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

all over my chin and a nipple tassel between my teeth. ‘Where’s the International Man of Mystery? Why isn’t he here to celebrate?’

‘Amnesty mission to Darfur. Part of his ongoing Wife Avoidance Programme,’ she told me. ‘I may not have cancer, Cassie, but I’m still in the terminal stages of a lengthy disease called wedlock.’ She paused to pour me a glass of Krug Rosé, pilfered from her husband’s cellar. ‘Side-effects? Self-loathing and excessive alcohol intake.’

‘Well, it must be contagious because I seem to have the same symptoms.’ I glugged down the exquisite vintage vino. ‘Yep. We’re both so happily married, except for one thing – our husbands.’

When Jazz suggested all wives put crushed glass in their hubby’s coffee, I dazzled my sozzled self by replying how that really would be grounds for divorce.

Jazz raised a shapely brow. ‘Divorce? Oh no. I’m not divorcing.’

‘But . . . but I thought . . .’

‘It takes a superhuman effort to demolish a marriage, sweetie. And the time is never right. Studz’s mother is sick, Josh’s A level exams are coming up. Divorce would be so damaging to Joshie. Why should a child born in love be condemned to . . .’ she lit up a cigarette and launched a halo of smoke ceiling-ward, ‘. . . seeing his mother pouring concrete down the loo and stealing the light bulbs.’ Recoiling from the image, Jazz tucked her long legs, which were slinkily clad in black leather trousers, under her on the sofa. ‘Eeeeew. No way.’

‘But I’ve just come round to the idea of divorce,’ I said. ‘I mean, we’ve both stayed put in the one position for so long, that marital deep vein thrombosis has set in. We need the psychological version of support stockings.’

‘No. What we need are frequent-flier miles for surviving the journey – frequent-flier points in the form of a lover. Studz said that the grim reality of his operating table had left him etherized. Well, I’ve been left etherized too – on my marital bed. I’m going to take his advice and just go and have affairs to feel alive again.’

‘Revenge fucking?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Crikey. Won’t you feel guilty? I feel guilty about everything. I just know one day they’ll find out it was me who stole the teacher’s peanut butter sandwich in Year Two and my life on the run will finally be at an end.’ I extracted the cigarette from between my friend’s painted talons and extinguished it with a hiss in her half-empty champagne glass. ‘I’m pretty sure that guilt is to adulteresses what lung cancer is to smokers.’

Jazz’s mouth, lipsticked bright orange with bravado, broke into a bitter smile. ‘My husband cheats on me with everything that walks and now I’m going to have my revenge by fucking the pool boy. Gosh. Perhaps one day I’ll be flooded with remorse,’ she concluded sarcastically, shrugging a black cashmere cardigan over her naked shoulders.

I looked at my friend in amazement. After her brush with mortality, there was a new flinty exterior to her. Curled on the couch in her black clothes, she looked like a comma. And passers-by would pause when they saw her and catch their breath.

‘The best thing about being a woman . . .’ she hesitated while her lips took a brief hiatus to light up another fag.

‘Is never having to make a best man speech?’ I guessed. ‘. . . is that we live longer than our partners and can spend all their money. Which is why I’m staying married, but cooking all Studz’s food in double cream and not draining the fat off his bacon. I’m feeding him up like a Strasbourg goose. After his coronary, I’ll buy a Home Autopsy Kit so I can check for myself if the creep actually has a heart. However, until he’s dead and buried, you’re going to have to cover me for any clandestine carnal activities.’

‘Oh, a dream come true. What I’ve always wanted to be – an under-the-covers agent.’ I squirmed. ‘Do you honestly think an affair is the answer?’

‘Affairs may not be the answer, sweetie, but it sure as hell will help you forget the question.’

‘Which is?’

‘Why the fuck did I ever marry that pig?’

To illustrate her point, the phone rang. ‘No, he’s not home. But do give him a disease for me, will you?’ Jazz suggested in a vinegary voice before ringing off. ‘It’s that patient of his – the expert on Sylvia Plath. You see? They even ring him at home now.’ Her green-gold eyes glinted with tears. ‘It’s so hard not being loved, Cassie. I just don’t want to feel dead any more. Yes!’ she rallied. ‘Just look on me as a mortician, sweetie. I can’t bring my marriage back to life, but at least I can make it look better.’

‘So don’t get mad, get bad. Is that your new motto? But where exactly are you going to find this hot–to-trot lover of yours?’

Jazz poured herself some more Krug in a clean glass. ‘I dunno. Internet chat rooms, dating agencies, ads . . .’

‘Relying on the kindness of passing serial killers?’

‘You’re right,’ she said with a taut laugh. ‘Much better to stay unhappily married with no sex-life and contract cancer from being so bloody miserable.’

She pointedly twirled a nipple tassel. It seemed that her mammogram had in fact been a telegram from Mother Nature – a wake-up call to live.

‘The hardest thing about middle age, sweetie, is that we grow out of it,’ she said wistfully. ‘Tonight, I’m going online to see what I can bait.’

A few days later, when I told Hannah that Jazz had found a potential lover, she nearly drowned. We were in our weekly aquarobics class, splashing around energetically to a wavery tape of ‘Let’s Get Physical’. Once Hannah had been given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from a lifeguard and the jets of water had ceased erupting from her nose, my well-groomed friend defied her Botox and raised her eyebrows higher than her hairline.

‘The clitoris is clearly the least intelligent part of the female body. So why is Jasmine thinking with it?’

‘Jazz says