Mad Cows by Kathy Lette Page B

‘Preferably for the heir to an oil fortune.’
    Not
the way to conduct a job interview, she silently fumed, lying Jack on the office carpet to swab and daub.
    â€˜Well, that’s a first,’ she began lamely, resuming her seat and glancing at the bewildered personnel manager across the desk. ‘The only male I’ve ever succeeded in changing. Oh, I got close with Milo Roxburghe,’ she floundered, name-dropping frantically, ‘the Hair Extension King? An ex-fiancé of mine, do you know him? That man wore white
shoes
when I first met him.
    Gillian couldn’t believe how often babies defecated. ‘You’re
male
,’ she lamented to her homo sapien soupçon , as they were ejected from the store. ‘You’re supposed to disappear into the lavatory with a copy of
Sporting Life
for hours on end. Don’t you know
any
thing?’
    Worse than the endless poo were the air-to-surface mucus missiles. Gillian had to resort to going to the corner store in her taffeta ballgown, because the rest of her wardrobe was covered in baby slime. By Wednesday morning she’d taken to wearing only fawn and cream. Not her colours, but it cut down on washing.
    Gillian felt that years of attending the Paris fashion shows had equipped her for the job of Fashion Editor on
Harper’s Bizarre
. All you needed to do was describe everything as
fab
ulous, am
az
ing, or ’tastic. This just meant that you hadn’t seen anything like it in the last five microseconds. As babies were this year’s ultimate accessory – all the Fashionista from Madonna to Michael Hutchence were sporting them – Gillian felt that finally Jack would be an asset.
    â€˜Oh, look!’ The female fashion journalists – who used their heads solely as a place to prop their Sony Walkmans – emerged from behind their six-foot flower arrangements, and, ignoring Gillian, rushed to gush over Maddy’s offspring. ‘Isn’t he
gorgeous
?’
    Gillian stared down at Jack. He lay squiggling on the carpet like something larval. She couldn’t see it. ‘I suppose someone said that to Saddam Hussein’s mother ,’ she japed. Oblivious to the magazine editor’s censorious glance, she prattled on. ‘Can you imagine the indignity of being a baby and having to wear those hideous all-in-one babygros? Now
there’s
a fashion victim!’
    The editor, in arctic tones, replied that she didn’t know what Gillian was talking about. Standing up to show Gillian the door, she revealed her lame jump suit – with press-studded crutch for easy access.
    â€˜Oops.’
    Jack gurgled happily all the way down in the lift. ‘Oh, grow a neck,’ she scolded him. ‘And
then
we’ll talk.’
    It was the same story all week; whether posing as a Prue Leith graduate (she’d landed the job to deliver hampers of salmonella and egg sandwiches to posh boardroom lunches) or an opera buff (when the Covent Garden PR director asked her how she would define her understanding of various plots, she’d flirtatiously ad-libbed, ‘just follow the bouncing dagger!’) every opportunity was sabotaged by Maddy’s little crumb-cruncher. ‘Talk about gumming the hand which feeds you!’
    â€˜Indulge me,’ Gillian pleaded with Jack on Friday morning. ‘I’m a severely economically inactive, neurotic, middle-aged celibate with suicidal tendencies.
Please be quiet
.’ She plugged a dummy into the baby’s mouth and watched, astounded, as he plummeted, pell-mell into unconsciousness. This time Gillian checked him in with her coat at Blake’s Hotel. Cocooned in the depths of her carpetbag.
    Half an hour into the interview, not only did she have the job of Exotic Plumage Importer, but the boss, Simon, an elegantly dressed stud-muffin in his mid-forties with bedroom eyes and a bionic bank balance, had asked her to lunch. It was then the coat-check girl