Sue Margolis - Gucci Gucci Coo

Contents

For my husband, Jonathan,

whos always there when things go wrong for me.

The mans a bloody jinx.

Chapter 1

Ruby Silverman shuffled down the gynecologists table and maneuvered her feet into the stirrups. As she gazed steadfastly at the ceiling and listened for the tart snap of the doctors rubber gloves, she tried to take her mind off what was happening by returning to the game she had been playing in her headseeing how many words she could find in speculum.

So far she had sixcup, mule, plum, clue, lumps and slump. Her seventh, eulum, wasnt a real word, of course, but shed decided to allow it, since it sounded to her like some obscure body part prone to enlargement or inflammation.

Any tenderness here? the doctor asked crisply, pressing down on one side of her abdomen. He had yet to reach the internal part of the examination, but it could be no more than seconds away.

No. Nothing.

Pus! That made seven.

The doctor, whose name shed forgotten, although she knew it was hyphenated, was the archetypal English hospital consultant: late fifties, unkempt eyebrows in urgent need of a trim, expensive but conservative gray suit, ditto the tie, precious little by way of bedside manner.

Usually Ruby placed great value in a doctors bedside manner, but on this occasion, the lack of it didnt bother her. In fact she saw it as a bonus. The idea of a nonboyfriend maneven one who was a gynecologisthaving access to all areas of her body was bad enough; one who was overly charmingor, God forbid, young and good-lookingwould have had her making a bolt for the door.

Because of her reservations about male gynecologists, the doctor she usually saw for her annual nether region checkup was a woman. Dr. Jane Anderson was a forty-something, easy-to-talk-to, mothering soul with untameable hair and a comforting lack of fashion sense. Ruby wouldnt go so far as to say she enjoyed their encounters, but she always felt reasonably comfortable with Dr. Jane. Today, though, she was off sick and Dr. Double Barrel was filling in for her.

Periods regular? It was more of a command than a question.

Yes.

Urination?

Fine.

Bowels moving?

She thought about trying to lighten the atmosphere by replying: Yes, to East Grinstead actually. She decided against it, as Double Barrel didnt appear to be overendowed in the humor department. Instead she just nodded.

Any STDs in the last year?

What? No. Absolutely not.

As Double Barrel carried on prodding and pushing, Ruby abandoned her speculum word game for a minute to consider how odd it was that despite St. Lukes being the trendiest, most progressive private maternity hospital and well-woman clinic in London, its male doctorsor at least this onewere as distant and aloof as in any ordinary hospital. She couldnt imagine chatting away to DB the way she did to Dr. Jane. On the other hand, maybe male gynecologists kept their distance on purpose because they were aware that affability might be misinterpreted.

Whether Double Barrel was the exception or the rule, his manner wasnt stopping women flocking to St. Lukes in Holland Park for all their ob-gyn needs. Since it opened five years ago, it was forever being extolled in the broadsheets and upmarket glossies as the Bentley of birth centers. The upshot was that the number of patients on the hospitals books was growing almost daily.

The maternity unit in particular was hugely popular. Women who wanted natural childbirth instead of being pumped with drugs, along with those who preferred to wanderobstetrically speakingeven farther off the beaten track by opting for the 10,000 birthing pool, doula and champagne breakfast package, were falling over themselves to get into St. Lukes. Because the competition for rooms was so fierce, most women picked up the phone to the admissions department the moment the pregnancy testing stick registered positive.

The way Ruby saw it, St. Lukes patients fell into three categories. First there was the megarich Kabbalah and crystals brigadethe ditzy, enlightenment-seeking British celebs and Hollywood stars living in London who hired shamans (along with the doulas) to be present at the birth and ate their placentasalthough Ruby secretly believed they hired the shamans to eat the placentas.

Then there were the middle-class, organic-vegetable-consuming, Guardian-reading women who liked the idea of St. Lukes being a center of medical excellence as well as progressive. At the same time, though, they felt that paying for medical treatment severely compromised their left-wing principles. They got over this by going to St. Lukes and then writing long, guilt-ridden, but ultimately self-justifying articles in The Guardian.

Finally, there were the ordinary women who didnt have much money to spare, but saved what they could and went without holidays so that they could have their babies at St. Lukes. These were the women who had decided theyd had it up to here with public hospitals and clinics where they were forced to sit for hours on end in grubby green waiting rooms, TV blaring in the corner, carrying a wire supermarket basket containing their underwear, only to be seen by some disinterested junior doctor who barely looked up from his notes and addressed them as if their IQ were lower than their dress size.

Because her parents had struggled financially when she was growing up, Ruby liked to think of herself as one of the people and therefore part of the last group, but these dayseven though she wasnt remotely obsessive about reading the Guardian or buying organic foodshe knew that she had more in common with the second.

RUBY HAD ONLY agreed to see Dr. Double Barrel after the receptionist explained that Dr. Jane was off with a serious virus and she wasnt sure when she would be back. Since Rubys checkup was already overdue because of her summer holiday, she decided to try and overcome her hangup about male gynecologists and take the appointment with DB. Maybe she was wrong about them and they got no more pleasure looking up a vagina than a car mechanic did looking down into an engine through the cylinder head.

Since Double Barrel was seeing Dr. Janes patients as well as his own, he was running late and Ruby had been forced to wait over an hour.

In that time shed drunk three cups of strong black coffee, which had made her feel even more jittery. It had also made her want to pee every twenty minutes. When she went to the loo the last time, there was no paper left and shed had to go rooting around in her bag for tissue.

She also read Hello! magazine. Twice. Like many intelligent women she tried to convince herself that her interest in celebrity gossip was strictly ironic. The truth was she devoured it. Seeing who was pregnant, who had lost or gained weight, cellulite or wrinkles, or who had turned up to a film premiere done up not even like the dogs dinner, but worseas the dogs doggy bagnourished her the way chocolate did before her period. A candid snap of Kates orange peel thighs, a shot of Gwyneths eye bagseven if it was a trick of the lightcould set her up for a whole week.

Rubys fascination with celebrities, however, extended beyond mere curiosity. She had a professional interest. One of the reasons she was especially curious about who had just got pregnant or had a baby was because like St. Lukes, much of Rubys clientele was made up of celebrity mothers.