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

dedicated to looking good, the men were not even aware there were other women within a ten-mile radius. With a Pop Princess present, we were ranked somewhere below lesser invertebrates. As Kinkee jabbered on inanely about Kabbalah and hot-cupping, London’s male socalled intelligentsia hee-hawed appreciatively.

To my alarm, the Pop Princess suddenly broke off and shimmied towards me. A feather boa coiled and writhed like an exotic snake around her snowy neck. ‘Wow! Lesbian chic. I like it.’ The boa jerked as though really alive. ‘Bi-polar, bi-coastal, bisexual. Everything is bi, bi, bi right now. I’ve been thinking a little lesbo action could broaden my career options, ja know?’

The geriatric males, who all had high hopes of turning up sometime in the future on a postage stamp, turned their droopy eyes in my direction. As the centre of their fleeting attention, I tried a simulation of coquetry by giggling and hair-flicking. Only trouble was, I’d forgotten that I was infested so accidentally sent a plague of dead and dying lice into the atmosphere. Perhaps she’d like to come up and see my itchings? It was a bad pun I’d save for Jazz, who’d love it. ‘Well, actually it’s nit lotion,’ I confessed.

This spokeswoman for vermin-afflicted children in the Third World gagged, shrieked and then ricocheted across the room at the speed of light. The United Nations had obviously selected her for her survival skills. Couldn’t wait to see how she was going to endure those field trips to the Congo.

Jazz rode to my social rescue with a call to dinner, and even though Studz had not yet arrived, we filed into the ornate dining room where the elite male intellectuals jockeyed for position next to the Pop Princess. As we devoured the eggplant soup and pimento coulis, the human rights lawyer once imprisoned in Burma, the journalist from Chile who’d written about his torture, and the poet still living under a Fatwa all began to compete to see who had been the most heroic and self-sacrificing, who had received the most death threats. ‘The reward for sticking one’s head above the political parapet,’ sighed the Pulitzer-winning journalist. It was the intellectual version of comparing penis sizes. Basically these pacifists would have killed for a Nobel Peace Prize.

I myself had never got close to active combat, unless you counted the supermarket check-out queue. How inadequate not to be on a hit list, or to have my phone tapped. Mind you, if I want terror I just attend my son’s parent-teacher night.

Oblivious to the men’s posturing, the Pop Princess jabbered on about tofu face creams, while we wives rolled our eyes, sharing a silent laugh at the girl’s inanity and the men’s vanity.

Jazz, the hands-on-hostess, was carting platters of vegetables to the table. She paused by my chair as a mildewed political activist talked of his brutal imprisonment in South Africa. ‘Truth be known,’ she murmured in my ear, ‘his only experience of real pain was when a BBC interviewer asked him if he was tortured by the guilt of inherited wealth.’

I glanced in his direction. Not only was this Oxford Mandarin an antediluvian, but he had the kind of face which would frighten a gargoyle. ‘Don’t mock. Some day his looks will go,’ I whispered back to Jazz.

Giggles were rising up in us like champagne bubbles. Men are so egotistical they never think they’re too old for a girl – not even when they lose their dentures during oral sex.

The lawyers, heads down, chins tucked into their other chins, were now competing to see who did the most pro bono work. Jazz confided to me that she was only pro Bono if he was headlining a concert. It was like watching a room of flat-chested women fighting over a 36C cup bra.

Hannah, Jazz and I were crossing our legs and biting our lips to contain our glee. Good girlfriends have an emotional patois only they can understand. We can speak fluently to each other without using words. I was just pondering how much easier it would be if men had antlers (perhaps then they would at least stop driving those stupid cars), when David Studlands swept into the room and eclipsed every one of them.

The all-over tan, the tailored teeth, the coronet of luxuriant greying hair, his bouffant was so distinguished there was talk of giving it its own knighthood, the freshly laundered silk shirts and racy Paul Smith cufflinks – he commanded respect. When Jazz rose to greet her husband, the air around her lit up with love.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said briskly. ‘Urgent meeting with the PM on our AIDS funding in Uganda.’ Studz was so in demand, so over-scheduled, so heroic – always coming straight from scaling the cliff-face of fundraising for torture victims or something equally important – that he was also invariably forgiven, fussed over, indulged.

Studz flashed his dashing smile – the smile of a gambler who only plays for dangerously high stakes. When he spoke, the room became illuminated by his eloquence. As he expounded on his latest project in the Sudan, praising the Pop Princess for her contribution to the health of underprivileged children, with amusing little asides and witty, self-deprecating remarks, managing to flatter every single person present by referring fleetingly to their own unique and selfless qualities, Jazz just smiled fondly and went to the kitchen to fetch the main course.

A steaming vat of her famous osso bucco appeared, complemented by leeks and red beet essence. As the guests marvelled greedily, Jazz started to relax. It was the first time I’d seen her laughing and joking since her mother died. And there was still no mention of the dreaded C word. I was just breathing a sigh of relief when the Pop Princess bayoneted a piece of veal on her fork and held it aloft as though it were a medical experiment gone wrong.

‘I doan eat meat. It gives ya colon cancer, yer know,’ she drawled.

Jazz jumped as if something had bitten her.