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Slynne, craftily. ‘You’re right. Much better that I send her into prison proper . . . where she’ll be beaten up as a “beast”.’
    â€˜How can that happen when no one but the people in this room know about the missing child?’
    â€˜You know how word travels in prison.’ The Detective winked in the prison officer’s direction. She reciprocated with a cruel, collaborative grin. ‘Especially when a woman has killed her baby . . .’
    Dwina, savouring her Ph.D.’ed smarts over the clueless detective, unclipped one earring and rubbed the lobe. (Maddy presumed she’d attended a workshop for that also – Earring Management in Telephonic Situations: A Psychodynamic Approach.) ‘I don’t believe she’s hurt her baby. She’s hidden him with someone. Didn’t you have a visitor yesterday?’
    Detective Slynne opened his mouth to speak, but Dwina got in first, forcing him into a goldfish impersonation.
    â€˜Madeline, all that talk of adoption, it all felt so cold, didn’t it? So clinical . . .’ She squatted down in front of Maddy . ‘But what I didn’t explain is that there is another way.’
    Slynne, ferociously drawing on his cancer stick, rocked from his toes to his heels and back again.
    â€˜What once took just one man, one woman, one bed and Ravel’s “Bolero” has become, for many couples, a bureaucratic nightmare. There are ten million childless women in the “civilized” world. And yet the number of babies offered for adoption is falling. Can you imagine the pain of couples longing for a stake in the next generation?’ She retrieved a tissue from her sleeve and delicately blew her nose. ‘It’s heart-breaking.’
    The Detective Sergeant, sighing tetchily, lit a new cigarette from the embers of the old. To him, psychology was nothing more than a guess with a goddamn degree.
    â€˜The beauty of a
private
adoption is that you can choose the adoptive mother. I see the chance here of saving four lives. The hopeful couple’s, Jack’s and above all,
yours
, Madeline. I’m offering you a chance to
start again
. Just tell us where your baby is?’
    All eyes were on Maddy, whose eyes were on her shirt in anticipation of the kettle’s cry.
    â€˜Otherwise every bleedin’ broom handle you see will have your name on it.’
    â€˜Detective!’ Dwina fumed. ‘Centre yourself! You’re pro
jecting
!’ She impounded the police-officer’s cigarette and extinguished it. ‘A cigarette,’ she lectured, ‘has a fire on one end and a
fool
on the other.’
    â€˜You don’t understand,’ Slynne whinged. ‘Ms Smartass here likes a bit of a joke. Liked making an ass out of me in front of my coppers down the nick. How do you like it when the joke’s at
your
expense?’
    Maddy’s mouth was in gear before she knew she was driving. ‘Have you heard the one about the inmate who cut off the detective’s testicles and wore them as ear ornaments? Dwina could have a workshop. Earring Management –