Neurotica Read Online Free PDF Page A

fortune.”
    “I'll tell you why. I've got orders coming out of my ears,
but I can't keep up, because I've got no staff, one rotten sewing
machine in a flat not much bigger than a pair of Christina Aguilera's panties, not to mention fucking Goering here making
twenty-four-hour-a-day territorial demands on my tits.”
    Anna, being an accountant's daughter, couldn't see the
problem. Once Brenda had got Alfie on the bottle and into day care,
all she needed to do was form a company, write a business plan,
find a backer to put up half the money she needed and her bank
would probably lend her the rest.
    “God, what planet do you live on? Find a backer? You may not
be aware of this but you don't find too many ordinary daddies
sticking around in Peckham—let alone sugar ones.”
    Driving home to Blackheath, with Josh asleep in his carrycot
on the backseat and Dire Straits on the cassette player, Anna began
running through a list of people who she thought might be able to
come up with the kind of cash Brenda needed. In the end she decided
the only person she knew who wasn't up to their eyes in mortgage
repayments and didn't have the ladies from Barclaycard on the phone
every five minutes over late payments was her father. He had the
money from his mother's flat in Brighton sitting in a building
society. But to convince Harry that investing in Brenda's business
would be a sound move, she first had to convince her mother.
       
    A nna spent the next three weeks, in between
breast-feeding Josh, on the phone trying to persuade her mother—directrice
of Maison Gloria in Stanmore (Fabulous Fashions For the Fuller
Figure)—to take a look at Brenda's work.
    Harry had bought Gloria the shop over thirty years ago, when
her need to repeatedly clean things—the Maudsley called it
obsessive-compulsive syndrome—had reached a particularly
worrying phase.
    One Saturday lunchtime, he had come home from synagogue
expecting a nice bowl of borscht before he went off to see
Tottenham. Instead he found Gloria on her knees removing bits of
dirt from between the floorboards with a cotton swab while two of
his best suits were soaking in a bath full of Parazone.
    Her psychiatrist at the hospital suggested to Harry in
private that an outside interest would be a good idea.
    “Funny you should mention it, Dr. Mittelschmertz. I've been
thinking maybe a few gentle rounds of golf now and again would do
me good.”
    Dr. Mittelschmertz grimaced. “I mean for your vife, Mr.
Shapiro, for your vife.”
    Harry began phoning estate agents.
    Maison Gloria seemed to have done the trick. Every day,
Gloria glided around the shop, black velvet pincushion on her
wrist, flogging mauve chiffon evening dresses to size twenty-two
mothers-of-the-bar-mitzvah-boy who couldn't lay off the
cheesecake.
    Anna knew that as far as Harry was concerned, Gloria was
northwest London's answer to Coco Chanel. If Gloria thought Brenda
was worth backing, he wouldn't hesitate to put his hand in his
pocket.
    But persuading Gloria wasn't easy. Every time Anna brought
the subject up, Gloria told her she was mad and obviously suffering
from postnatal depression if she expected her to convince Harry to
invest money in a total stranger—a shikseh no
less—who at best needed a good elocution teacher and at
worst might turn out to be a psychopath, only they wouldn't find
out until they woke up one morning dead in their beds.
    Anna never quite worked out why—maybe her mother could
no longer stand her continual badgering—but finally Gloria
caved in and agreed to schlep over to Peckham.
    “There'll be dirt and litter and people in Acrilan. What
should I wear?”
    “Pith helmet and puttees should just about hit the right
note.”
    To placate Anna further she even took a present for
Alfie.
    Gloria decided that as Brenda had been brought up in public
housing and her gene pool probably left a lot to be desired, little
Alfie's IQ might need a jump start, and so she bought him a
times-tables tape.