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

by Kathy Lette

  Yeah, you could take this knife out of my back. ‘No, thanks.’

  I was beginning to think that if Perdita were a dog, I was her tree. I told myself not to sink to her level, as it was, after all, such a long bloody way down. Little did I know that I was about to fall flat on my face anyway . . .

  ‘Well, it gives new meaning to “personal training”,’ was my only comment when Jazz, our resident sausage jockey, pointed out her newest ride after school later that day. Hannah, Jazz and I were at the Regents Park Tennis School, taking turns to half-heartedly knock a few balls at each other, while Jamie and Jenny had their lessons on nearby courts.

  ‘Oy veh, Jasmine,’ snapped Hannah, having examined the coach in question through her opera glasses. ‘In general I think it’s best not to shag someone you could have given birth to.’

  ‘As I see it, any male of legal age on the planet the same time as me, is up for grabs, girls.’

  Hannah fiddled with the lenses then fixed the opera glass to my eye. A muscled Adonis jumped into the frame. ‘Yowzah! He’s gorgeous, Jazz. I think I’ll shop you to Social Services so that I can have him! So, where do you do it?’ I probed, looking around voyeuristically. ‘In the clubhouse?’

  ‘Of course not. We do it at his house.’ Jazz dropped onto the lawn to re-lace her tennis shoes. ‘He’s um . . . sharing a place with some old friends of his.’

  ‘You mean his parents? You shtup him at his parents’ house?’ Hannah remonstrated. ‘That’s pathetic, dah-ling. And does the tennis coach know about all your other men?’

  ‘No. And don’t tell him! He’s a little naïve. He only slept with me because I told him it was my first time, you know, with someone else besides my husband. Well, it was my first time that day!’

  My laugh died in my throat as I glanced across the courts.

  ‘Fuck a duck.’

  ‘It’s about the only thing she hasn’t.’ Hannah’s sarcasm was cut short by my frantic finger-pointing and arm-waving, because there, crossing the courts, was Bianca, in an immaculate white tennis skirt, her hair swept up into a coronet of slightly burned profiteroles.

  ‘Who is it?’ Jazz asked languidly, looking up from her shoes.

  ‘Bianca – our Couples’ Counsellor. I’ve missed her class for weeks. Said I had terminal flu. Left another message today saying I was at death’s door.’

  Jazz followed my gaze. ‘Oh my God! I know her.’

  ‘Really? You and Studz had therapy?’ I marvelled.

  ‘No. Her daughter does swimming training – you know, squads, at the Y, where Josh trains. Serendipity’s her name, can you believe it – she goes to your daughter’s school. Didn’t you know that, sweetie?’

  ‘No. I didn’t even know she had a daughter. Poor kid.’

  ‘You better believe it. Bianca only dresses her in unbleached cotton from Fair Trade. Sends her to swimming practice with lentil sandwiches on home-made rye. The woman has been irrigated in every orifice. She once told me she knew the other mums must always say about her “How does she do it! What an inspiration!” Well, let me tell you, what the other mums really say is “Quick! Hide! Here she comes!”’

  ‘Quick! Hide!’ I found myself saying. ‘Here she comes.’ I ducked down behind an ornamental shrub.

  ‘How can you take advice from her?’ Jazz scoffed. ‘The woman’s insane! Has she sat on your husband yet? She’s a real husband-sitter from way back. The female version of a marauding Viking. She’s had affairs with the swimming coach and two of the fathers. Yep. A total truffler of other women’s hubbies.’

  ‘Really?’ I experienced a colonic flutter as my sphincter battened down its hatches.

  ‘She’s also a marital bulimic,’ Jazz insisted. ‘Marry, divorce, marry, divorce . . . You’ve got to be suspicious of the “till death us do part” bit when the bride makes a habit of catching her own bouquet . . . I can’t believe she’s teaching couples how to stay together! That’s hysterical,’ Jazz shrieked.

  A cold shadow loomed over me and I squinted upwards. If only I weren’t so wimpy. I needed a wimpectomy, urgently.

  ‘My, my. What a speedy recovery you’ve made, Cassandra. I am glad. Although I’m sad you’ve missed my class.’

  To my amazement, I gave her a tart, withering look.

  ‘I think I’ll be missing it a whole lot more from now on, actually.’ It was as though I’d undergone a bravado-transplant and chutzpah transfusion.

  ‘Oh really? I think Rory is getting quite a lot from my self-help group.’

  ‘A self-help group is a contradiction in terms, you know,’ I pointed out, pedantically. Jazz and Hannah, astounded at my uncharacteristic outburst, applauded my sassiness.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re not as committed to your marriage as your husband is,’ Bianca seethed.

  ‘If I listen to you any longer, I’ll be committed alright. To an asylum.’

  Which is exactly what I told Rory later that night. I was weary of being pushed around. It was as though my self-esteem were solar-powered, and it had done nothing but rain for day after day. But no more. I was no longer going to Cringe for Britain. The next morning, instead of cancelling the Science Museum excursion as instructed, I urged my pupils to get their parents to write to the Head expressing their disappointment. I also emailed Bianca to cancel the rest of our therapy sessions. But unfortunately, if I wouldn’t go to the sermon on mounting, the sermon on mounting started coming to me. Bianca was just suddenly always around. Inexplicably. Like carrot in vomit. You know how you can never remember eating any carrot, but there it is? Well, neither Rory nor I could ever remember inviting Bianca, but there she bloody well was. All the bloody time.

  At first she popped over for advice on pets, which, as far as I could see, she didn’t own. Another June day, she zoomed over from Camden because her washing machine was on the blink. She then proceeded to confound and delight a neighbourhood full of horny husbands by prancing to the clothesline and pegging up a line of erotic lingerie; making my devotion to the Cottontail God pale a little in Rory’s eyes by comparison.

  One day in early July, she arrived wearing a bikini top and minuscule shorts. ‘It’s just way too hot to wear clothes today,’ she sighed.

  ‘Yes, clothes are just so last season,’ I said ironically.

  ‘Yeah. I’m with you, Bianca,’ I heard my husband say, boggle-eyed at her curvaceous body. ‘Cass, what do you think the neighbours would say if I took the rubbish out naked?’ he said, palming the beard he’d started growing against my wishes.

  ‘Why bother? The neighbours already think that you’re a total Sex God. I mean, look around you. They obviously know I didn’t marry you for your money,’ I tried to joke, but was feeling nauseous with distrust.

  ‘My, my, my, Cassandra.’ Bianca seized on my comment with raptor-speed. ‘Do I sense a hint of animosity? Let’s examine your motives. Could it be because you’re a passive-aggressive coculprit?’

  ‘No, it’s because I think you’re a charlatan. I mean, you therapists are the ones who need therapists. The care of the id by the odd. Which is why we don’t want you coming around here any more.’ I moved to stand next to my husband. ‘Do we, Rory?’

  Bianca wore the calculating expression of a praying mantis. Before my husband could answer, she said in her sumptuous, satiny voice, ‘Rory’s tragedy is that he has a huge capacity for loving, but the one person who should respond has rejected him. No wonder he retreats to the clinic.’

  ‘Ladies, ladies,’ Rory said, ‘I think Bianca’s clinic is making me a more evolved person. I relate to her energy.’

  Relate to her energy? Evolved? Was this my husband speaking? The beard, the dire chill-out CDs, the incense, the candles . . . Mr I’d-Rather-Die-Than-Have-Therapy had become a poster boy for karmic laundering.

  ‘I mean, this was your idea, Cassie,’ he went on. ‘It was you who wanted me to get in touch with my emotions.’

  ‘I’d say you’re in touch with your emotions, Rore. Your selfish, arro
gant, mean emotions.’

  ‘Well, he’ll be in touch with a whole lot more next week,’ Bianca boasted.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ Rory said sheepishly. ‘Bianca’s holding a little graduation class.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, I prefer to call it a sensual, interactive surprise,’ Bianca preened. ‘At my home.’

  I felt my chest tighten. I had a feeling that any party at Bianca’s would only require one etiquette tip. ‘Take off underwear – mingle.’ The woman’s front door no doubt had a sign: Come In! We Are Never Clothed!

  ‘Shall I take it you’ll be coming?’ she asked archly, before laughing fakely. ‘I suppose that’s pretty much the point of an orgy!’

  I wondered how many times she’d made that little joke. Still, Rory laughed uproariously.

  Perhaps now would be the right moment to pretend to her that my husband was just recovering from the surgical part of his sex-change operation. One thing was sure. It was time to page Doctor Freud to reception . . .

  14. The Sensual Interactive Surprise

  I don’t like surprises. Most surprises are so surprising that you could die of a heart attack. And this was to be a week of surprises.

  The first surprise was actually pleasant. I was in the staffroom when Scroope strode in to announce that he’d had a change of heart about my Science Museum excursion. This was due to the number of disappointed letters he’d received from parents. He grudgingly congratulated me on having the foresight to book the museum trip a year in advance, reiterating for the benefit of the ‘chalk and talkers’, how much the Inspectors approved of field trips. ‘Therefore, I’m allowing you to take your class. As planned,’ he pronounced crisply.

  As he then lectured me on Health and Safety and the endless Risk Assessment forms I would need to fill in i.e. risk of choking to death on a grape in the museum cafeteria, risk of falling into a canal, risk of a terrorist attack; and whether or not the perceived risks were high, medium or low, I sneaked a glance at Perdita, hunched over her herbal tea. She was giving me a splenetic stare. Saying that Perdita was competitive and jealous is like saying that Al Qaeda are only a little fanatical. Risk assessment for Perdita back-stabbing me was very, very high. I feared for my promotion more than ever.

  I was ambushed by my next surprise whilst ambling down Marylebone High Street the following Saturday morning on my way to collect Jenny from her drama class. A sleek black Merc purred past me before coming to a tyre screeching halt halfway over the zebra crossing. As pedestrians scattered, the driver’s window whooshed down and Jasmine’s highlighted head popped out.

  ‘I’m fucking a murderer!’ she called gleefully at me across the road from her new car (the Volvo estate didn’t suit her new, vampish image), much to the bewilderment of passers-by. ‘I’ll pop by later.’

  The ‘murderer’ turned out to be prison playwright Billy Boston, newly celebrated for his début drama, written whilst incarcerated, which was being staged at the avant-garde Tricycle Theatre. ‘Not only is he BIB, sweetie,’ (her shorthand for Brilliant in Bed) ‘but I’ll also finally be able to get rid of my husband! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a lover with advanced weapons’ training?’ she’d laughed.

  Billy Boston had tattoos, a pierced penis, nipple rings, a youth spent in boys’ homes and orphanages, two convictions for GBH and theft, one for manslaughter, a court case pending and a drug habit. In other words, a difficult man to seat at a dinner party.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said at my place later that day. ‘So, he used to be a drug-taking, violent thug – but then it all went wrong?’

  I was halfway through a basket of ironing when Jazz had arrived, high on her own scandal.

  ‘The manslaughter conviction was really self-defence against a drug dealer. But he doesn’t do drugs now. He just does me!’

  ‘Come off it, Jazz. A man like that could find a heroin needle in a haystack,’ I retorted, pressing the iron over one of Rory’s recalcitrant cuffs.

  ‘Do you know the average number of times a person has sex in their lifetime? Two thousand, five hundred and eighty. Well, we’ve had more sex than that in a week! I’ve given up all other men.’

  ‘What?!’ This was so surprising that I burned my finger. ‘Christ!’ I licked the sizzled flesh. ‘Bit prim for you, isn’t it, Jazz – only having one lover and one husband at a time?’

  I immediately phoned Hannah. It was time for reinforcements. She was briefed and at my house in all of ten minutes. ‘You’re just spunk-drunk, that’s all,’ she said to Jasmine.

  ‘No, it’s more than that. I’m so in love with Billy it renders me incapable even of shopping.’

  ‘Christ,’ I conceded. ‘That is serious.’

  ‘You’re just having some D.H. Lawrence fantasy, already. You’re slumming it, Jasmine Jardine. To cure your broken heart,’ Hannah commiserated.

  ‘Well, it’s better than broken legs – which is what Studz is going to have by the time my murderer boyfriend has finished with him. The man has stolen my heart,’ Jazz sighed.

  ‘Well, of course. He is a thief after all,’ Hannah warned.

  The doorbell rang and I looked at my watch. My husband’s heart, not to mention other parts of his anatomy, were being unlawfully acquired at the home of Bianca in exactly half an hour. ‘It’s my babysitter.’

  ‘Perfect timing. Come out with me tonight, Cass. I’m meeting Billy in the Boom Boom bar, in Shoreditch. Full of low-lifes and Ladies of the Night. Very rough trade,’ Jazz thrilled. ‘Billy’s got a very sexy friend. Prison poet. Ex-cons are so intense. He’ll worship you. The prison vernacular, I believe is “cunt-struct”. It’s just what you need, sweetie.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Hannah interrupted. ‘You’re double-dating criminals?’ She looked up to heaven. ‘Heal them, Oh God, for they are injured in their taste buds.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got an orgy to get to.’ I feigned joviality, but was wretched with dread. ‘Oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about what to wear.’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind and feel like a Slow Comfortable Screw in the Boom Boom bar . . .’ Jazz interrupted.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not a group-grope, Cass,’ Hannah comforted. ‘It’s probably just a sales spiel for a more Advanced Counselling Course.’

  ‘A slow, comfortable screw?’

  ‘It’s the name of a cocktail, silly.’

  I was surprised to find I was disappointed. But in actual fact, it was so long since I’d had sex, I’d probably get motion sickness. I’d have to tell the guy to pull the bed over to the kerb.

  The one accurate bit of information I did learn from therapy is that if you arrive late at a whipped-cream orgy, chances are it will have curdled.

  Having vacillated for so long about venturing to Bianca’s basement flat in Camden, by the time I got there things were pretty much in full swing. Literally. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see that couples were locked together, legs around each other’s waists, like sexual Siamese twins. The rather large librarian was flailing around like a sperm whale in flummery while the accountant nibbled at her nipples. The toupeed man with the hairy ankles and the grey socks was making out with the inflatable date. An orgy, one you’re not taking part in, looks about as much fun as an anal probe by aliens. And then my heart stopped with a jerk. I peered into the candle-lit gloom. Was that Rory? Was that Bianca? And were they kissing? My stomach roiled. My toes curled up as though I was wearing a pair of Turkish slippers. The image bored like titanium augers into my brain. It must have been a good kiss because Bianca was thrashing around so much, I presumed she was giving birth – and to a woman pretty much her own size. The range of reactions available to me as a Homo sapien seemed completely inadequate to the situation. I needed to spontaneously combust. Or go to another galaxy, warp factor 5.

  When Bianca saw me, she broke off from kissing my husband and encouraged me to
join in, with the line, ‘It’s just experimentation. A new technique of mine – tongue-reiki.’

  ‘Rory,’ I said, ‘if you could manage to extricate your tongue from our therapist’s navel, I think it’s time to go now.’

  ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ Rory asked. ‘Bianca says you have no feel for the erotic.’

  ‘Actually, it’s not erotic, or exotic. It’s psychotic. There are not enough circuses for all the freaks in this room. You don’t need a therapist – you need an exorcist. You’re possessed. I don’t exactly know how Bianca got the job of marriage counsellor, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t involve a satanic ritual at some point.’

  ‘You are so straight, Cass,’ my husband sighed. Unlike the sexy and sophisticated Bianca, whose limits were obviously limitless.

  ‘If she bores any more, she’ll strike oil,’ Bianca giggled.

  Rory laughed with her and I felt my face burn.

  ‘Listen, Rore. You can stay here watching strangers licking each other’s genitals or wait until your wife is sectioned under the Mental Health Act. It’s your choice.’

  He answered me by dropping a kiss, or rather ‘tongue-reiki’, on the nape of Bianca’s bare neck.

  I lunged then, trying to wrench Rory from the Husband Truffler’s embrace, but slipped in my leather shoes on a melted patch of cream. I skidded and in the fall, must have hit my head because when I came to, my forehead was being bathed by a self-confessed coprophiliac. Does it get any better than this? I asked myself.

  Yes, it does. I had a sensual interactive surprise for Rory too. I was off to meet Jazz and her prison pals in the Boom Boom bar for a slow, comfortable screw.

  15. High Infidelity

  Billy Boston was not that hard to spot. A Pointillist portrait of a naked Pamela Anderson lay supine on his left bicep; Marilyn Monroe on the other. He had small, close set eyes, which made me wonder if the guy’s frontal lobe had been hammered. They were eyes that screamed ‘maximum security prison’. He looked so much like a hardened criminal, I couldn’t believe that the bar manager wasn’t already sending off the CCTV footage to the police.