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

‘I make them balanced meals!’

‘Yeah, you give them dark and white chocolate! Not to mention the nagging over homework.’

‘That Lego I bought them was very educational.’

‘Yes. You spent six hours building a space craft with rotors and working moon modules while I took the kids to the park. And that was five years ago.’

‘But you’re such a great mum, Cass. Of course a dad should have a say in his children’s upbringing and welfare, but what he should say is “Your mother is right”.’

My anxieties had grown too big for me to laugh. They were sumo anxieties by now. ‘I’m also always the one who has to take a day off when the kids are sick.’ I hated the shrewish tone to my voice, but I couldn’t stop my complaints from piling up on top of each other, like a Chinese acrobatic group. ‘Why am I the only one who can find a lost library book or football boot?’ It was as if someone else had written the words and I was merely miming – a marital karaoke with the banality of a pop song.

‘I do things . . .’

‘Rore, I’ve been waiting two months for you to put together that new Ikea bed we bought for Jamie.’

‘I’ll do it, okay? I’m a man – I love rising to vacuous challenges.’

I looked at my husband. This was as meaningless as Republicans saying that they were going to do something about global warming.

‘But when? Why don’t you do it today? And you could wash up while you’re at it. Plates don’t levitate, clean, into cupboards of their own accord, you know.’

‘Boy, it’s so nice to see you so positive this morning.’

‘Hey, I like to start out right.’ Once, Rory’s flaws had made me feel more tender towards him, a little ache of attraction and affection. Now these same endearing foibles had my skin crawling with irritation.

My husband got up from the table and wrapped his muscular arms around me. ‘Of course I’ll help, chicken. You go off and have a nice time.’

I had been about to forgive him, but these words froze me in my tracks. ‘Nice time? I won’t be having a “nice time”. I’ll be doing the food shopping.’ This was my ‘day off’ so of course I was taking the kids for hair cuts, dropping one off at dance class and the other at tennis, stopping by the dry cleaners, renting videos, buying garden fertilizer, filling up the car with petrol, selecting Rory’s brother’s birthday present, renewing my pill prescription and then depositing the kids at various parties, Ten Pin Bowling and Rock Climbing, and at absolute opposite ends of the city. The thing that drives a mother mad, is driving her offspring everywhere. ‘And I expect you to clean up while I’m away too, okay? I was going to say this house is a pigsty, but no self-respecting pig would set a trotter in here!’

Judging by the peculiar odour emanating from under the couch, herds of wildebeest had obviously gone there to die. Or maybe it was just the smell of our relationship rotting. But then my husband said a surprising thing. ‘Of course, angel.’ And blew me a kiss goodbye.

The cockles of my heart, not to mention other parts of my anatomy, warmed. I couldn’t wait to tell Jasmine how wrong she was. Rory wasn’t autistic or emotionally inarticulate. I had complained, he had listened, compromised and changed. He was sensitive and caring and my darling and there was absolutely no need to put this marriage to the sword.

Three and a half hours later I was back, laden down with bags of groceries. I could hear the music blaring from two blocks away. As I struggled into the house, the throb of the amplifier rattled my bone marrow. I’d dropped the bags in the hall and burst into the sitting room to see Rory gyrating manically. My husband is the Jimi Hendrix of air-guitardom. He knows all the various stances. He can play on his back, behind his head. The man can play with his teeth. He once sold an air guitar on ebay for £50.

Using my pot-plants as the other band members, a lampstand for a mic, and the mirror as an adoring audience, he was belting out the lyrics to ‘Smoke on the Water’ whilst giving himself a bad case of thrash.

Needless to say, the house did not look like the model home I’d envisaged. It looked more like an SAS training ground. The dirty plates were still underneath the couch and the Ikea bed remained in its flat-pack at his feet. Rory wasn’t even embarrassed when he saw me standing in the door, but just strummed his invisible guitar even more enthusiastically, dropping to his knees at one point for a particularly harrowing solo.

I felt it might be time to share with him a wife’s most handy household hint: that a husband’s bloodstains can be effectively removed from carpet using a mixture of starch and water.

Surprise, surprise, a fight ensued. There was quite a lot of incredulity on my part i.e.

‘What have you been doing all this time?’

‘Well, I have cleaned up a bit.’

‘Cleaned . . .? Why is it that there can be rutting rats romping across a coffee table, creating a bacteria colony capable of devouring a small child . . . and a man thinks that’s clean? Hmmm?’

There was also quite a bit of sarcasm i.e.

‘What about a Power-Point presentation on whether empty orange-juice cartons belong in the fridge or the bin? Would that help you?’

Quite a lot of open hostility i.e.

‘Any husband’s ass left here on the couch watching sport on the telly for over four hours will be towed away and impounded at the owner’s expense. Am I making myself clear?’

And quite a lot of martyrdom i.e.

‘I suppose I’ll have to do it, just like I do Everything Else.’

Graduating to full martyr mode, I then ripped the plastic off the wooden slats of Jamie’s Ikea