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

Rory had been right about that, at least. Dogs are loyal, always happy to see you and are rarely stolen by another woman.

I felt the stirrings of a fledgling hope. I couldn’t believe I’d stood on the precipice like that. But like getting dumped in big surf, sometimes you have to touch bottom in order to know which way is up.

24. The Comeuppance

I awoke feeling big, bouncy and bumptious. (Take advantage while stocks last.) Not even my impending unemployment was enough to capsize my spirits. Scroope had decided to keep me on until Christmas, but he made me pay for his leniency by assigning me Late Duty every bloody day.

It was the last day of term, a wet Thursday afternoon and I was waiting in the bleak pre-fab building designated as the ‘late room’ with one child whose working mother had called an hour and a half ago to sob hysterically that she was stuck in traffic. Been there; been driven mad by that. Because I didn’t want the kid to be in trouble or the mother to be blacklisted, I went to the office and signed out, called goodbye to my hideous Headmaster, loudly and firmly – then sneaked back down the hall to wait with the little boy, on the sly, in the quiet of the sick bay. Once he’d been dispatched home, out through a side gate and into the arms of his harassed parent, the atmosphere grew eerie. There was usually one caretaker holed up in the basement, smoking, but he too had left for Christmas. The school, all shut up and locked, seemed to be holding its breath.

Unnerved by the silence, and suppressing my sadness at having to leave my job, I snatched up my bag and tiptoed back past the Headmaster’s office towards the staff car park. I was nearly out of the door, when I heard the strangest noise. The muffled thuds and moans emanating from the Head’s office made me think he was definitely still in there and possibly having a heart attack. Except, of course, he didn’t have a heart. With the stealth that comes from years of maternal spying, I squeezed open the door to Scroope’s inner sanctum.

The look on my face must have registered more surprise than the congregation at Michael Jackson’s wedding. Because there was my Headmaster with his trousers around his knees, spanking a bare-buttocked Perdita who was lying across his desk, skirt up, panties down. As the ruler swished across her porcelain buttocks she whimpered, ‘I won’t let other boys touch me again. Only you, sir.’

It was torture not to erupt into hysterical guffawing but I didn’t want to alert them to my presence. Not until I had savoured the delicious piquancy of the moment – and videoed it for posterity on my mobile phone camera.

Their whacking and whimpering was so loud that I got a good minute of footage before Scroope caught sight of me standing there, filming. He then looked like a hippopotamus having an epileptic fit. His Adams apple zoomed up and down his oesophagus like a mouse on amphetamines.

‘Gee, I’m not sure this complies with Health and Safety regulations, are you, Mr Scroope?’ I said loudly. ‘Did you fill in the Risk Assessment form? Hmmm, let me think. What would fucking a member of staff on your desk rate? A medium, low or high-risk category? I would say high, wouldn’t you? I mean, let’s just think about the perceived risks and possible outcomes, shall we? Are you wearing a condom? No. Well, that would make it a high risk then. Oh. And what about a splinter or a paper cut – on a very private part of your anatomy. Not good Health and Safety is it, hmmm? Then there’s the possible risk of me reporting you to the Board of Governors.’ His ginger eyes, under fizzing brows, skittered around the room. ‘Would you say that counts as a low, medium or high risk? I would say high, very high, you asshole. Unless I get reinstated. Possible outcomes if I don’t? Let’s see . . . accusations of corruption, public disgrace and humiliation – oh, and of course, divorce. Risk assessment of me calling your wife right now and forwarding her this video footage I’ve just taken on my mobile phone? Oh, high. Very, very, very, fucking high actually!’

‘But . . . but . . .’ Scroope gurgled in the quicksands of moral justifications for a while before he went under. ‘My marriage has been sexless for so long. But this has nothing to do with Perdie – with Mrs Pendal getting the promotion. It was a very hard decision.’

‘Yeah. That’s what it looks like in the video.’

Perdita was scrambling back into her panties. ‘I didn’t mean to borrow your ideas Cassandra. It’s just I do suffer from this terrible inferiority complex, and—’

‘Its not that you have an inferiority complex. You’re just inferior, Perdie.’

‘Have some compassion,’ she begged. ‘Some teacherly loyalty. Some sisterly solidarity.’

‘Gee, I don’t know,’ I said, then parroted her response when she’d caught me sneaking into school after the Science Museum excursion. ‘Duty before friendship.’

‘What do you want?’ Scroope asked bluntly.

It was then it came to my attention that I might not be as nice a person as I’d always thought I was. ‘The promotion.’

‘What?’ Perdita’s gasp was louder than her faked orgasm.

‘Yes. I think this is just the excuse I need for you to promote me.’ I mimicked his line to me. ‘In fact, as you have made your hostility to your new Deputy Head i.e. moi, so apparent, it seems clear that it would be best for the school if perhaps you saw this as a lifestyle down-scaling opportunity and moved on, Mr Scroope,’ I paraphrased.

‘You little bitch,’ Scroope spat. ‘Get out of my school.’

‘Okay then.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps we should just meet with the Board of Governors where you can discuss your um . . . extremely close working relationship with a member of staff whom you’ve just promoted?’

Scroope