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

All Rory’s years of rigorous medical training were now being utilized to run pet masturbation workshops for overly sexed cats. (It gave a whole new meaning to ‘Heavy Petting’.) The rest of the time he spent on ‘pet bereavement counselling’. Losing a beloved pet can be as devastating as losing a spouse, Bianca’s brochure blurbed.

No, it couldn’t, I thought acrimoniously.

By the time the kids and I got back to London at the beginning of September, our Kilburn house had a meek, defeated look. Much like me, I thought. I tried to make myself feel at home – until I remembered that’s where I was, goddamn it.

When my husband, as I still thought of him, in the odd proprietorial spasm, came to collect the children for a meal at the local Chinese or a movie, it was like a hospital visit, formal and tense. This is how it went on all through September, borrowing and returning the kids as though they were library books.

Once I was back at North Primrose Primary, supposedly refreshed for a new school year, the octopus tentacles of misery really took their stranglehold. Six months ago, I’d been so blasé about our marriage, but now the wild panic of no longer having Rory made me lose my moorings. Without him, I just failed to add up to a person. A whole person. For a while I thought his attraction to Bianca would pass, but by October I had to face the vertiginous terror of being alone. It was worse late at night, when the silence of my world would roar steadily in my ears. Then I would sit in Rory’s favourite chair, so I could feel his contours in the way the seat moulded under me – and ache for him. I missed the hot rush of his laugh, and his rather gruff adoration. I would sleep in his shirt and cry all night. I even missed the animals. Oh for a pet piranha in the bath; an incubator full of snakes in the airing cupboard; a sabre-toothed llama in the living room.

Stupid little things would ambush me, leaving me tsunamied in tears – the sight of the knee-guard he wore for squash, or stepping on his spearmint dental floss. The worst night was when I went to the flat, at the back of the surgery, to retrieve some books, and there on the floor were a pair of his jeans, the legs pointing out at an angle of half past seven, as if he’d just stepped out of them. Jagged black edges sliced and tore me up. Time fractured, and it was two hours before I could climb the steps back into my house, arms clutched around myself, attempting to contain the dreadful hurt inside.

I tried to sleep but was savaged by nightmares. I shrank from my thoughts as if they were blows. Was it all my fault? I went over and over it in my mind; fingering the rosary of guilt, each bead well worn by my mental touch. Bitter regrets, like ghosts, skulked out of my shadowy subconscious to claim retribution.

I began listening to country and western songs with cheery, up-beat titles like ‘What Can You Expect From A Day That Begins With Waking Up’. I took to tearfully singing ‘Wichita Linesman’ and Tina Arena’s ‘Chains’, in between sloping to the shops wearing slippers, a duffel coat and pyjama bottoms to buy more booze.

I took to cooking with wine – and forgetting to add any food. The warmth of the alcohol sinking into my body was all that would calm the chaos of my heart. Some mornings I was still drunk from the night before. Then I’d have to rummage around my brain for a few remaining cells and attempt to strap them on to a bit of caffeine so I could get to school on time. What a way to start the day, trying to saddle up a coffee bean then ride it round the kitchen. But I couldn’t risk being late.

With the Deputy Head announcement due in November, Perdita had become terminally sycophantic. I was one strike down already. And a second was looming. Raw with lack of sleep and excess emotion, I was not at my best to handle a confrontation with a pushy father.

‘My daughter is in the choir. When I come to the choir performance, will I be able to hear her individually?’

‘Um . . . it’s a choir. They all sing together.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

‘Actually, do you know what’s not good enough? The way you push Lilly. Your daughter is already top of the class, yet you’re always insisting she has more holiday homework; more tutoring; that she’s failing. You’re the one who is failing, Mr Farber. An infant prodigy is nothing more than a rug-rat with an overly ambitious parent.’

If that didn’t get me the sack, nothing would. I had the distinct feeling I’d soon be making both weekends meet.

Sure enough, the next day I received my second written warning. When Scroope called me to his office, he was using his deceptive voice, as mild as a kindergarten teacher. Once the door was closed, he just laughed flatulently. ‘You might have been the Board of Governors’ favourite choice and pet of the Inspectors, but this is just one more reason for me not to promote you. Thank you, Ms O’Carroll.’

I tried to tell myself that it could be worse. I could be a teacher at the Robert Mugabe Charm School. Or the Gary Glitter Dating Academy. But I just sank lower into despair.

I would have booked in for some really serious drinking time, if it hadn’t been for Jazz and Hannah. The best thing about having girlfriends is that when you don’t know what you’re doing, someone else always does. When I stopped answering her calls, Jazz came around and banged on the front door until I opened it, to see two of her standing there. I blinked frantically and reduced the two Jasmines