Nip 'N' Tuck (17 page)

Britney, seated on a makeshift podium next to Sven, crossed her legs in an effort to distract. Her skirt hem disappeared underneath her armpits – along with the investigative brain capacity of every man present.

Two henchmen materialized. I pushed into the ladies’ loos and splashed my face with cold water. Why was Hugo involved with these charlatans, I wondered, as a malfunctioning hand-dryer sucked my arm in up to the elbow. And why hadn’t he told me he’d chosen them above his marriage? My husband was treating me like a side dish he hadn’t ordered.

Flummoxed, I collapsed on to the loo. I was sniffing back tears when Britney Amore shoved her way into my cubicle. ‘Hey!’

‘God
damn
it to hell. How many times do I have to flush before you’ll go away?’ she demanded, in a voice like acid.

‘Haven’t you got any fan-mail to go forge?’ I managed to retort.

‘Stop trying to sabotage our project.’ She loomed over me.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t play dumb with me.’ She raised her tangerine-coloured brows, ruthlessly plucked into two cynical arches. ‘I’m much better at it.’

‘Who
are
you?’ I asked the not-quite-as-famous-as-she-used-to-be actress, who was not quite as stupid as I’d imagined.

She levelled a chilling stare on me. ‘I’m a shareholder in this clinic. And so is your hubby. There’s no way the Longevity Clinic will work without Britain’s leading facial surgeon.’ She lazily half closed her lids, an insolent set to her lower lip.

Had she deliberately seduced my husband? In that case my mistake had been to think she was a bimbo. She wasn’t. She was a praying mantis in Prada. Let’s face it, it takes a lot of intelligence to look that stupid. I took aim with the best ammunition I had. ‘Do you know Sven’s sleeping with my sister? And has been since before you got engaged?’ I revealed triumphantly.

She shrugged. ‘So what? It helped Sven persuade your sister’s little bunny to sell her eggs in time for Easter. Once Marrakech is signed, he’ll have her flash-in’ her gash for a men’s mag in no time.’ I felt momentarily unable to contribute to the conversation.

‘Well, one thing’s clear,’ I finally responded. ‘You’re definitely never going to be a character actor – because YOU DON’T HAVE ANY. I don’t know what my husband sees in you.’

‘Well, he’ll be seein’ it more regularly, hon, unless you get with the programme.’

Curiously, I began to feel sorry for Hugo and his entanglement with this woman. Enter Britney’s vaginal zone and you could just vanish; never to be heard from again. She was the Bermuda pubic triangle.

As Britney Amore sashayed her way out of my toilet cubicle, pausing only to reapply a slick of magenta lip-gloss, I tried to steady myself against the basin. Moments later, as I hurtled, pell-mell, in a toe-stubbing flurry down the hall, I realized that the only difference between a Hollywood actress and a piranha is the silicone implant.

19

A Stitch in Time – Now That Really
Would
Have Confused Einstein

THERE IS NO
law of gravity in Harley Street. Skin sags upwards. You know how they do cosmetic surgery? Basically they just drag everything up: the ankle becomes the knee, the knee becomes the navel, the clitoris becomes the chin. The way to spot a recipient of cosmetic surgery is to look for a woman who’s rubbing her jaw a little bit too vigorously.

When I found my sister she was on the fourth floor, surrounded by the film crew, stretched out on a hospital trolley, clad in a white surgical gown and shower cap rehearsing for the ‘before’ segment of the promotional video. Standing over her was the new potentate of plastic surgery, Hugo Frazer, who was skilfully marking up her face and neck in black felt-tip pen, like a designer’s instructions for a tailor. Carnationed button-hole, bow-tie, black jacket, pinstriped trousers. Really, the man should have been struck off for serious sartorial misconduct, i.e. impersonating a prat doctor.

Hugo rustled up a defiant smile. ‘So, oh … what do you think of the clinic?’

‘Well, it’s, um …’ catching him in the act like this had left me dumbfounded ‘… clean, isn’t it?’ I said, proving that little escapes me in architectural matters.

Hugo moved around the bed taking Victoria’s pulse and temperature with cool efficiency.

‘God, all that medical training, all that expertise, and here you are staple-gunning excess facial flesh to the back of brainless heads. Vick, instead of having bits of your body cut off, hey, why not add bits
on
?’ I suggested, desperate to make her see the surreality of the scenario. ‘Another nose for when the first one gets sinusitis? A spare vagina to use after child-birth? Why not just have all your body parts attached to Velcro so you can take them on and off as they go in and out of fashion?’

‘Don’t start, Lizzie. Roll tape!’ My sister cued the camera man. ‘I’m only having a little bit of Restylane and Hylaform to fill in all these little grooves and hollows.’ She ran her fingers over her beautiful face. ‘Plus a chin implant … My chin is too far back. It should be in line with my upper lip.’ The camera man moved in for a close-up. ‘They make an incision by the lower teeth, saw open the jaw then move the chin forward and pin it into place. So I might as well have the cheek implants at the same time, to make them higher.’

‘Is that
it
?’ I asked, with flabbergasted sarcasm. ‘Or is there some other
little
thing?’

‘Well, while I’m under, I might as well have some abdominal lipo.’ She slapped her taut tummy. ‘To get rid of some of this beastly fat.’

Beastly? She made it sound as though she needed a whip and a chair to tame it. A line-tamer. Hugo would have that fat jumping through hoops and standing on its hind legs in no time.

‘It hurts a bit, ’cause of the bruising on your muscles,’ she said to the camera. ‘But it’s quite economical because I can freeze the unwanted fat for reinjection into my cheeks later on. All minimally invasive.’

I was staring at her, dismayed. At least I now knew that blondes don’t always have more fun.

‘God, if that’s minimal I’d hate to see maximal. Soon only about one per cent of you will actually be
you
. Just a pube or two and the odd eyeball. You’ll be silicone from tits to toenails.’

‘Sven suggested that it might be time for a little remodelling.’

God, how I longed for a semi-automatic weapon or perhaps a small nuclear device to blow the whole hideous Longevity Clinic sky high.

‘Sven’s only using you to get at Marrakech. Britney admitted it.’

‘Of
course
she’d say that. She’s jealous of me.’

‘He’s convinced Marrakech to sell her eggs. Designer genes. Did you know about this, Hugo?’ I dodged his steps from one side of the bed to the other.

My husband shrugged imperiously. ‘It’s a celebrity-obsessed world, Elisabeth. If we can help increase the chance of reproducing beautiful children, giving them a huge advantage in society, why should I feel guilty about that?’

‘Because it’s unethical.
Doktor Mengele
.’

‘It’s Darwin’s natural selection at its very best. The highest bidder gets youth and beauty.’ The nurses and PR reps were listening to him with grave courtesy, nodding heads bent respectfully. ‘People are only interested in looking at the beautiful. Just turn on your television any night and see for yourself.’

If he’d meant to wound me, he’d succeeded. ‘I
know
,’ I said bitterly.

Hugo tapped his wristwatch. ‘Well, if you good people would excuse me, I have a surgery to run.’ He turned and paced swiftly down the corridor.

I ran after him. Alone with Hugo at the lift well, I grabbed his sleeve and looked at him imploringly. ‘Have you lost all respect for yourself?’

‘Elisabeth, for the first time I actually
have
respect. For the first time, I have the surgical support I need. For the first time I’m going to be properly paid for what I do. Stop asking so much of me, Lizzie.’

‘So
much
? It’s not like I’m asking you to slay a dragon or pull a sword out of a stone. All I’m asking is that you don’t throw away your reputation.’ This had the same deterrent effect as an activist on a tank in Tiananmen Square. ‘They’re nothing without you,’ I persevered. ‘Just a cowboy clinic. Did you ever think that Britney may have come on to you just to entice you into business?’

His stethoscope, I noted, was now looped around his neck like a noose. But, when my husband turned disdainfully on his heel and strode off to scrub up, I realized that
I
was the highly strung one – strung out to dry.

Staggering in a half-stupor towards the fire exit, the cold blade of reality sliced into me: my husband no longer loved me. It was as obvious as a pre-1990 nose job.

20

All Stressed Out With No One To Kill

THINK NEGATIVE AND
you have nothing to lose. It was my New Year resolution. I made it a week late, all alone, crying in my bathroom, the kids tucked up asleep in my bed – while the cave-like echo of the empty house sent a chill through my heart. Hugo was always working now. He was doing so many operations, it must be like drive-through breast augmentations over there at the Longevity Clinic – McBoob and Co.

What happened to the tender, sensuous man I’d married? The closest I got to sex now was a nice pat-down from a security guard when I went for job interviews at television stations. My favourite sexual fantasy was –
a partner
. I was so lonely I’d taken to sexually harassing myself. With Hugo’s transformation I lost the star I was following and, with it, my sense of immunity. I felt imprisoned by inferiority and the plain, cold fear that I was about to forfeit my family life. My husband’s love was simply fading away, like the end of a pop song on the radio.

I became short-tempered with the children. ‘I want you to come down for breakfast in five minutes or before your mother is institutionalized, whichever comes first!’

I became short-tempered with my husband on the odd evening Hugo actually turned up in time for dinner. ‘We are going to be a happy, close-knit family unit, even if I have to hog-tie each and every one of you to this damn table.’

Not that my domestic skills were worth coming home for. I developed a tendency to soak baking trays instead of scrubbing them. I soaked them for up to two weeks at a time. Every sponge cake I made had to be rebuilt with toothpicks. In fact, the kids were often left to forage for food while I took to zigzagging around Harvey Nix buying leopardskin hot-pants I was way too old for. My employment prospects were equally forlorn. I was short-listed for a few presenters’ positions but unless you’re a country-and-western singer, crying when drunk doesn’t seem to improve your image. My Prozac prescription refill was programmed into Hugo’s secretary’s speed dial. Taken with alcohol it soothed my stretched nerves, but then I became paralysed by the boredom. I was the Monarch of Ennui – Ennui the Eighth I am, I am.

I tried to turn to my sister for emotional support, but she was preoccupied with her recovery. My sibling now had a body more preserved than Lenin’s. Her vivid purple neck and the mouldy rainbows of her eyes gave her a Bride of Frankenstein countenance. The first time I saw her without bandages, her face like an overworked play-doh, my jaw hit my chest. ‘Um, was anybody else hurt in the accident?’

‘So, what do you think?’ she said, tilting her head. Her eyes seemed to be on the sides of her head, like a fly. She also looked perpetually amazed. Basically my sister’s face-lift had given her the look of an insect who’d just seen a very big dick.

‘What am I lookin’ at exactly?’ Cal quizzed, perplexed, leaning against the kitchen door, sipping Earl Grey.

‘Marrakech’s university fees, right there, on her stupid face,’ I explained, pointing to Victoria’s uplifted cheeks and chiselled chin.

I tried turning to Cal, but he had also changed. He’d left university and gone back to working on a building site. It was nihilism by numbers.

‘Labouring?’ I screwed up my nose when he’d told me.

‘Yes. Just imagine,’ he said flippantly, ‘soon that island in the Aegean will be mine!’

One frosty winter’s morning I caught him at the back of my garden, about to barbecue his novel. I galloped down the path in my pyjamas and knocked the match out of his hand. ‘Calim! Don’t you dare! Okay, when you started writing you stunk. But now you stink much better!’ I hazarded a smile.

‘Lizzie, I have raised writing to a new low.’

‘That’s not true! Your novel is excellent … though you may need to trim a few thousand pages. You’re the best writer on the planet – now that Tolstoy has kicked the bucket.’ I punched his arm.

‘You’re living in a fantasy world.’

‘I do
not
live in a fantasy world. If I lived in a fantasy world, I wouldn’t get cystitis … And my lovely husband, my darling Hugo, wouldn’t be leaving me,’ I shivered.

‘You’ve got him on a pedestal, Lizzie. The only time a man should be put on a pedestal is when he’s too short to change the lightbulbs.’

‘Well, the woman
you
love has obviously got you
under
a pedestal. Hugo has promised me he isn’t cheating and—’

‘With a mind like a steel sieve, you believe him. I didn’t realize you had such a rugged determination to lose, Lizzie. That’s
my
job.’

‘I
won’t
lose. I will not let it happen. It wouldn’t be fair on the children.’

‘Who said anythin’ about life bein’ fair? Was it fair the way you got the sack? Is it fair that your husband is off ridin’ some actress? Is it fair that the woman I adore more than my own life won’t love me back?’

My best friend had bought a one-way ticket on the Dis-orient Express and it was all my fault. If it weren’t for me, he would never have become infatuated with my superficial sister.

He struck another match across the box.

‘Listen, Calim Keane, I know you better than anyone. I’ve known you at least since the Palaeolithic period. You are not a shallow, cynical person. Don’t do this.’

He paused. ‘Hmmm. You say “shallow” as though that’s a
bad
thing. As for “cynical”, you go round pretendin’ to be happily married … yet spend all your time moanin’ about him. You simply
must
pop down the shop and pick up some more salt for that wound, Lizzie!’