Mad Cows by Kathy Lette Page B

bureaucratic briefcase.’
    Maddy had underestimated Dwina’s powers of persuasion. This was the sort of woman who could kill her husband and make you sympathize with her for being a widow.
    â€˜I’ll tell the press!’ Maddy shouted frantically as the prison officer slammed the steel door in her face.
    â€˜There’s a mass of restrictions on public access to family cases. Judges issue injunctions against the media which stop them publishing anything.’ Joyce had to raise her voice to be heard above the shopping-mall muzak tinkling over the van intercom. ‘It’s all secret hearings, my dear.
Ex parte
.’
    The intercom dee wah diddy dum diddy dee-ed all the way back to Holloway. Shit a brick, Alex! Maddy panicked. Thank you for landing me in this crapulous shemozzle. As far as the owner of the BBC’s Best Buns was concerned, Maddy was starting to have fantasies involving cattle prods and private parts.
    When the van stopped, Maddy listened to the engine ticking as it cooled. To put the icing on another fun-packed day, one of the screws informed her through the steel grille that she was now going to be charged with contempt of court. Well, thought Maddy. They got
that
right. Contempt was exactly the right word.
    There were no slices left in the justice pie. They’d shown it to her, she could see everybody’s fingers in it – then they’d put her on a diet. No pie for you, baby. Well, diets were for breaking. Still, the thought of what she had to do turned her stomach.

10
    Pre
-Coital Depression
    PENISES, LIKE SNOWFLAKES , are each of them different. And Maddy liked them all. She liked them in different shapes and sizes. The lean, slinky, kinky ones. The thick, succulent types. The low-slung, gunslinger sort. The stubby button mushrooms. The round-heads. The hooded eyes. The meat and two veg, packed-lunch variety. She liked them long and strong and ready for action. She liked them all coy on a cold winter’s morning. All this male angst over size. It’s
attitude
woman are interested in. Women like a penis which says ‘G’day! God, am I glad to see
you
.’
    This is what Maddy reminded herself, as she contemplated having sex with her solicitor on the interview room table of Her Majesty’s Prison for Women, Holloway. She’d thought over every alternative.She could super-glue breadcrumbs to her arms and legs and let the pigeons fly her over the wall. She could sew all her cellmates’ femidoms and cervical caps into a wet suit and flush herself down the loo. Or she could sink the sausage with Rupert Peregrine.
    Maddy sat down hard on the straight-backed chair and massaged her cramped toes. She would have to fake it, of course. Faking it didn’t come that naturally to her. She had always thought there was little point in encouraging a male partner in practices which were not going to get her anywhere. By anywhere she meant the usual desired female destination of over the moon, off the edge of the planet or into another orbit entirely. But, she admitted to herself, all women faked it a little
tiny
bit. Not in a grand, theatrical
When Harry Met Sally
kind of way. But, face it, when women wank, do they call out, ‘Oh God! Don’t Stop! Oh! Oh! OH! Give it to me, big boy!’ It was all theatrics, she persuaded herself, to
some
degree.
    Maddy felt less convinced when Peregrine entered the room, all eighteen stone of him, secured the door and plonked a packet of condoms on the table between them.
Pre
-coital depression set in.
    â€˜Did you see him?’ She couldn’t keep the jangled anxiety out of her voice. ‘Did you see Jack?’
    â€˜After our harried communication in the court cells in which you begged me to go to an address in Clapham to verify the existence of your son, I perambulated to the designated rendezvous as promptly as decorum would allow—’
    â€˜Yes! Yes!’ Peregrine’s concupiscent