by Kathy Lette
‘I like that dress,’ I said to the sales assistant in Joseph, ‘but have you got it in a heavier bone size?’ The only dress I found which was vaguely flattering, sported the price label Guess.
‘Gee, I dunno. More than a week’s salary?’
In the end, I settled on a new wardrobe from Top Shop and just sat up all night writing Pucci and Prada onto all my cheap bags, shirts and shoes.
Jazz also believed in the King Canute property of face creams, and made me buy every lotion and potion which promised to hold back the sea of time. Needless to say, she did not seem very impressed by my make-up drawer which contained one mini-mascara I’d had for four years that dried up after the third eyelash, plus a freebee lipstick the colour of which was so vile that a mortician wouldn’t use it on a cadaver. But Jazz’s beauticians did finally manage to transform me . . . Only trouble was, I could never go anywhere spontaneously ever again, because I needed to start getting ready at least forty-eight hours before.
Then there were the control-top tights, as easy to get in and out of as, say, a wetsuit. It was hardly striptease material. I wore them to school for practice and they were fine, but struggling out of my Extra-Hold Thigh Shapers that night proved so strenuous that I pulled a muscle and had to be taken to hospital.
I sat in the Accident and Emergency room rapidly going off the infidelity idea. Affairs sounded easy, but they were actually so bloody dangerous. And not just physically. I mean, what if Trueheart got serious? What if he got cloying and annoying? I could always call out my husband’s name in bed. That would probably be enough to put him off . . . Or perhaps I could become more sexually demanding – in a weird way. Or I could tell him I had a stalker and police protection. That would make an ex-con run for his life.
But what if Trueheart became the stalker? Then I could just tell him that I had a restraining order out on my husband because he’d threatened to kill any man who slept with me.
Christ. But what if I got serious about him? There never really is a good time to tell your husband that you’re divorcing him for a twenty-nine-year-old poet with serious pecs appeal – oh, and a criminal conviction for cannabis dealing. No, no, I couldn’t go through with it.
To cement my view, I was at Jasmine’s when the blonde-haired Sylvia Plath academic telephonically doorstepped her. ‘Look,’ Jazz barked down the phone, ‘I know you’re having an affair with my husband. Just as long as you know you are one of many, sweetie.’
No, no. I wouldn’t put myself in such a vulnerable position. But then again, the thought of Trueheart Jones kept triggering that heat between my thighs. Something had to give and it could be my knicker elastic. Maybe he was the one to shift my sex-drive out of neutral?
I booked and cancelled a double date with Jazz. And booked and cancelled. But in the end, my vacillation was pointless. I came out of the school gate one Wednesday evening after choir practice, glum at the prospect of the long night ahead of me – Jamie was away at school summer camp, Jen was on a sleepover and Rory was still living in the flat – when he was just there beside me, dexterous as a cat burglar.
Against my better judgement, I felt a delightful throb of expectation. I floated towards him. Cosy in the shelter of his huge arm, I was led by Trueheart Jones on a walk towards Regents Park. I could feel the warmth rising up off his skin as we strolled over the lawns and down amongst the roses. Behind the Open Air Theatre he brushed a fingertip along the nape of my neck. A hunger spasm shot through me, and not for food either. I had a craving for the meat and bones of a man. He traced the neckline of my T-shirt, where it ran along the collarbone, and electricity rushed through me from neck to knee, and quite a few places in between. I was so turned on I forgot to feel guilty. I was so turned on, I forgot to cry ‘bring me my breasts.’ There was no fumbling as he expertly got beneath my old grey bra, found my nipple and squeezed it. Not softly, the way Rory did. But hard.
‘I have breastfed two children . . .’ I spluttered apologetically.
I’d hardly finished the sentence before his lips were on my breast, warm, wet, startling. He didn’t suckle as Rory did, but bit me, lightly. Sensation juddered along my spine and down my legs. He crushed me to his body. I was under a libido attack. And oh, how happily I surrendered as his hand crept beneath my skirt and up my thigh, slow as Tai Chi. He was under the knicker elastic of my big white cottontails and inside me, two fingers, circling. ‘I want you so bad.’ And suddenly I knew why half of all married women are apparently having affairs. Not because they want mind-blowing orgasms. Although, yes, yes, yes!!! They do want those. But because a woman needs a man to desire her. At least half as much as he desires victory for his country in the cricket.
As sensation built, I found myself writhing up against Trueheart Jones. I was about to be in my prime! Just like Miss Jean Brodie! My muff would no longer be in a huff! Any minute now I would cry out in an urgent, animal way before I collapsed wrecked, in a sweaty, panting heap . . . But no sooner had I imagined it, than I found myself pulling back from the brink, like some sappy romantic heroine in an eighteenth-century novel. The sensual mist, the cocoon of breath and skin he’d spun around me, tore.
‘I need to go.’
‘Yeah well, I need to lie ya down so I can lick ya.’ His hot voice was thick with lust.
I swallowed hard. My body gave in straight away, yes, yes . . . but a warm storm of feelings took me over. I loved my husband. I belonged to Rory. He had soaked into me, body and soul. He was my man.
‘Hey, I thought you wanted to go all the way?’
‘Oh, I do – But it’s got to be in opposite directions. I’m so sorry, Trueheart. So, so sorry.’
Racing round the Inner Circle to Baker Street tube, I realized I’d recycled Rory too easily. He was like the stuff you keep for years and years, only to throw out two days before you need it. There’s a fine line between lust and insanity. And I had just stopped myself from erasing that line.
17. Till Homicide Do Us Part
The night was warmly scented with honeysuckle, which buoyed my spirits as I let myself into the surgery and went straight to the little flat behind. All I could think about was the dreamy, creamy warmth of my husband’s embrace. I was burning up with need – the need to feel Rory close to me. That was my matrimonial mantra. Rory wasn’t back yet from his home visits so I crashed into the spare bedroom, determined to wait for him, but after a couple of hours, I passed out, fully clothed, face down on the bed. In my light-headed relief at having escaped from folly, the last frivolous thought on my mind was that it had been so long since I’d seen my husband I was frightened I’d shoot him as a burglar. But I was the one hell-bent on theft. Emotional break and enter. I would steal my way back into my husband’s heart.
I woke in a mist of adrenalin and angst. The dawn gave the surgery bedroom a melancholy, vanquished look. Much like me. The pillow beside me was empty. Where was Rory? I felt the zig zag of doubt go through me as the pendulum of suspicion swung back and forth. Clambering off the bed, I searched the room for clues. I prodded at the message button on the decrepit answerphone. The tape was so old that the message which had been left was scratchy and warped, but the voice was definitely female. And it was arranging a time to meet. I frantically tried to come up with other excuses for why my husband would be meeting a female. Perhaps his mother had come back from the dead? Perhaps he’d developed Dr Doolittle traits and could talk to the animals – and they could talk to him? Perhaps Rory was a cross dresser making an appointment with his seamstress? All these excuses were more palatable than the fact that he might be having an affair. Especially when logic dictated that there was only one possible candidate.
I wanted to call the police and get them to throw fingerprint dust all across her naked body, because I was now imagining my husband’s hands all over her. Bands of anxiety circled my ribcage, tighter and tighter. Nervousness beaded my lip with perspiration as I fell into psychological quicksand. Men are creatures of habit. They don’t leave the co
mfort of their homes unless it’s for another woman. Terror slammed through me. Of course he was falling in love with her. One encouraging word from the Husband Rustler and he’d fled from our marriage so fast he’d left nothing but the outline of his body in the wood of the front door as he went through. Why had it taken me so long to admit it? I was a Mensa candidate, obviously.
As I blundered my way out of the veterinary practice, I felt sure the animals were mocking me from their cages. Can rabbits smirk? Because I was convinced I saw one chuckling snidely.
The Dickensian houses of Camden cast tombstone shadows across my car as I sat outside Bianca’s flat. I felt oppressed by fear and wound down the window for a blast of oxygen. It was 8 a.m. Rory opened the surgery at 8.30, so if he was here, he’d have to appear soon. Sure enough, a heart-stopping moment later, Bianca’s yellow front door squeezed open and they were there, together, on the doorstep. Peering between the suctioned feet of Jenny’s Garfield doll, I saw him kiss her. I strained my eyes until they stung, watching them. Oh. I clutched the steering wheel and despaired. My skin prickled as though I was being secretly watched, instead of the other way round. Rory looked so muscular and handsome. Yes, the entire world loves a lover – unless he’s your bloody husband.
‘I thought it was experimentation?’ I was out of the car and screeching across the street before I knew what I was doing. I gulped in air as tart as she was. ‘I thought it didn’t mean anything?’ I felt as though I’d been hollowed out by the wind. ‘Rory, I want you to get in the car and come home with me right now.’
Rory stood stock-still. Bianca, however, nuzzled his ear, no doubt whispering her spells. She was wearing a pink silk camisole with lace scanties. Her hair was fetchingly tousled and she was sporting false eyelashes which would have been more at home on a giraffe. Just the way all working mums look in the mornings. Not.
‘Rore?’ But Rory just stood there, staring. ‘When I say I’d like your answer soon, what I mean is, within my lifetime.’ It sounded bold, but I could feel a great floodtide of grief behind my tonsils.
‘Actually,’ answered Bianca, ‘we’re moving in together.’
Pain came, rapid and intolerable, like opening the blinds on a summer’s day when you have a hangover. A malicious smile shrieked across her face.
‘Where to? Your eco-sensitive igloo? Rory, she’s a fake. Can’t you see through her?’ The street, the world, seemed to tilt and start sliding slowly toward some dreadful abyss. Fear began to ooze from me. I looked at my nemesis. Bianca had obviously been to the Eva Braun School of Mistressing. ‘Don’t you care about the family you’re destroying?’
‘I care about Rory, in all his complexities,’ Bianca cooed in her creamy tones. ‘I can fulfil his needs in a way you never can.’
‘Gee, how many years of yoga did you have to do, to be able to kiss your own ass like that? It’s quite an achievement.’ I could feel my blood coagulating with rage.
‘I can nurture his creativity and tap into his untouched potential. You have done nothing but smother him.’
I wanted to make a Wildean quip, a Shakespearean reference, a caustic aside. But instead, I just smithereeened into tears. ‘Rory!’ If he didn’t hold me, I was going to fly apart, like an exploding landmine. ‘Can’t you talk to me alone?’ As addled as I was, I knew that it was a sure sign that your marriage is not going well when your husband has a loaded woman pointed at your chest. ‘Stop pointing that thing at me.’ I gestured towards Bianca. ‘It’s making me nervous.’
‘I’m sorry. But where Rory goes, I go. That’s the kind of devotion he’s been missing from his marriage,’ Bianca said with practised aplomb.
I had been hit by a psychological truck. And my husband was driving. ‘Listen to me,’ I told him. ‘You’re having a midlife crisis, obviously. But couldn’t you just worry over male pattern baldness, like other men your age?’
Rory palmed his new beard. He’d been sprouting the look of a revolutionary leader for a few weeks now. But it was me he was revolting against. Or maybe, just me he found revolting?
‘I know it was my fault, dragging you to therapy,’ I went on, ‘but when I told you to show more affection, I didn’t mean you to take a lover!’
Bianca shook her head. ‘Truth is, you just don’t satisfy him sexually.’
‘Well, you know I have a sex tip for you, Rory. The way to ensure that a wife stays moist during intercourse is to keep your bloody mistress out of sight!’
‘Mistress? For your information, Cassandra, Rory and I are soulmates. We are emotionally and psychologically simpatico. But of course, we also have so much to discover sensually about each other.’ She squeezed his hand and gave him one of her velvet glances. ‘In fact, he’s going to star in a video I’m making called The Body.’
‘Oh really? How big is his part? Must be quite small.’ Which wasn’t a bad reply, considering I was in the midst of an anxiety attack. I felt an ache of disgust grip my intestines. How could she do this to me? To us? A murderous fury took hold of me. Die! Die! But all I had in the car was Jamie’s giant water-pistol. I had a sudden vision of all the brunch-crumb-coated Camden arty types, sipping their champagne and shaking their heads condescendingly as they caught sight of me chasing my husband and his mistress down the street pumping watery rounds into them from an aqua-gun.
‘Rory, what about the kids?’ I implored. ‘If you can’t think about me, at least think about them.’
‘Oh, but we are. I’ve already had a text from Jamie saying he can’t wait to meet me. Look.’ Bianca displayed Rory’s phone with a message illuminated. She sounds cool, Dad it read. ‘Aw,’ Bianca gushed, ‘thassadorable.’
I had to wait for the crashing in my ears to fade away before I could talk again.
‘Rory, don’t be fooled,’ I said desperately. ‘Bianca hates children. She makes her own kid play with gender-non-specific toys from economically disadvantaged Third World craft fairs. I mean, it’s child abuse. And before you move into Tofu Towers,’ I gestured to her flat, ‘just think about this. Bianca may pretend to be all organic, hell she’s no doubt given you your first organic orgasm, but the woman’s full of Botox. Don’t you find that a little hypocritical?’
‘And he’s taking me to meet Jenny today,’ Bianca miaowed.
I tried to answer, but what erupted instead was a cry of anguish. ‘Where?’ My life was suddenly a cracked mirror.
‘Sports Day. Our daughters are at the same school.’ Rory spoke at last. I reached for him, but he brushed me away as if I were a gnat. A gnat he wanted to swat. ‘Serendipity is a year younger, but I’m sure the girls will get on.’
‘But, Rory you never go to Sports Day! I’ve always gone. This is the first year I’ve not run in the Mothers’ Race, but the dates conflicted with my school excursion to the Science Museum.’
‘It’s okay. Bianca’s going to run.’
‘Yes,’ she gloated. ‘Some of us like to keep in shape.’
Warning! Warning! Danger! Klaxons of terror trumpeted in my head. My face was pinchy with indignation. How could he do this to me? Rory might be the vet, but I seemed to be the one with a degree in Animal Husbandry. ‘So, you really do want my husband, do you? Well, just let me go and get his water bowl and chew toys. And hey, that might be a good way to get rid of you too, Bianca. If I throw a stick, no doubt you’ll run after it.’
Bianca abruptly pulled Rory back into her garden flat and slammed the door. I felt desolate at the loss of him. What really upset me was that I was the one who’d battled with and then retrained him; who’d finally got through to him the importance of birthdays and anniversaries and that there is only one answer to the question, ‘Does this make me look fat?’ Only for another woman to waltz off with the New and Improved Version. It was like renovating a house, making it perfect – only to be evicted. That was it. I’d been sexually gazumped by a new owner. A younger, thinner, firmer new owner, with better underwear.
And it was all my own wretched fault. Jesus Chri
st. By dragging him to couples counselling, I might as well have lit up a cigarette next to a petrol tanker. And soon Bianca would be meeting my daughter, and running with all the other Yummy Mummies in the Mothers’ Race.
Driving to school, I fantasized about killing her off and making it look like a lawnmower-related accident. I could see myself now on a maximum-security prison wing crocheting doilies and pleading that I suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder. Multiple? Who was I kidding? Hell, I didn’t even have one! Well, all that was about to change.
I steeled myself. The chequered flag had been dropped. The race was on. And I would win back my hubby fair and square. Even if I had to cheat to do so.
18. Survival of the Prettiest
When a woman finds out that her husband is having an affair, most of the immediate options seem puerile.
Writing on his driver’s licence under any distinguishing features – NO PENIS.
Dating the bloke he hero-worships on their Saturday footie team who never passes him the ball.
Spreading a rumour that you ended it because he’s incontinent.
Signing him up to some embarrassing websites; websites under surveillance by Scotland Yard.
Giving up chocolate. You’ll miss it so much, you won’t have time to miss your husband.
Getting hold of his chequebook and on all the cheque stubs writing for sexual favours.
Beating the bitch in the Mothers’ Race.
Sports Day is an exercise in ritual humiliation. Most mums like to spend the Mothers’ Race hiding in the toilets. Needless to say, I was looking forward to it only slightly more than I would have my own execution by lethal injection, but my hatred of Bianca overrode all other feelings. The only problem was how to get out of my school excursion to the Science Museum?
There was no point calling in sick. Mr Scroope doesn’t even accept a certificate of death as an excuse. But it would be my own funeral if I didn’t beat Bianca in the Mothers’ Race.