Sisteria by Sue Margolis Page A

babies have this heavenly smell about them?’
    â€˜Yeah, I know, that kind of delicate blend of shit and vomit,’ Beverley said.
    Lance arrived with their second round of kir royales.
    â€˜No,’ Naomi said, picking up her glass and taking a sip, ‘I mean the smell of their skin. It’s so soft and pink. Look, Bev, you wouldn’t breathe a word of this, would you? If the press find out they’ll have a field day, but I’ve even been seeing a shrink. I know how hard I can be and Renate’s been brilliant at forcing me to confront my feelings about Mum. I mean, getting angry in therapy is so different from getting angry with people in the office. It’s just so cathartic, you wouldn’t believe it.’
    â€˜Does all this mean you’re ready to do some emotional bridge-building with Queenie, then?’ asked Beverley. ‘Originally I thought that’s why you got us together. She’s dying to see you. It’s been ages.’
    â€˜I know. It’s unforgivable of me to have left it this long. I’ll give her a ring, Bev, as soon as I’ve got an hour or six to kill - I promise.’
    Beverley laughed.
    â€˜That would be wonderful,’ she said gently, taking her sister’s hand again.
    There was a pause while Naomi gathered her thoughts.
    â€˜Look, getting back to the surrogacy,’ she said, ‘you know, I wouldn’t expect you to do it for nothing...’
    â€˜Heavens, Nay. If I agreed I wouldn’t want paying. It didn’t even occur to me.’
    â€˜Well, it occurred to me. Look, I’ve got a fair idea how things are financially with you and Melvin, and I thought two hundred and fifty sounded about right...’
    Without thinking, Beverley let out an uncharacteristically sardonic laugh.
    â€˜Great,’ she said, ‘that should just about cover the milk bill.’
    â€˜Bloody hell, how far does it go back - 1485?’
    â€˜No, June.’
    â€˜Hang on. I think we’re at cross-purposes here. I mean two hundred and fifty thousand .”
    Beverley sat blinking at her sister. It was a few seconds before she could speak.
    â€˜What, as in a quarter of a million?’
    â€˜The very same.’
    â€˜Pounds?’
    â€˜No, cocktail gherkins, you dope. Yes, of course pounds.’
    Beverley knocked back the rest of her kir in one gulp.
    ***
    While Beverley was on the Tube, still desperately trying to take in the enormity of what she was being asked, not to mention offered, Benny Littlestone was sitting on his bed, ripping into a pile of bubble packs and tipping their contents on to his duvet: one twenty-five-millimetre butterfly hose clip, six thirty-two-millimetre rubber washers, twelve clear plastic shower curtain rings and half a dozen inlet hose washers.
    He picked up a couple of the inlet hose washers and gave a short soft laugh. Why on earth had he bought them? They had a diameter of less than half an inch. They wouldn’t fit over his middle finger, let alone his penis. A thirty-two-millimetre rubber washer, being lightweight and slightly stretchy, might on the other hand be just the business. He would try it much later when his sister wasn’t around and everybody was asleep.
    He turned back to the print-out Lettice had given him last week from the Foreskin Reclamation Web site.
    The six pages of information and instructions had been written by Dr Dwight Lafayette, founder of the San Francisco-based foreskin reclamation self-help group, Recover. Lafayette was a Christian vegan and former missionary who had spent much of his professional life converting ‘primitive peoples’ to Christianity. Having spent thirty years watching members of African tribes distend various body parts with the aid of weights, he had become an expert in the art, and on the plane home to the US after retiring from his post had a vision of the Almighty standing by him in the aisle commanding him to apply what he