Mad Cows Read Online Free PDF Page A

tagged. Jack was also strip-searched. ‘Heroin. In the nappy. Major drug route.’
    Make that a Linda McCartney back-up vocal
on an isolated track
.
    She was then assessed by a doctor to see whether or not she was suicidal (In these circumstances it would surely save time to see who
wasn’t
. By now Maddy’s mood was so black you could view an eclipse of the sun through it.) She was ordered to exchange her own dirty clothes for a stylish little piece of prison haberdashery: charity-donated crimplene slacks and a psychedelic tank-top three sizes too big – a fashion statement which could only be described as Albanian.
    Swathed in this fluorescent tarpaulin, she billowed behind her captor, whose hush-puppies echoed squelchily as she marched the length of ‘B’ wing. Jack slept throughout the journey, occasionally jumping in his dreams, as though zapped by invisible electric currents.
    â€˜Wonder what yews are havin’ thrown into your cage for dinner then?’ pondered Maddy’s jaunty companion as they approached the Mother and Baby Unit.
    All that seemed to be on offer was an aperitif of drugs from the medication trolley. It was ‘cocktail hour’. The equivalent to social drinking in prison is a quick gargle with washing-up liquid, a clandestine sniff of bleach lifted from the laundry or a chill-pill. Women, cradling irritable babies, buzzed around the nurse, downing plastic cups of iridescent tranquillizers. Dinner itself consisted of a bread roll, still frozen in the middle, and a bowl of stew which looked to Maddy like the sort of liquid in which frogs would spawn. Pastel animal mobiles rotated half-heartedly beneath the strip-lighting. She took her place at one of a cluster of plastic tables next to a young brunette, cradling a baby about Jack’s age.
    â€˜What beautiful red hair!’ Maddy broke the quizzical silence. ‘Does her dad have red hair?’
    â€˜Dunno. He neva took off his balaclava.’ The other mothers hooted with derision.
    â€˜Oh!’ Maddy retreated. She suddenly had that haemophiliac-in-a-room-full-of-switch-blades feeling. Jack stirred, looking for tucker.
    â€˜I neva wanted anuvver kid,’ chirped a teenager opposite, banging on the bottom of an HP sauce bottle. ‘Tammy’s farver promised he’d only put it in a little way. What’s yer sprog’s name?’
    â€˜Jack.’
    â€˜A
male
,’ the young woman lamented, cheerily. ‘Still, I don’t think we should hold that against him.’
    It didn’t take long to suss out that most of the women in Holloway’s Mother and Baby Unit had been involved with blokes who made Claus Von Bulow look like the perfect husband . . . They were even worse than her heart’s resident ratbag: supersonic sleazebucket, Alexander Drake.
    â€˜Got any putt, gear, blow?’ whispered another mum. ‘Any of yer visitors gunna keep yer sweet?’
    At the appearance of a patrolling male prison officer, all ten mums were suddenly gazing at their babies the way people look at aquariums, tuned into Baby Channel. The screw rapped his knuckles on the table top in front of Maddy. ‘Don’t breastfeed at the table. It’s unhygienic.’
    A rat the size of a football sauntered casually over the bread basket. ‘Sorry.’ Maddy gestured towards her fellow mothers, confident of their support. ‘I thought this was a B.Y.O. establishment.’
    â€˜You’re only breastfeedin’ to turn on the male screws,’ accused Tammy’s mum, emerging from her trance to wrap herself around a stale slice of bread and to cadge a fag.
    â€˜
Nobody
breastfeeds,’snarled the brunette. She stood over Maddy with the thrust-out pelvis of a store mannequin. ‘Ruins yer titties.’
    The officer smiled disparagingly, then flicked Maddy’s tray to the floor. The clank and rattle set all the babies crying simultaneously. ‘Oh, what a