How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints), Kathy Lette [books to read to increase intelligence .txt] 📗

a point. I’d never met any female executive, no matter how senior, who didn’t jettison the financial pages to turn to the scare story about how the children of mothers who work fulltime have less chance of progressing to A level and are more prone to collect Nazi memorabilia in later life.

Jazz had her arms outstretched as though on the cross so I could paint her sides. ‘Haven’t I been a good wife?’ She stuck her chin out nobly. ‘Good God! The things I’ve put up with. The medical emergencies. The Human Rights campaigns . . . My house is always full of landmine victims. Or literacychallenged homeless lower Voltans with no refugee status and haemorrhoids. Black trade unionists who talk about “equality” then snap their fingers at me for coffee because I’m a mere female. Oh yes, I’ve graciously entertained them all.’

When Jazz blew her nose, it sounded like the HMS Britannia foghorn. ‘Funny, isn’t it, the delusion among the Bridget Jones set vomiting drunkenly in gutters at three a.m. that marriage will be a step up!’

Hannah corrected her. ‘Not all men are shmucks.’

‘True. Some of them are dead. Men – can’t live with them, can’t slip them a cyanide tablet without being jailed for murder. Oh, I feel sick.’ Clutching her abdomen, hair limp with sweat, Jazz looked like an overripe mango. She mopped at her brow. ‘Your heating’s too high, Cassie. I feel so queasy. And I have a headache. Do you have any peanut butter? I’ve had such a craving for it lately.’

‘Christ, you’re not up the duff, are you?’

Hannah’s eyes rolled like a pantomime dame’s. ‘Yes, that must be it, Cassie. It’s an immaculate conception.’

‘The reason I’m feeling so rotten,’ Jazz went on, ‘is because I’ve only just realized how women are still putting themselves last. Look at you, Hannah. You didn’t have children because Pascal didn’t want them. And . . .’

This was dangerous territory. I glanced at the kitchen clock. Jazz could easily be through Customs now and at the baggage carousel. I made a pathetic attempt to steer us towards safer conversational ground. ‘I can’t understand why you didn’t have kids, Hannah. If only as an excuse to leave parties early.’

But Hannah was already bristling. ‘My first commitment is to Pascal. We have the life we want.’

Jazz, fuelled by whisky, guffawed. ‘You have the life that he wants. Pascal just wanted to be your only child. The centre of your universe.’

‘Well, at least we’re happy,’ Hannah retorted, a little cruelly.

‘Come on, Jazz. Hannah’s soft furnishings are actually far too nice to have sprog pee all over them.’ I was doing so much defusing I could get work with the Bomb Disposal Squad.

‘Eeeew! I detest children. I detest animals too, but I thought admitting to the former would bring me fewer death threats,’ Hannah crabbed.

Whenever Hannah and Jazz found themselves at each other’s throats, they would reunite by redirecting their dissatisfaction towards me. And we had definitely entered a Hard Hat area.

‘Come on, Jazz, get dressed,’ I insisted. ‘You’d be driving home from the airport by now.’

‘My life is fine,’ Hannah reiterated, flicking dog drool off her fingers in disgust. ‘It’s Cassandra we should be worried about. Cassie should be appearing on a Jewish This is Your Life called THIS is Your LIFE?!’ She gestured around her, repulsed, before cringing away from a Doberman which was licking her hand under the table. ‘What the hell is that dog? It looks like the kind of creature which would drag you into the Underworld.’

‘Hannah has a point, Cassie. I mean, why is it that you have a full time job and yet Rory does fuck all to help you?’

As usual, I was exceeding the Daily Recommended Allowance of Cowardice. I bleated for a bit about what a good partner Rory was and how he did half of everything.

‘Half! Women are so crap at maths,’ Jazz exploded. ‘This is why men are able to trick us into believing that they’re doing fifty per cent of the housework, childcare and cooking. It’s like that joke: the reason the bride wears white is because it’s good for the dishwasher to match the stove and the fridge.’ She paused to blow her nose once more. ‘Which is why your sex-life sucks, because underneath you resent him.’

I glared at Jasmine in horror. How could she blurt out my secret like that? Hannah gave me a gluttonous look and for a minute I thought she was finally going to spread something on her cheese cracker – moi.

‘Your sex life sucks?’ she repeated, voraciously.

‘Well, I wasn’t actually planning on broadcasting my sexual secrets i.e. that I don’t have any, but . . .’ I glowered at Jazz once more. Stalling for time, I busied myself wetting Jasmine’s bikini and scrunching it up in a plastic bag, then sprinkling sand from the cat litter into her suitcase. ‘Cone of silence?’ I requested and Hannah nodded. ‘I’ve . . . I’ve . . . Oh God. My pussy has lost its purr,’ I confessed reluctantly.

‘Like most married women, her sex-life is terminally blah,’ Jazz elaborated resentfully.

‘Really? I thought Rory was an animal in bed.’

‘Oh, he is an animal – a hamster.’ I winced. Once, having loads of sex made a woman feel guilty and cheap. After marriage, not having loads of sex made a woman feel guilty and cheap.

‘You two should really hit the road. I mean,’ I tapped my watch, ‘what if there’s traffic?’

‘Rory has the patience to spend hours and hours trying to hit a teeny weenie golf ball into a teeny weenie hole, but hasn’t got the time to find her G-spot. Isn’t that right, Cass?’ Jazz said, testing the dryness of her tan with a fingertip.

Hannah looked at me with horror. The news had obviously scandalized her. ‘Rory golfs?’

I shrugged non-committally. Rory may golf but I was the one with the handicap – my pathetic personality. Why could I never stand up to anyone? In my book, caution was always a good risk to take.

‘We were told that our generation