How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints) by Kathy Lette (top 10 novels to read TXT) 📗

could Have It All,’ Jazz continued, ‘but what they really meant was that we can Do It All. Which is why I gave up work.’

‘I don’t Do It All,’ I protested feebly. ‘Rory helps me – he does. Get dressed, Jazz. It’s time to go. Come on!’

‘He helps you, eh?’ Jazz echoed sarcastically as she pulled on trousers, boots, jumper and gloves to face the winter weather. ‘Because the average working mother gets the kids up and off to school, does the housework, finally racing to her job, exhausted, panting, unbreakfasted, with kids’ egg-dribble on her blouse – totally unaware that there was an earthquake in Pakistan. While her husband has read the papers, showered, shaved, listened to the BBC news and arrived at his office, refreshed, relaxed and warmed up for his day – and that’s why you’ve lost your orgasm. Because you’re angry. You’re trapped in a hamster wheel of resentment and recrimination, and subconsciously you begrudge the prick, which is why you’ve stopped enjoying fucking him. It’s just one more bloody demand.’

Jazz straightened up, fully dressed, with nothing left to do but go and confront her awful wedded spouse. ‘Marriage,’ she declared, ‘is the only war in which you have to sleep with the enemy.’ She picked up her orange scarf and lassooed her neck in a noose. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me.

‘Rory is not the enemy!’ I carped. ‘He’s a very hands-on dad, I’ll have you know. He helps me a lot. With the kids, with the cleaning, with the—’

‘And with your career? Aren’t you up for a promotion? Mazel tov!’ Hannah threaded her arms into the satin lining of her coat.

‘Yep. I’ve got a meeting with the Head tomorrow morning.’

‘Well, let’s just see how much the shlemiel helps you get that job.’

I wanted to retaliate, but had no wish to fight with my friends. Would I never be cured of my lack of sass? It was a wonder David Attenborough hadn’t made a documentary on me – half-woman, half-mouse, with the backbone of a jellyfish.

‘Just remember that no wife has ever shot a husband while he was vacuuming,’ were Jazz’s parting words as Hannah left to drive her home from the airport, supposedly all tanned, rested and relaxed.

After they’d finally left, I slumped back against the hall door, exhausted.

Jazz was wrong. My Have It All dream had not turned into a Do It All nightmare. Rory and I were true partners. He did half of everything. He really did . . . Didn’t he?

6. The Working Mother’s Week or ‘Where the Hell’s Your Father?’

Monday morning

The Dunkirk evacuation must have been easier to organize than a working mum getting her kids up and out of the house in the mornings.

7.00 a.m. Start breakfast. Sound alarm call. My kids always know it’s time to get up when they hear me sharpening the toast.

7.10: When they’re still not up, make their beds with them still in it.

7.20: Start sobbing that they can either get up now, or after their mother is institutionalized. Whichever comes first.

Ten minutes later it looks as though my friends will be getting a lot of woven baskets for Christmas.

‘Come on, we’ll be late,’ I beg, running my daughter’s morning bath to ease her eczema.

‘Fish are in schools. And they’re not learning anything,’ my teenage son smart-arses from beneath his duvet.

It crosses my mind that it was so much easier to love your children unconditionally before they learned to speak.

7.23: In desperation, go into Attila the Mum Mode. ‘Get up immediately or I’ll fetch your father! Where the hell is your father?’

‘On the loo,’ they chorus.

After I slip a disc tipping them both out of their respective beds, I find Jenny’s favourite cucumber and grapefruit shampoo with 83 added vitamins, ginger-nut bodywash and super-absorbent towels (two), then track down the cream for Jamie’s wart, plus his fish-oil supplements.

7.30: Stand by sobbing as daughter plays Musical Clothes for the regulation ten minutes before choosing the very outfit I had laid out for her the night before. Informed by son that his uniform is caught between the wooden slats under the mattress of his top bunk.

‘Where the hell’s your father?’ I plead, plaintively.

‘Eating breakfast.’

There’s nothing else for it. Manoeuvre top bunk-bed mattress onto own back so Jamie can retrieve snagged shirt. Catch sight of myself in mirror. Bent double from the weight of the mattress, look like two-legged turtle. Make mental note to go to chiropractor and to remind husband to put together Jamie’s new Ikea single bed bought bloody weeks ago.

7.38: Hurtle into kitchen. Kids enter after me like a rush of wind. A squall of limbs and cacophony of complaints about what they will and won’t eat. An Impi of Zulus doing close order drill would be less noisy than . . . Oh God! No!

7.39: Cereal fight. Bowl hurled at the fan heater. Cereal and milk globules splatter Jackson-Pollock-like, everywhere. Where is a Turner Prize judge when I need one?

‘Where the hell’s your father?’

‘Shower.’

7.42: Trundle out vacuum cleaner. Start to hoover up rice bubbles. Just in time, see escaped guinea-pig. Bend down to coax it to safety. Hair sucked up in hoover nozzle. Now have impromptu perm on one side of head. Will have to teach in profile.

7.46: Dehair shower plug. Will let the water beat down on me for five minutes and tattoo out a soothing rhythm to stave off nervous breakdown. Turn on taps. Shriek. Water arctic. Thank you, Rory. Fucking hell! Bloody bugger it! Shit! Shit! Shit! Slip on puddle because husband has showered with plastic curtain outside bathtub.

7.50: Taking cold sponge bath with a flannel when daughter barges in. Needs cake for school fête. Oh fab. All the other mothers will have been up all night baking and all I have in the cupboard is a novelty, anatomically correct Gingerbread Man left over from the school librarian’s hen night. Oh, and could I rustle up a few wood-nymph costumes for today’s school play while I’m