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

The woman isn’t getting older . . . What she’s getting is injected twice a week with collagen and smeared in foetal lamb membranes.

With her duck-like deportment, hyper-arched back and flattened chest, it’s obvious that Hannah had been tortured in tutus by her mother from a very young age.

Having given up teaching art in a comprehensive and moved into interior design before it was fashionable, Hannah is credited with bringing feng shui (like chop suey, only not as tasty) to the West. In the early days she was compared to Martha Stewart, but insists that she was a rotten, two-faced bitch YEARS before Martha came on the scene. I adore Hannah, despite her grating, ‘Let’s get on with it, already!’ approach. Ms Wolfe always knows exactly which beaded pashmina or faux-chinchilla throw will be this year’s ‘must have’ accessory. This Design Diva could wear a tarpaulin cleverly draped so as to look like a ballgown and get away with it. Every time Hannah sees me in saggy leggings or ink-stained jeans, she adopts the sort of pained expression which makes me think she’s trying to suck her face out through the back of her skull.

After making her first fortune advising heiresses on whether to paint their houses peach or pistachio, Hannah decided she no longer wanted to ‘accept any employment which might interfere with my nails, dah-ling’. Shortly afterwards, she opened her own art gallery in Old Bond Street, and made her second fortune.

This world of spin and spittle provided her with a house in Regents Park so big there’s a toilet for every occasion, and a marriage proposal from Pascal.

When I first met Hannah at teacher training college, she prided herself on only ever dating men whose professions began with P. There was a Polar explorer, a poet, a pornographer, a pianist, a philanthropist, a political dissident and then finally a painter. Well, Pascal called himself a painter. Jazz and I saw him more as a lapsed Satanist.

With his dark good looks, insolent pout, lazily half-closed lids and Medusa dreadlocks aureoling his head, Pascal was the hot-to-trot Love God of Art School. Let’s face it, ‘My name is Pascal Swan. And yes, I mate for life,’ is a pretty persuasive pick-up line. And it seemed to be true. Even if his hair hadn’t lasted, their marriage had.

While Hannah is ever-optimistic, Pascal sees the bad side of everything. If he had his way he’d be skywriting There is no such thing as Santa! over EuroDisney.

Although we hated the way he sponged off Hannah (when Pascal put his arm around his bride at the wedding, Jasmine whispered, ‘Wouldn’t it look more natural with his hand in her purse?’) and even though we got Rory and David to tell him on his stag night that the marriage was not going to work unless he did, what we really resented was the deal he’d struck. He would only marry Hannah if they never had kids, or ‘ruggis ratti’ as he called them.

Whenever Jazz and I complained about our children, Hannah would do a little jig. ‘I’m celebrating National Childless Day, dah-lings. I’m dancing and leaping to celebrate my infertility!’

In short, she brought home the bacon – but not to go with eggs.

Standing now on Jasmine’s threshold, Hannah shook her head in disbelief at the sight of me, silver earrings jangling jauntily from the four holes in her chic little earlobes.

‘What? You’re trying to sell me a used car?’ She pointed at my slicked-back hair. Hannah is the most disloyal person I’ve ever met. That’s what makes her such fun.

‘It’s nit napalm. I have to leave it in for twelve to sixteen hours. Who’s here?’ Shedding my coat, I watched Rory retreat at speed to the kitchen, mumbling about checking on the family’s animals – even though I knew that the only animal Jazz had allowed her son Josh was a pet rock.

‘Oh, the Good and the Great. A few Prime Ministers from Third World fledgling democracies,’ Hannah sighed, ‘a couple of Nobel Prize winners, the World’s Greatest Living Playwright . . .’

‘Oh fab. The Cultural Commissars. Is Jazz at least enjoying herself?’

‘Well, nobody’s mentioned the C word. They’re all besotted with that pop star the United Nations has just appointed as a Good Will Ambassador – at least, I think she’s a pop star. With a name like Kinkee she could also be a hooker. She’s American, blonde, and you can still see the price tag on her store-bought boobs. Says she’s moving into acting, dah-ling. No doubt as Paris Hilton’s pussy double.’

I laughed. ‘Oh, the Parma Syndrome, huh? Thin and hammy. Christ!’ I caught sight of my Al Capone hairstyle in the hallway mirror. I looked underdressed without a sub-machine gun. ‘I can’t go in looking like this.’

But like a sky-diving instructor with a reluctant recruit, Hannah had already shoved me through the drawing-room door. And there was Jazz, all laughing eyes, luscious breasts, honeyed hair and velvet glances, coiffured and sublime in a colourful silk cocktail frock, smiling at me quizzically as I parachuted in.

I kissed her hello. ‘You look like a holiday. I want to go on you.’

She held me at arm’s length whilst scrutinizing my nit napalm. ‘Nits? Just pretend you’re into tits and clits,’ she suggested. ‘Then everyone will just presume that you’ve slicked it back because of the lesbian chic look.’

But there was no need to turn the other chic because all eyes were on the Pop Princess. In her mid-twenties, with lacquered lips, conical breasts and the obligatory flawless dentition, she was cadaverously pale and, like a jockey, way under her normal weight. All the better for riding, I supposed. What can I tell you? The girl was born to limo. This gym junkie was so determined to show off her time in the ab lab, she was only wearing a boob tube and matching hot pants made from mesh. The woman was so vain she’d no doubt installed a follow spotlight in her bedroom.

Despite the hours we girls had