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

by Kathy Lette

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 movie. ‘I don’t know what she’s talking about,’ the traitor simpered.

  ‘Can’t you just be gracious and wish Perdita the best?’ insisted Scroope.

  ‘What I wish is that she were in a plane which was about to make unexpected contact with the Atlantic Ocean.’

  Mr Scroope’s nose twitched. His face contorted into a gargoyle scowl. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Pendal, for generating and then implementing such breakthrough ideas. And thank you to our Inspectors for their favourable report,’ he said oleaginously, bringing the meeting to a close. ‘Mrs Pendal, would you like to escort our esteemed friends to the school gates?’

  When the staffroom had cleared, Scroope turned to me and hissed his usual phrase. ‘My office. Now.’ I could only imagine that he was going to make me write out 100 times, I must stop my compulsive, obsessive behaviour towards Perdita. I must stop my compulsive, obsessive behaviour towards Perdita. I had completely underestimated her indomitable resolution to win. At my own cost.

  ‘But they’re my notes! She stole them,’ I pleaded once more, as he closed the door behind us.

  My boss’s furry red brows collided on his forehead threateningly – the man really needed eyebrow mousse – but instead of yelling, he smirked. ‘Falsely accusing a fellow staff member of plagiarism, humiliating the school in front of the Inspectors – I think we can safely say that this can be called your third strike. I am writing to the Board of Governors immediately.’

  I wandered in a daze back to the staffroom and stood staring at the noticeboard with its Union flyers, yellowed with age, and collection of mildly humorous faux pas from children e.g. Philistines are the inhabitants of the Philippines. Three strikes and I was out. My reality cheque had just bounced. What would I do without teaching? I couldn’t expect a reference. Roadsweeper and toilet cleaner were two of those excellent options that my careers adviser never mentioned. Teaching was my vocation. I reread a card given to me by a pupil that day – You’re a cool teacher. You learned me real good – and gave in to my tears.

  After school, I sought solace with Jazz, but she was also going through a Life in the Toilet stage.

  ‘My husband is emotionally blackmailing me.’ She spoke in a weary singsong as we struggled through the supermarket aisles, pushing trollies with club-wheels to do the weekly food shop. ‘My son has gone all secretive and withdrawn, and I’m so broke I may have to break into my face-lift fund. I mean, look at this.’ She held up her pale blue handbag. ‘Things have got so bad I had to buy imitation Prada. And . . . I’ve broken up with Billy Boston.’ She maintained their romantic demise was because he refused to have the tattoo Sharyn removed from his arm. ‘He wanted me to change my name to Sharyn by deed poll, as it would hurt less than laser removal of the tattoo. Can you believe that?’ She laughed with lunatic fervour.

  Studz had vandalized whatever hope was left in the woman. Beaten and defeated, she sniffled into a tissue for a moment, then made a physical effort to shake off her maudlin anxieties. ‘What we need is some fun,’ she declared by the frozen food. ‘I mean, at least one of us has found some happiness. And if she won’t share it with us, we’re just going to have to live vicariously.’

  The person Jazz had in mind to spy on was Hannah. She had been so secretive about her lover that our curiosity was piqued. As ice-cream melted in the boot of my car, we sat outside Hannah’s house, swigging from a bottle of cooking wine as we giggled like deranged schoolgirls.

  ‘There! I see them!’ Jazz squealed with excitement, when the lights in Hannah’s bedroom came on. ‘I’m so pleased she finally took my advice.’

  We were laughing so much it took me a moment to realize that Jazz had started squeaking like a lost kitten.

  ‘Jazz?’

  I glanced over at her, bewildered. Her smile had become unhinged. The sort of smile that goes with braiding your hair and sitting in a corner humming.

  ‘What is it?’ I persisted.

  She tried to answer but her mouth just fell open.

  I looked in the direction of Hannah’s bedroom but all I could see was the moon, pocked like a giant golf ball, looming over the house. Jazz flumped back into the passenger’s seat in a fugue of shock, her eyes bare and round as light bulbs. She made a noise like a tyre going flat, but through the hiss I thought I heard the word ‘Josh’.

  ‘What?’ My face burned in confusion.

  ‘It’s my son!’

  I felt as if I’d wandered into a Greek Tragedy during the second act. ‘Josh?’

  And then I heard no more because the air was cleaved by my best friend’s wailing.

  22. ToyBoysRUs

  Jazz was out of the car and pounding on Hannah’s door before I could catch her. ‘Open this door!’ Her throat was on fire with misery.

  The window wheezed open above us. There was a general banging of doors, a scraping back of locks, and a few minutes later Hannah appeared, dishevelled and half-dressed. She stared at Jazz.

  ‘Where is my son?’ Jazz barged past Hannah.

  ‘Why? Is it past his bedtime?’ There was nothing weak or apologetic in Hannah’s voice. ‘He’s run along home, actually. But thank you for suggesting I help Josh with his art assignment. He is a truly remarkable young man.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he is.’ Jazz’s voice
was like acid and her look – well, it was a look which could have parted the Dead Sea.

  Following Jazz into Hannah’s state-of-the-art kitchen, I braced myself for the whole story. How could she possibly justify her actions? The person you go out with says a lot about you. Sleeping with your best friend’s son says that you are a two-faced psychopath.

  Hannah sashayed into the kitchen after us. ‘Talking about art, we became so connected intellectually and emotionally, it was only natural that we share a sexual complicity.’

  ‘Oh, spare us the details!’ Jazz roared, in a voice that could have moved the earth out of its orbit.

  Hannah uttered a little hiss of amusement. ‘But you’re the one who told me to take a toy boy. “The bitch is back”, you said.’ She swivelled onto a kitchen barstool and casually filed a nail. ‘“Kiss my tiara”. “You have to be mean to be queen” . . .’

  Jazz listened dumbfounded as her own words came back to haunt her. ‘For God’s sake, Hannah. He’s seventeen!’

  Hannah gave a brittle laugh. ‘When you were molesting your tennis coach and I suggested that it was best, in general, not to shtup someone you could have given birth to, you said, and I quote, that was “ageist bullshit”.’ Her lips were moving like a pair of garden shears. And her remarks were suitably cutting.

  Jazz was looking at her with the kind of expression you’d give an incontinent nudist who’d just relieved himself on your trousseau.

  ‘I remember you said that sex with a younger man is the equivalent of jogging seventy-five miles – but sooo much more enjoyable! And you’re so right. I mean – look at me! I’m glowing!’

  Jazz gave a horrified moan. ‘He’s my son!’ she croaked. ‘If you were a mother you’d understand! Just as well you never had a baby, Hannah. Although no, wait – you could have farmed the collagen from the umbilical cord to puff up your lying lips.’

  This time it was Hannah’s turn to be cut by a sharp remark. But it was not hard to comprehend Jazz’s wrath. The answer to, ‘How do you keep your youth?’ should not be: ‘At my best friend’s house in an upstairs bedroom.’

  ‘Why don’t you just crawl back to whatever sulphur-scented depths spawned you, you bitch. Do you have any idea how devastating this is for me?’ Jazz said.

  Hannah gave a sour smile. ‘Well, I’m glad you now know what it’s like to have your life devastated,’ she said. ‘Join the fucking club.’ Her laughter crashed like a hailstorm all around us.

  I looked at Hannah, aghast. This was all for revenge? It was a rationalization so convoluted I’d need Stephen Hawking to explain it. ‘Have you no heart?’ I asked. It seemed to me Hannah could qualify as an artificial heart donor, right at this moment.

  ‘No heart and no decency!’ Jazz spat. ‘You’re nothing but a calculating sexual predator.’

  Hannah guffawed. ‘Why do the words “pot”, “kettle” and “black” spring to mind, I wonder?’

  ‘But you deliberately sought out the most vulnerable of victims. Josh has just lost his family home. His parents are at war. His A levels are looming.’ Jazz paced as she catalogued our friend’s cruelties. ‘You’ve acted with the most callous disregard to the damage you could cause him. Or me! Worse still, you have absolutely no remorse. I never ever want to see you again.’ Her voice spiralled up into a shriek. ‘Fuck off and die, do you hear me?’

  Hannah tried to justify herself once more, but Jazz screeched over the top of her. ‘Here, let me give you a twenty pence piece so you can go and ring someone who gives a fuck. If you come near my son once more, I will kill you.’

  Kill was a little strong, I thought, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hannah were to lose a limb in a bizarre Moulinex accident.

  In the handbook on ways to get rid of a girlfriend, the third most effective method would be to say, ‘I’m going to miss you. I mean, hanging out with you makes me look so much slimmer!’ The second most effective technique would be something along the lines of, ‘Here’s the pound I owe your husband for going down on me.’ But the ultimate had to be to sleep with her son.

  ‘Cassie,’ Jazz turned to me. ‘You must choose now. Me or Her.’

  ‘Go on – take her side. You usually do,’ crabbed Hannah, ‘because you’re so intimidated by her. This is the woman who sabotaged your marriage!’

  I looked from one to the other, debating the wisdom of a response. I had to orchestrate a reconciliation. But how? To say my best girlfriends weren’t getting on was putting it mildly. They had the same rapport as a gun-toting Islamic fundamentalist and an armed American GI. But I’d hesitated a moment too long because Jazz was exiting, slow and deliberate, like a matador turning his back on the bull.

  ‘Hannah! Apologize. You must run after her.’

  Hannah just laughed mirthlessly.

  By the time I’d blundered down onto the street, Jazz and her imitation Prada handbag had been eaten up by mist.

  The menthol coldness of winter was upon us once more, but it was the coldness between we three that was truly arctic. The social frostbite felt more chilly and bitter than the nights. Mistrust, like a slow drift of snow, had banked up around us, making it icy and treacherous. Silence deepened in drifts.

  I rang Jazz and Hannah constantly, to no avail. It was hard to believe that our twenty-five-year relationship was seeping away, almost mimicking the evenings, which were now dwindling into sepia grey, then darkness. How could something so delicately established over decades, be torn asunder so quickly? The centrifugal forces of loving friendship had held us in their grip, but suddenly gravity had evaporated and we were all flying off into space.

  I thought of writing to Jazz, but what could I say? Am so sorry your husband is a diseased philanderer, your house has been remortgaged and sold from under you, and your best friend is shagging your son. But there just didn’t seem to be a Hallmark card to cover that.

  Lose a friend, gain a mother. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my mother moved in. She said she had left my father because of the other ‘she’ in his life – the shed. Apparently he was always in there, mucking around with bolts and wires and computery things. ‘On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the Escape key, dear,’ she informed me. I emailed my father: Shed some light, please?

  All week she catalogued my father’s shortcomings. ‘He’s always timing things. “Oh, that walk took ten minutes and seventeen seconds”. The man would time a guilt trip, Cassandra, if he could. Except of course he never goes on any!’ she bawled.

  My kids took to their beds. Jazz potty-trained her son early and had him into a bed by the age of two, while I had kept lowering my cot bases so the kids couldn’t get out and wake me in the traditional toddler way – by pulling out my nostril hairs and singing ‘Come on everyone get happy.’ I’m a believer in kids taking long afternoon naps – but not when thay are at the age of puberty. This was not healthy.

  Jamie had become so delinquent that I had to attend his parent-teacher evening under an assumed name. As for Jen, the only words my twelve-year-old daughter had addressed to me for the last six months were, ‘I need money.’ She was at that stage of locking herself in her bedroom and not coming out again until she leaves for University. Although the way her grades had been going since the summer, I think she was laying the foundations for a fabulous career in hamburger-flipping in some fast-food joint. And it was all my fault. I was a bad mother. My mother report card would read Must Try Harder.

  Things had become so morbid, it was a wonder Vincent Price didn’t drop in. Mum and I numbed our mutual heartache with alcohol – something I would normally have done with my girlfriends. But after the second bottle I started convincing myself that I was better off without Jazz and Hannah.

  ‘I never liked either of those bossy-boots,’ my mother confided, calling me to the dinner-table, just as she had done when I was a child. Oh, and just look at what I’d achieved and how I’d matured since then!

  But shedding friends is harder than shedding pou
nds. There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but leaving your mates is much more difficult.

  ‘Sorry, guys, I don’t want to play with you any more,’ just doesn’t cut it once you’re out of the school playground. ‘I think we should start seeing other people,’ didn’t really hit the spot either. Nor did, ‘Look, I just don’t want to see you any more.’

  ‘You’re better off without them, dear,’ Mum concluded.

  ‘Gggwwwhhhfffgh,’ I replied.

  ‘And you’re better off without that lazy bugger of a husband of yours too, love.’

  ‘FFFFFghwwwwaaach,’ I added, before keeling over.

  No orgasm, no husband, no mind and now – no friends. As soon as I sobered up, I vowed to leave my brain to medical science. Unlike me, it had obviously never been used.

  23. You Are Going to Enjoy This Marriage Even If I Have To Divorce You to Do So

  Beginnings are easy. We know how to fall in love. Our bodies tell us what to do. We have all those pop songs, arias, poems, films and books which celebrate the euphoria. No, it’s endings that are hard. What about the times when love no longer casts its spell? When joy has evaporated and we’re filled instead with bile and blame?

  ‘What if you crave passion, sex, friendship and children – all with the same partner? Can such miracles occur?’ I asked the woman in the food-splotched bathrobe in the mirror, only to discover, to my horror, that it was me.

  The realization that life hasn’t quite turned out the way we thought it would hits us all at some time. It is prompted by many things. A lover leaving, the kids flying the nest . . . other people’s gazebo extensions. For me, it was waking up alone in my marital bed with images of Bianca’s spandex bikini thong between my husband’s teeth, to find myself surrounded by wine bottles and chocolate boxes, watching I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. You’d think reality TV shows would have helped to remind me that there are people out there who are even sadder than me. But without Rory or the company of my two best mates, I too could hear the jungle beasts growling and prowling as my little campfire flickered down to its embers.