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

Even though it was a Sunday, Jazz was waiting in once more for another valuation expert for a second quote on their property for insurance purposes. When I enquired why Studz couldn’t wait in, she replied, ‘Oh, he’s off at Number Ten. Winning some award for his humanitarian work. No doubt they’ll reward him with an even bigger stethoscope.’ But there was a bitter edge beneath her jokey bonhomie. She poured herself a whisky now and downed it in one wincing gulp. ‘Billy’s been invited to a writers’ festival in Australia and he’s asked me to go with him.’

‘If you really are in love, why don’t you just run away with the guy?’

Just then Josh strolled through the kitchen. He was so manly in his build, yet grinned impishly as he handed his mother his washing. There’s a peculiar indeterminacy to teenage boys; Josh was simultaneously childish, yet prematurely adult.

‘He still needs me,’ she shrugged, after he’d sauntered off.

‘And is Studz still cheating on you left right and centre?’

She sighed. ‘Well, he does get a lot of odd calls. You remember that Sylvia Plath expert? She’s just getting bolder and bolder. It’s mind-boggling. She texts him all the time. It’s textual harassment. Stuff like: Was your father an alien? ’Cause there’s nothing like you on earth. She also sends postcards. I know her writing now. ‘What’s your favourite position on extramarital sex?’ She slugged down another hit of Chivas Regal. ‘Which is why I go revenge-fucking. As should you. Billy’s poet mate, Trueheart Jones – isn’t that the best name ever? He’s sooo cute and he really, really fancies you. If anyone could cure you of bore-gasms, it’d be a Trinidadian poet named Trueheart.’

I looked at my best friend in alarm. Dating at forty is like being a teenager again. Then you avoided bright light because it showed up spots. Now because it shows up wrinkles. I was just way, way too old for this. ‘I am not at the age where I grope at parties then rush home and write about it in my diary, Jazz. I couldn’t cheat on Rory. It’s just all so . . . slutty.’

‘Oh really? Well, next time you go to a dinner party, take a close look at the sluts – sorry, married women – sitting around the table. Latest research? Half of them are having affairs. They’re easy enough to spot once you know the telltale signs. She’s given up her trouser suit for a Moschino mini. She’s not eating any carbs. Her arse is two sizes smaller, her tits two sizes bigger. She’s suddenly an expert on things she knew nothing about before – hang-gliding, ghetto rap, Mahler, mountaineering, Tibetan nose flutes – whatever her new lover’s into. Her teeth are as bleached as her hair. Her Manolo-Blahniked legs are now as long as the tales she spins about working late at the office. Having been chronically under-valued, she’s suddenly full of self esteem.’

‘Really?’ Oh God, how I craved letting off some esteem. ‘But I’d be betraying the person with whom I’ve shared my life, my children, my greatest confidences . . .’

‘Yeah, the husband you’re now sharing with your marriage therapist.’

‘Rory is not cheating on me, okay? So he kissed Bianca. Big deal. Maybe it really was just tongue-reiki. Maybe he just does need some time alone. He would never be unfaithful to me.’

‘Get real. Men will shag anything. Including body-temperature pies or tethered, reasonably domesticated livestock. You just have to make him jealous. You’re so pretty, Cass. Our dreams may have collapsed but not our faces. Why don’t you just work out a little more?’

‘Hey, at my age, I just try to be neat and punctual.’ It was my turn to slug down a gulp of acidic Chivas Regal. ‘What I hate about gym classes,’ I gasped, my throat searing, ‘is the instruction to wear loose-fitting clothing. If I had any loose-fitting clothing, I wouldn’t have to come to the gym now would I? But that’s also the reason I can’t have an affair. I mean, say we go to bed at eight? If I stay the night that makes it twelve hours. I just can’t hold my stomach in that long. Besides, what would I say to him?’

‘“My, what an enormous cock you have” seems to work wonders.’

‘I just couldn’t do all the lying and cheating, Jazz, I’d feel like, I dunno, Iago! Anyway, there’s nothing serious going on between them, I know it.’

‘Anything unserious is serious enough. And you can lie. Good God, it’s not like you’re testifying under oath. Look, you weren’t searching for an affair. It’s just that you’re sexually frustrated and emotionally famished.’

Well, that was true. The encounter in the bar lingered in my memory with a crystalline clarity, as though I’d taken a drug which intensifies the senses. The feeling of Trueheart Jones’s hand on my back burned on warmly in my mind. Despite my denials, oh how desperately I wanted to explore the sweet empire of sexual satisfaction.

‘At our age it’s probably wise to stock up. I mean, we never know where the next penis is coming from, right?’

‘Gosh, Jazz, if I’d known I was going to have an affair, I wouldn’t have let my legs grow together,’ I replied facetiously. ‘Besides which, I just don’t have the underwear. Victoria’s Secret is that nobody over size eight can bloody well wear them.’

‘We’ll go to Agent Provocateur. They have lingerie for all sizes.’

‘Actually, I was thinking of something more substantial. Say, a ski suit. Or the Turin Shroud.’

How could I get naked in front of a twenty-nine year old? How could I get naked in front of a strange man for the first time in twenty years? Because that’s the trouble with cheating – sooner or later you have to take off your clothes. Jazz advised me to leave the heating off and the windows open, and then suggest we both undress in bed, because it was soooo cold . . . But what