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

at college. Love is the dirtiest four-letter word. Marriage is to love, what thermal underwear is to sex. We are soooo much better off without it.’

Hannah merely grunted. My two best friends were conversationally circling each other like wrestlers.

‘When a woman runs off with your husband, there is no better revenge than to let her keep him! Just remember Lot’s wife and don’t look back,’ Jazz breezed, strolling to the counter to order a semi-skimmed latté. When she returned to our table, she seized my mobile phone from the tabletop and scrolled through my call register.

‘Why does your phone register ten calls an hour to Rory’s mobile?’

‘Must be the kids,’ I lied, even though I had worn my fingerprint off pressing ‘redial’. Rory’s mobile phone beeped entreatingly, but he never picked up. Like the rare Spotted Finch, there had been some sightings of him though, trailing after Bianca with ice-skates or roller-blades over his shoulder, looking exhausted, limp no doubt with fatigue from mapping Bianca’s most elusive erogenous zones. Like the pet poodles he now pampered for a living, Bianca kept him on a very short leash.

‘I see,’ said Jazz, handing back my phone in a peeved manner and peering over Hannah’s shoulder at something she’d ringed in the paper, ‘Taurus? That’s Pascal’s sign. Even though he’s told you he’s marrying Shona as soon as possible, you’re still reading the bastard’s horoscope?’

When Hannah had heard the news of Pascal’s impending nuptials, all she’d done was weep copiously. If it were me, I’d have turned up at the wedding in a hearse, wearing a black veil with the stake I was going to plunge into the bride’s heart.

Jazz then launched into yet another diatribe on the usual theme, that a husband is something you make do with once you’re too old for a toy boy, when Hannah stopped her mid-sentence with a momentous announcement.

‘Stop lecturing me already. I have actually heeded your advice and taken a lover,’ she blinked neutrally, ‘for your information.’

Jasmine sloshed coffee accidentally down her front. ‘Really? Since when?’ she probed.

Hannah’s expression remained unfathomable. ‘Oh, a little while now.’

‘That’s just what you need, sweetie!’ Jazz was more excited than by a ‘free gift with purchase’. ‘Well, who is it?’

‘I’d rather not say,’ Hannah replied coolly. She finished her coffee, stood up and moved outside. We followed suit.

‘How old is he then?’ Jazz interrogated, buttoning up her coat.

Hannah’s face flushed elusive expressions. ‘Young enough.’

‘Oh, tell us! Younger men are so much fun. You can educate them, Pygmalion-style,’ Jazz enthused, pulling on her gloves. ‘How old is he? Come on – make us jealous.’

‘He’s an art student, actually.’

Jazz made a fist and jerked her elbow back hard. ‘Yes! A student? When I said take a younger man, Hannah, I didn’t mean adopt!’ She laughed. ‘So, what did you say to him? “You have been a very naughty boy, now go to my room!”’ She was practically dancing round Hannah now. ‘Does he have a phosphorescent map of the planets glued to his bedroom ceiling? Does he short-sheet your bed?’

Jazz broke off to rush into the local pharmacy, emerging to thrust into Hannah’s hands what she called her ‘one-night-stand kit’ – a condom disguised as a lipstick, a toothbrush and pair of sunglasses for what she laughingly called ‘The Morning Walk of Shame’.

The sky went dark and a light drizzle wet our faces. The rain melted away my newly acquired peace of mind. I was pleased that Hannah had found some consolatory happiness, but as far as fate was concerned, I was little more than a fist-magnet.

The next day I arrived late to school to find the staffroom taken over for an impromptu visit from two School Inspectors. They had, apparently, given in their report on our classwork. Mr Scroope was singing the praises of the teacher who had scored the top marks as I slunk into the back of the room.

‘. . . a teacher interested in throwing off the shackles of conventional thinking and consistently coming up with big new ideas.’ As he droned on, I made a cup of tea, avoiding the tan knobs in the sugar bowl from wet teaspoons and the used tea bags lying like dead mice along the draining board. I added a splash of milk which was, as usual, on the verge of curdling. I then drank my teak-coloured tea, with the string of the bag dangling from the cup. I was so engrossed in my tea-making task that it took me a few moments to realize that my Head’s large lips were salivating in oleaginous platitudes about Perdita.

‘Perdita?’ I said in an anaemic murmur. ‘Unconventional?’ What was the man talking about?

‘“Having a better sense of which ideas are breakthrough and which are incremental – and how to progress each of those appropriately”,’ he read from the Inspectors’ notes. His jowls were made up of so many rolls of fat, he looked as though he was holding a stack of pancakes under his chin. ‘She calls her strategy “Meeting Yesterday’s Challenges Tomorrow”.’

My head reared up and back like a rattlesnake surprised by a mirror. That was my title. I felt like the female lead in a horror movie whose car is about to run out of petrol in a dark, bleak place and she’s going to have to walk for help.

‘But they’re my ideas!’ I found myself shouting. ‘You stole them! She stole them!’ All eyes had swivelled in my direction. ‘You made me write all that jargon in my reports just so that you could steal my ideas! You liar!’

‘Ms O’Carroll! Perhaps we could discuss this later in my office?’ Scroope’s thatched eyebrows knotted menacingly. He spoke to the Inspectors in a whispered aside – ‘She’s going through some personal problems. Hubby ran off,’ he confided, his voice sickly-sweet with fake compassion.

‘But they’re my ideas!’ I said again to all and sundry. No one would meet my eye.

Perdita gave me a superior, predatory look which could have got her a part in a Dracula