Free Foetal Attraction by Kathy Lette Page A

distribution of wine and women around the dinner table.’ Maddy flicked a switch and Alex’s protestations were drowned out by the munching and crunching of bone on blade. ‘Here,’ she said, extending a pinky plastered in grey grime. ‘Taste.’
    ‘It’s not cooked!’
    ‘I thought you liked things
raw
.’ Alex was about to speak when he was garrotted by the garlic and shallot strings suspended from the elevated pan rack. ‘Not to mention old Harriet. She’s in there now, whining on about the unemployed. What the fuck would
she
know about the unemployed? She’s got tenure.’
    ‘Oh, it’s about the
job
,’ Alex decrypted, disentangling himself from his vegetable necklace.
    ‘The only thing she ever gets fired with is enthusiasm … Mainly for
you
.’
    ‘I know I said I’d take you on the next expedition, but we’re talking cannibals. You’ve heard of vegetarians , well these people are
humani
tarians. They eat humans.’
    ‘Taste.’ Maddy’s little finger, glistening in grey globules, was still outstretched towards him. ‘Does it need salt?’
    ‘I can’t,’ Alex cringed. ‘It looks like something a Rottweiler threw up.
    Maddy felt sweat pricking in the small of her back. She eyed him grimly. ‘Listen, buster, it wasn’t my idea to spend the entire afternoon blanching grapefruit peel. You’re supposed to be the New Man.
You’re
the one supposed to be able to do sensitive things with mange-tout.’
    ‘Mange what?’
    ‘Oh Christ.’ The lids of the boiling saucepans rattled angrily. Tiny tornadoes of steam spumed from the stove. They were having, Maddy realized, their first fight. ‘Why is it that once you move in with a man, his arms mysteriously atrophy whenever he’s in the vague vicinity of the kitchen?’
    Harriet’s cropped head bobbed into view. Her serrated sneer ran from ear to ear. ‘Everything okay?’
    ‘Fine,’ the lovers said in unison, smiling sapidly.
    ‘Anything to drink?’ Harriet waved her empty wineglass in the air. She drank as though she carried a spare liver around in her pocket at all times.
    ‘Be right there, H.’ Once she’d withdrawn, Alex cupped his hands over his mouth and nose, like an oxygen mask. He breathed deeply, then turned to face her , wreathed in conciliatory smiles. ‘You’re right, darling. I’m sorry. You see how poisoned we are by “class”?’ He squatted down to rummage through the wine rack. ‘Think about it. I mean, even our mail travels first and second class.’
    ‘I’ve noticed. Do first-class letters get a little in-flight movie and a paper-parasoled cocktail on the way or what?’
    ‘It’s not funny, my love. We’re living in a sick society.’ Placing the bottle on the counter, Alex entwined his arms around her waist. ‘You’ll be so relieved to get back to Oz.’ He kissed her hair. ‘When
are
you going back by the way?’ he asked casually.
    Though her whole body sparked at his touch, Maddy pushed him away. ‘My visa doesn’t run out for four more months, you drongo.’ She clouted him good-naturedly. ‘Besides, glum bum, once I get residency I’ll be okay.’ She ruffled his hair and broadened her accent. ‘Once you make an honest sheila out of me.’
    Alex placed his hands around the slender throat of the wine bottle as if to throttle it. He extracted the cork. ‘Of course, of course …’ he muttered, retreating hastily into the living room. ‘Some rather tricky whatnots to negotiate first. You know … few loose ends to tie up …’
    His words stuck in her guts. Maddy scraped the charnel house of small bird bones into the pan. Their wings appeared to flap as they hit the hot peanut oil. She knew just how they felt.
    Ignoring her carefully interleaved male-female placement, Britain’s Greatest Living Writer – Humphrey, Sonia the Eco-fascist extraordinaire, and her SAP (Socially Aware Popstar), Bryce and Imogen, designer baby attached to photogenic nipple, the exiled opposition leader of some African