How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints)

by Kathy Lette

  Three hours later it began to dawn on me that Mr Ikea and his Allen key are responsible for more marriage break-ups than infidelity. They should be renamed ‘The Divorce Bookshelves’ – only they weren’t supposed to be bookshelves, they were supposed to be Jamie’s new bed, but that’s not how they turned out. Six tantrums later I finally found a good use for the Phillips-head screwdriver. It’s a very handy implement for spouses to use when stabbing each other to death.

  Rory hit the whisky bottle. I was so depressed I thought I might need something stronger – a swig of paint-stripper, perhaps.

  ‘Look,’ I relented, ‘why don’t we book a babysitter tonight and just go out and talk.’

  ‘Out? Where? Going out pisses me off. Restaurants always have those menus where it takes sixty words to describe something which then arrives at your table on a lettuce leaf, looking like a diseased frog with a sprig of basil sticking out of its backside. No, thanks, Cassie. Besides, what is there to talk about?’

  ‘Gee, I dunno. Our impending divorce?!’

  The next day, 2 March, was my birthday. A mother’s birthday takes second place to the guinea pig’s, of course – we women know that. But I would have thought a cup of tea and a bit of burned toast in bed might have been in the offing. Even from the kids.

  When it’s Rory’s birthday, I buy and wrap presents from the children, plan a birthday dinner, complete with heart-shaped cake and generally make him feel like a Sultan. By Sunday lunchtime when there had still been no mention of What Special Day It Was, I spoke up.

  ‘Look, I wasn’t expecting a light aircraft sky-writing I Love You, Cassie in the clouds. Or a neon sign lit up with a love message at Piccadilly Circus, but, you know, a flower or two for my birthday might have been nice. Did you at least remind the kids?’

  When Rory told me that he’d forgotten and hadn’t bought me any presents, I knew he was just trying to put me off the scent. Obviously he had a surprise party planned! By 9 p.m., I felt a twinge of doubt. An even bigger twinge at 10. A panic at 11. Followed by a manic declaration of ‘now or never’ at 11.45.

  ‘But I told you I hadn’t bought you anything,’ he replied, perplexed.

  ‘But I thought you were joking! How can you spend twelve months researching five hundred Internet sites and remembering every comparative price before buying an electrical appliance, but you can’t remember your own wife’s birthday?’

  ‘It’s not my fault I forgot. I mean, it’s not like you dropped any hints. Did you stay in bed all morning shouting, “Where’s my birthday breakfast?” at intervals? No. Did you send yourself flowers from a mystery admirer? No. Did you circle the date on the kids’ kitchen calendar? No. Besides, how could I remember it’s your birthday when you never look a day older?’ he concluded sycophantically.

  Good try. But I was beginning to think that Rory and I just didn’t match any more. If life were linen, suddenly he was a king-size top sheet and I was a single fitted bottom. God! Even my analogies had deteriorated into the domestic. What the hell had happened to me?

  There was only one course of action left. Sulking. I decided not to talk to him. For the next five days I served his meals in silence. I turned my back on him in bed. By the end of the week, I was a nervous wreck, as were both children. We’d been walking around on eggshells. The strain and tension in the air was palpable. The cat had taken to looking at me in a superior way as if to say, ‘You’re new at this, aren’t you?’

  By Friday night I could take it no more. ‘Oh Rory. Rory darling,’ I sobbed with relief.

  ‘Huh?’ he replied, giving me his full peripheral attention.

  ‘Let’s make up, Rore. I just can’t stand it any more. I’ve been crying myself to sleep at night. I mean, the tension, the angst, the atmosphere!’

  He just looked at me and said, ‘What?’

  HE HADN’T NOTICED.

  PART TWO

  9. Don’t Get Mad, Get Bad

  As I rang the bell at Jazz and Studz’s Hampstead mansion a couple of evenings later, I was still brooding about Rory’s shortcomings. Why is it that a man would rather watch a rerun of some badminton championship between two Croatians he’s never heard of than communicate with his wife? Although I wondered if Rory actually fitted the category of ‘man’ any more. He was more of a warm-blooded pot-plant – he just sat there, waiting to be fed and watered.

  I stopped brooding then because as we moved into the lighted hallway, I realised that Jazz had greeted me at the door topless. That is to say, she was wearing lipstick and glitter on one pink nipple and a sequinned tassel on the other. I scanned her face. This could mean good or bad news, I wasn’t sure. Was it a celebration? Or did she want to take her little darlings out and give them one last great time before the removal of a ravaging tumour – which, by the way, we’d already nicknamed ‘Studz’. Jazz had warned us that over the coming months she might be ringing to make unreasonable requests. I now steeled myself for a night of male dancers in latex Lederhosen at short notice.

  ‘It’s only a cyst,’ she laughed and did a little tapdance, sparkly nipples jiggling. She seemed anointed with joy.

  I hugged her hard enough to get sequins all over my chin and a nipple tassel between my teeth. ‘Where’s the International Man of Mystery? Why isn’t he here to celebrate?’

  ‘Amnesty mission to Darfur. Part of his ongoing Wife Avoidance Programme,’ she told me. ‘I may not have cancer, Cassie, but I’m still in the terminal stages of a lengthy disease called wedlock.’ She paused to pour me a glass of Krug Rosé, pilfered from her husband’s cellar. ‘Side-effects? Self-loathing and excessive alcohol intake.’

  ‘Well, it must be contagious because I seem to have the same symptoms.’ I glugged down the exquisite vintage vino. ‘Yep. We’re both so happily married, except for one thing – our husbands.’

  When Jazz suggested all wives put crushed glass in their hubby’s coffee, I dazzled my sozzled self by replying how that really would be grounds for divorce.

  Jazz raised a shapely brow. ‘Divorce? Oh no. I’m not divorcing.’

  ‘But . . . but I thought . . .’

  ‘It takes a superhuman effort to demolish a marriage, sweetie. And the time is never right. Studz’s mother is sick, Josh’s A level exams are coming up. Divorce would be so damaging to Joshie. Why should a child born in love be condemned to . . .’ she lit up a cigarette and launched a halo of smoke ceiling-ward, ‘. . . seeing his mother pouring concrete down the loo and stealing the light bulbs.’ Recoiling from the image, Jazz tucked her long legs, which were slinkily clad in black leather trousers, under her on the sofa. ‘Eeeeew. No way.’

  ‘But I’ve just come round to the idea of divorce,’ I said. ‘I mean, we’ve both stayed put in the one position for so long, that marital deep vein thrombosis has set in. We need the psychological version of support stockings.’

  ‘No. What we need are frequent-flier miles for surviving the journey – frequent-flier points in the form of a lover. Studz said that the grim reality of his operating table had left him etherized. Well, I’ve been left etherized too – on my marital bed. I’m going to take his advice and just go and have affairs to feel alive again.’

  ‘Revenge fucking?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Crikey. Won’t you feel guilty? I feel guilty about everything. I just know one day they’ll find out it was me who stole the teacher’s peanut butter sandwich in Year Two and my life on the run will finally be at an end.’ I extracted the cigarette from between my friend’s painted talons and extinguished it with a hiss in her half-empty champagne glass. ‘I’m pretty sure that guilt is to adulteresses what lung cancer is to smokers.’

  Jazz’s mouth, lipsticked bright orange with bravado, broke into a bitter smile. ‘My husband cheats on me with everything that walks and now I’m going to have my revenge by fucking the pool boy. Gosh. Perhaps one day I’ll be flooded with remorse,’ she concluded sarcastically, shrugging a black cashmere cardigan over her naked s
houlders.

  I looked at my friend in amazement. After her brush with mortality, there was a new flinty exterior to her. Curled on the couch in her black clothes, she looked like a comma. And passers-by would pause when they saw her and catch their breath.

  ‘The best thing about being a woman . . .’ she hesitated while her lips took a brief hiatus to light up another fag.

  ‘Is never having to make a best man speech?’ I guessed. ‘. . . is that we live longer than our partners and can spend all their money. Which is why I’m staying married, but cooking all Studz’s food in double cream and not draining the fat off his bacon. I’m feeding him up like a Strasbourg goose. After his coronary, I’ll buy a Home Autopsy Kit so I can check for myself if the creep actually has a heart. However, until he’s dead and buried, you’re going to have to cover me for any clandestine carnal activities.’

  ‘Oh, a dream come true. What I’ve always wanted to be – an under-the-covers agent.’ I squirmed. ‘Do you honestly think an affair is the answer?’

  ‘Affairs may not be the answer, sweetie, but it sure as hell will help you forget the question.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Why the fuck did I ever marry that pig?’

  To illustrate her point, the phone rang. ‘No, he’s not home. But do give him a disease for me, will you?’ Jazz suggested in a vinegary voice before ringing off. ‘It’s that patient of his – the expert on Sylvia Plath. You see? They even ring him at home now.’ Her green-gold eyes glinted with tears. ‘It’s so hard not being loved, Cassie. I just don’t want to feel dead any more. Yes!’ she rallied. ‘Just look on me as a mortician, sweetie. I can’t bring my marriage back to life, but at least I can make it look better.’

  ‘So don’t get mad, get bad. Is that your new motto? But where exactly are you going to find this hot–to-trot lover of yours?’

  Jazz poured herself some more Krug in a clean glass. ‘I dunno. Internet chat rooms, dating agencies, ads . . .’

  ‘Relying on the kindness of passing serial killers?’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said with a taut laugh. ‘Much better to stay unhappily married with no sex-life and contract cancer from being so bloody miserable.’

  She pointedly twirled a nipple tassel. It seemed that her mammogram had in fact been a telegram from Mother Nature – a wake-up call to live.

  ‘The hardest thing about middle age, sweetie, is that we grow out of it,’ she said wistfully. ‘Tonight, I’m going online to see what I can bait.’

  A few days later, when I told Hannah that Jazz had found a potential lover, she nearly drowned. We were in our weekly aquarobics class, splashing around energetically to a wavery tape of ‘Let’s Get Physical’. Once Hannah had been given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from a lifeguard and the jets of water had ceased erupting from her nose, my well-groomed friend defied her Botox and raised her eyebrows higher than her hairline.

  ‘The clitoris is clearly the least intelligent part of the female body. So why is Jasmine thinking with it?’

  ‘Jazz says that all women secretly want an affair.’

  ‘Hmm. On balance I think I’d rather take up heroin. Less dangerous. What you both should do is rekindle your passion. I saw some sex guru on the telly saying that married couples should liaise in the bedroom mid-afternoon.’

  ‘Mid-afternoon? Are you mad? Where am I supposed to put the children? Under the sink with the lethal household substances?’ ‘Liaise’ sounded so full of Gaullist suavity. But the only vaguely French thing about me were the tufts of armpit hair I’d sprouted during the winter.

  From her supine position in a poolside lounge chair, Hannah’s eyes interrogated me. ‘And where exactly has she met this lover of hers?’

  ‘An Internet chat room,’ I verbally fumbled.

  ‘Oh, how romantic. What’s it gonna be, your homepage or mine? So we’re talking about a perfect stranger?’

  ‘Yes – except I doubt he’s perfect. He listed his hobby as “aura grooming”. Oh, and there was a star sign mentioned too, I think.’

  Hannah grimaced, her small face a knot of opinion. ‘Some women like to just pack a pair of spare panties, paint on their lipstick, go to a bar, see what gorgeous Love God fate throws into their laps, then go home with him for a night of wild, rampant sex . . . Most of these women are never seen again.’

  ‘Jazz says his emails are really sweet and polite.’

  ‘Oh, that’s reassuring. She’s found the most polite sexual psychopath in London. Great.’

  ‘That’s why she wants me to drive her there. To the rendezvous. Just to be careful.’

  The pool area was flooding with mums and toddlers for junior swim class so Hannah didn’t speak again until we were in adjoining shower cubicles, dodging Band Aids and verruca viruses. Her shampoo-foamed head giraffed over the partition.

  ‘It’s such meshuggeneh talk. Completely crazy. And we have got to stop her, Cassie.’

  We? We was rapidly becoming my least favourite word in the English language. No way, I thought. ‘Of course,’ I said, even though I’d rather lick the sneeze hood over a salad bar.

  ‘So what are you saying? That I should just give up on sex?’ Hannah timed her confrontation with Jazz until we were midway through our Sunday-morning power walk on Hampstead Heath. We were standing atop Parliament Hill, panting. Beyond the inky calligraphy of trees, the city lay scribbled below. The smoggy air in the basin of London was thick as broth. You could almost spoon it.

  ‘Having sex three times a week burns about seventy-five hundred calories a year and is the equivalent of jogging seventy-five miles,’ Jazz enthused.

  ‘Shtuping a man you meet on the Internet will be about as much fun as jogging seventy-five miles,’ countered Hannah. She was on all fours, executing her push-ups rhythmically, mindlessly.

  ‘Man? Did I say man?’ Jazz smiled in an almost regal way. ‘He’s twenty-two.’

  ‘Mind the gap,’ I said, in the scratchy voice of a tube announcer.

  Hannah sprang to her feet. ‘Ohmygod. What if he rapes you? Or beats you? Or kills you!’

  ‘There are far more effective ways to destroy a woman, you know. You can just marry her,’ Jazz said in an aggrieved tone. ‘Anyway, statistically most women get murdered by their husbands, not some stranger. He sent his photo. His upper arms look like two footballs caught in a stocking.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mrs Robinson.’ Hannah glanced at Jasmine sharply. ‘Cassie, did you know Jazz had taken up residence on Sunset Boulevard?’

  I paused in my bench presses and flumped onto my back on grass thickly buttered with daffodils. ‘Um, well, I dunno. I do think Missy Eliott CDs are slightly unseemly at our age, Jazz.’

  Jazz gave us both a sidelong, withering look. ‘Another nice thing about being a woman, even a woman of “our age”,’ she said thinly, ‘is that, unlike men “of our age”, we don’t have to pay for sex.’ She lifted a leg onto the bench and bent into a stretch. ‘We can just take a toy boy.’

  ‘Having a toy boy, you have to pay for everything anyway; dinner, theatre, holidays,’ I said lightheartedly, gazing up at the interlaced limbs of the trees. ‘Paying for sex actually would cost you less!’

  But despite our attempts to saw raggedly through Jasmine’s fantasies like a bread-knife through a frozen loaf of wholemeal, she remained determined. Hannah urged me on with her eyes.

  ‘Besides, do you really want to start going to comedy clubs again?’ I added. ‘And putting up with his nagging about recycling? And endless talk about the fate of the ozone layer whenever you use your hairspray??’

  ‘Oh sweetie, I don’t intend to be talking!’

  And with that, Jasmine pranced off down the hill, dismissing us with a perky, four-fingered wave.

  ‘You are not to help her. Is that clear?’ Hannah ordered me, before moving off after Jazz in a miffed manner.

  Oh yes, as clear as the view from Parliament Hill.

  And so it was that on a day in late March, Jas
mine Jardine, a forty-three-year-old housewife and mother of one, left her home in the leafy environs of Hampstead, climbed into the family Volvo estate and drove down to the grimier environs of Southwark. Her husband was under the impression that she was going to the cinema. But she drove straight past the Swiss Cottage Cineplex and on and on over the river until she reached a dilapidated terrace, where she parked, adjusted her hair, straightened the seam in her stay-up stockings and sashayed to the paint-peeled door. It was the first time she had been on a date for more than twenty years. And the first time she had ever been with a man who could lick his own eyebrows (the toyboy’s latest Internet revelation).

  I know all this because I was with her in the car, armed with a can of mace and the local police number. It was bad enough we’d had to go south of the river. Southwark’s local industries are kneecapping and drug dealing. The area has cockroaches so big you can hear the pitter patter pat of their huge hairy feet. As I waited in the car and time crawled by, one hour . . . two . . . it crossed my mind that I’d been looking out for Jazz’s welfare for so long I really required a clipboard and a white coat. Four crossword puzzles, three Mozart CDs and two packets of chocolate biscuits later, Jazz staggered onto the street, her clothes dishevelled, all wide-eyed and wild-haired. She looked like a haircare magazine reject.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I jumped out of the car, ready to pick up the pieces. ‘Shall I call the police?’

  ‘Only to tell them I’ve invented a new game: “Pin the Tongue on the Clit”.’ She suddenly leaped about as though auditioning for Riverdance. ‘Wow! OhmyGod. Wow! Wow! WOW!!’

  ‘Really? How were his teeth? Did he have a nice bum?’ Words tumbled out of me. ‘Do you feel guilty? Is the guilt eating you alive?’

  ‘Guilty? I feel euphoric!’ she said jauntily. What I’d taken for dismay was in actual fact a state of pure elation. The woman had the thrilled sense of achievement of a bungee jumper.