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

get away with it. If I wrote an autobiography it’d be called It’s Time To Take a Good Hard Look at Your Pathetic Excuse of a Life, You Bloody Idiot.

I kept my eyes on the wall behind him which was painted institutional beige and, as he ranted, found myself pondering what subjects he’d been good at teaching before his inexplicable rise to Headmaster? Cringing and Quaking perhaps? Torture Techniques? My parting gift would be a sign for his office which would read You don’t have to be a misogynistic, misanthropic bastard to work here, but it helps.

After Scroope had ushered me from his sight, no doubt so that he could play some more with his gun collection, I thunked my head against the wall. But the school and all its tribulations might as well have been on Pluto. They seemed so paltry by comparison to the rest of my woes. I had lost my husband’s heart. And embarrassed my daughter, which meant I’d practically thrown her into Bianca’s sinister embrace. I had a feeling that the light at the end of the tunnel was from a train. And I was tied to the tracks.

19. I’m Having My Period So Can Therefore Legally Kill You

‘He’s bonking his therapist? You’re kidding. Where do they make love? On her couch? After fifty-five minutes does she say, “Your time is up”?’

‘It’s not funny, Jazz. I tell you though, if things get any w . . . w . . . worse, I’ll have to ask you to stop h . . . h . . . helping me,’ I sobbed.

After school, I’d shoved some money at Jamie and Jenny and dropped them at McDonald’s, cursing myself for being such a bad mother. Guilt gland throbbing, I recalled how I’d asked the doctor the day Jamie was born to wake me after the Caesarean – when he was oh, say seven. But the guilt wasn’t enough to stop me from abandoning them to a McShit meal while I careered to Jasmine’s.

She was showing another property valuer around. Apparently, Studz wanted yet one more house evaluation for insurance purposes. Lately, estate agents were constantly coming and going in their black, shark-like cars.

‘Here,’ Jazz said to me. ‘Drink this while I get rid of this guy.’ She plonked a stiff gin and tonic on the kitchen table, rescued her freshly baked bread out of the oven, then turned her attentions to the sharp-suited salesman.

‘So, before you go,’ she said pointedly to him, ‘just out of interest, how much do you think I’d get for the place?’

‘Oh, the house is worf free mill, easy. No doubt ’bout that. It’s a fine property. Georgian masterpiece. State-of-the-art kitchen, magnificent spiral staircase, underground swimming pool, unique double height wood-panelled library, bewdifully presented.’ He spoke like a brochure as he gazed admiringly at the crystal decanters, the neat piles of Christies’ catalogues, the gleaming grand piano. This house had been Jazz’s labour of love.

‘Gosh! You’d certainly get a juicy commission, wouldn’t you? If I wanted to sell, that is,’ Jazz small-talked, opening the hall door in way of a hint. ‘What would you earn on that?’

The ginger-haired man snapped his briefcase shut. ‘Peanuts on this joint, Mrs. It’s owned by the bank.’

Jazz stood as straight as an exclamation mark. ‘What?’

‘Mortgaged up to the hilt, love.’

‘That’s a mistake. We paid it off a decade ago.’

‘Yeah, but then youse remortgaged a few years back and then again recently.’

Jazz barked out a nervous laugh. ‘No, we didn’t.’

‘Well, whoja fink keeps employin’ me to come round ’ere and do the evaluations? I’ll let meself out, shall I?’

‘It must be a mistake.’ She moved after him down the hall.

I hurried to her side. Jazz held onto my arm as though she were drowning. Before she could find her feet, Studz padded into the kitchen from the basement swimming pool. He was as taut and trim as a tennis pro.

‘Oh, look who’s here. That heroic champion of the underdog.’ Jazz’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she marched back down the hall. I instinctively ducked out of sight into the living room. ‘I’ve just had a very interesting chat with that valuation chap who tells me that you’ve remortgaged our home. Is this true?’

‘Yes. Actually it is,’ he replied calmly. ‘I needed more money to fund my new invention . . . I’ve got a team working on an anti-ageing serum. Far more effective than collagen. That’s what’s taking all my money. It’s also taking longer than I thought to perfect. We’ve been conducting trials in Africa. But there have been a lot of setbacks and side effects . . .’

‘You’re using your poorest patients as guinea pigs?’

‘Why not? I’ve done enough for them. Now they can do something for me.’

‘I thought you preferred the prestige of helping the underprivileged?’

‘Yes, yes, I have cachet. Now I want cash. But I need to spend it to make it. Hence the re-mortgaging.’

I saw Jazz reel as though he’d hit her. ‘And you did this without consulting me? What am I? A child? But wait. The house is in both our names! I paid the bloody down payment, when you were still a junior doctor.’

‘Remember those papers I asked you to sign once, when I was rushing to the airport? They weren’t insurance papers. They were papers granting me emergency signature rights.’

Jazz bent double as though winded from the punch. ‘This is my home! Don’t you care about your family? Your son?’

‘It will be good for him to grow up the hard way, like I did. I didn’t have anyone holding my hand . . .’

‘Yes, you did! You had me! Me, for all those fucking years. How can you do down your own son? It’s sick. It’s insane.’

Studz still didn’t know I was in the house. I tried to think of a good excuse to leave, like, ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve gone into labour!’ But then the phone shrilled. Jazz snatched it up from its cradle. ‘Look,’ she barked into the receiver, ‘he’s got no money. You might