Foetal Attraction Read Online Free PDF Page A

driving gloves.’
    Maddy, against her better instincts, found herself intrigued. Gillian was a rich, handmade, dark-centred chocolate which was proving irresistible. ‘You’ve lost me.’
    ‘Good car means good cash flow.’ Gillian examined her full canteen of knife-sharp red nails and shuddered. ‘One must be rich enough never, ever to have to do any housework. As Daddy used to say, the only bucket a woman should ever handle is the one with the champagne in it. And what’, Gillian folded her arms across her Armanied breast and leant forward intimately, ‘about you? Doesn’t your mother want you to find a suitable husband?’
    The remote bits of animal anatomy that Plum had dismembered and deep-fried were now doing the rounds of the class. Teaspoons were provided for samplings. The platter was passed into Maddy’s hands. She scrutinized it with fascinated loathing.
    ‘It’s important in life, gels,’ pontificated Plum in a bad Miss Jean Brodie impersonation, ‘to have new taste sensations.’
    Maddy took a tentative nibble. She chewed meditatively. The offal wasn’t awful at all. If she could stomach such a zoological experiment, Maddy rationalized, she could stomach Ms Gillian Cassells. Swallowing, she turned to her neighbour. ‘I think Mum would be pleased if I found an
un
suitable one.’
    ‘And?’ Gillian insisted. ‘Is there a Mr Right?’
    ‘Well, I’ve encountered endless Mr Wrongs. One or two Kinda OKs and a couple of Everyone-Else-Has-Gone-Home-So-You’ll-Have-To-Dos.’
    ‘Haven’t we all?’ Gillian brayed. The other women at their preparation bench issued curt ‘ssh’ noises and exchanged sideways glances.
    ‘Until …’
    Gillian’s eyes lit up eagerly. ‘Spit it out. Name, rank and bank account number.’
    Plum was now beating a pudding mixture with a hypnotic regularity. Maddy found it surprisingly soothing. ‘He’s a naturalist. On the telly.’
    ‘Oh,
him
. That diving-into-piranha-infested-rivers type? Exciting.’
    ‘It’s not
that
exciting. It just means he’s either in the television studio or away a lot.’
    ‘Rich?’
    ‘No. Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
    ‘Well, what the dickens do you see in the man?’
    An oven buzzer rasped. The students craned forward. Plum held aloft a tray of accordion-pleated pastries. A warm cinnamon scent penetrated the room, sweet and intoxicating. The smell of bruised coffee beans and warm cake prevailed over all other odours. The copper pots and flan pans no longer looked lethal, but friendly, jockeying for position on the bulging walls with rows of round-bellied preserving jars. The rain pattering on window panes added to the cosiness inside. Maddy leaned back and thought lovingly, tenderly of her darling. ‘His curiosity, his politics, his passion and his lips,’ she answered.
    ‘Mmm,’ Gillian’s brow raised sceptically, ‘sounds as though he’s got everything but the duelling scar.’
    ‘His determination, his humour, his impetuosity …’ It’d been weeks since she’d had any Girl Talk. Maddy couldn’t contain her urge to confide. ‘And the fact that the sex is to die for. Saturday, we made love for three hours and the only position I recognized was standing up backwards.’
    ‘Ah yes, taking the phallic cure. Know it well.’
    The sample tray of cinnamon slices, macaroons and meringues reached their table. All sophistication faded, as Saskia and Clarissa and Octavia, flicking crumbs and licking fingers, fell gluttonously upon the food.
    Gillian seized two cakes, one in each hand. ‘I imagine you’re so in love you’ve lost your appetite?’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Maddy snatched one from between her companion’s varnished talons. ‘I’m in love … but I’m not
that
in love.’
    All week long, in between snipe-trussing, pheasant-plucking, steak-tartaring, tongue-potting and vol-au-venting, Gillian Cassells took Maddy on a guided tour of
her
love life. There was Archibald, whose underpants