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

There is a despondent grandeur to London’s architecture, reminiscent of an old lady wearing a fur coat she’s had since her thirties. I veered past the terraced houses of Primrose Hill and on into Regents Park. Trees thrashed in the wind. Towards Euston, the streets disintegrated into flimsy tower blocks which had spread like an architectural carcinoma after the Blitz.

On and on I walked. London in the winter is as grey as a parking garage; the monochrome colours matched my mood. The smell after rain was tart, and the air chilly. As I got closer to the City, giant hypodermic buildings needled the sky. The beacon atop Canary Wharf resembled a push button on a toilet. One touch and London, with all its stench and chaos and rotting history, would just be flushed away. Cars clattered by, but down on the river, between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower of London, it was dark and deserted.

I stood on the lip of the Thames, watching the wind whip the crests of the waves into cruel smiles. I don’t know exactly how long I stood there on the riverbank, but Big Ben marked the hours with sepulchrally deep chimes. As the tide turned, the grey and white ripples became the colour of a gloomy tweed. Circumstances closed in around me like the sides of a coffin. I felt as if a great lid was being screwed down on me. Even though it was shadowy and murky beneath the bridges, so many long-hidden home truths were suddenly brought into the blinding light. I had undermined my own marriage. My fault. My fault. In the rear-view mirror of marriage guidance, every infringement, every flouted rule, every scrape, every emotional hit and run, is examined in minute detail, magnifying the problems. My fault. My fault. I had been unhappy, yes. But not as unhappy as I was now. Recklessly, I began to climb over the railing of the wharf on the East Thames path and teetered above the fast-flowing current. I was overcome with a desire to reinvent myself; to leave my clothes on a beach and fake suicide, emerging with a new identity as an hotel heiress say . . . or a beautiful, flame-haired sex therapist.

People can re-sit driving tests, so why can’t we re-sit our lives when we fail? At that moment, the urge to kill myself off, like a character in a soap opera whose plots have got stale, was incredibly strong. I was shocked that such a thought could occur to me. There was no history of insanity in my family, except that my father did give up a job as a musician to become an accountant.

But what abruptly changed my mind about ‘ending it all’, was that just at that moment, I overbalanced. The eternity between losing my foothold and realizing that I was really going to fall to my watery death brought about a whole host of revelations, chief amongst these being that I no longer wanted to slowly sink, crippled by the terrible inertia of depression. It was such a relief to know for the first time in months that I was no longer in danger from this emotion. Anchored by my love for my children, negative feelings could no longer wash me out to sea.

But of course, the fucking river could.

As the scream ripped from my throat, I hit the cold with such force that it left me winded. I flailed out wildly, waiting for the surging water to pull me under . . . but there was no surging. In fact, there was no under. I groped about, plunging my hands into freezing . . . gloop. In the dark, I hadn’t noticed how far out the tide had receded. Realizing that I had merely plopped onto my arse into the crud and mud, I laughed raucously. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. The laughing and the frantic rush of the indifferent river out beyond me, seagulls gossiping casually overhead, helped put me back in my place.

Just because a relationship has ended doesn’t mean it’s a failure. The real failure is the marriage that has long worn out but which drags itself along in boredom and bitterness. Like two astronauts crammed into a space capsule, the loveless couple go hurtling through space together, starving each other of oxygen.

And so it was, on this bleak December night, sitting on the mudflats of the Thames with a bruised bottom, that I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need my husband. In truth, I had always run the family single-handedly. Like most wives, I was a married single mum. Since the separation, the children had been cowed into obedience. Sympathy for me had calmed their behaviour and increased their consideration. And without Rory – well, in reality, it just meant that there was just one less child to look after.

To see the whole picture, sometimes you have to step out of the frame. I climbed back behind the railings. My hands were frozen, lips numb, coat porcupined in mud icicles as I hailed a taxi to take me home.

I had been a pushover for way, way too long. I was the type who would look both ways before crossing my arms. Obviously my sole purpose in life was to act as a warning to others. I couldn’t blame Jazz, because the inequalities she’d pointed out in my marriage were real. And I had been guilty of a self-annihilating compliance. My friends, my family, the staff at school, my husband – they had all treated me like a slave. I did everything but peel them grapes and fan them with lotus leaves. Enough of my old life. I was reborn! I could now win the Shirley MacLaine Previous Life Achievement Award. As soon as I got home I would take drastic measures. I would sack Jazz, Hannah and Rory from my Friends and Family list with British Telecom. That would show them!

And then I would get a dog.