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

went pale. When he finally spoke, it was in a monotone. ‘I am sixty-four. I suppose retirement is not out of the question.’

Perdita fired off a round of explosive expletives. Probably because she knew she’d have to change her sloganed herbal-tea mug, from Best Teacher, to Scheming, Lying, Treacherous Amoral Teacher Who Does It 50 Times After Class With The Headmaster Who Makes Me Do It Till I Get It Right! And all, as it turned out, for nothing.

I don’t know if ‘gloat’ is the right word, but a definite feeling of warmth spread through my body.

‘Oh, and by the way.’ I paused at the door, ‘Re. your rather obvious marital problems, Mr Scroope . . . Maybe therapy would rekindle a sense of wonder and mystery. I do have the number of an excellent marriage therapist – Bianca’s her name. I’ll email her details to you, shall I? Oh, and Happy Christmas to the both of you. Looks like they’ve all come at once!’ It was an obvious pun, but oh, the pleasure it gave me.

As if Life couldn’t get any better, the next cab off the Happiness rank involved Rory.

It was Christmas Eve. The kids were tucked up in bed and I was wrapping their presents under the tree, when the key turned in the lock and there he was, zigzagging towards me, weaving and tacking around the furniture, tilting dangerously to starboard.

‘I’m soooo ssssorry,’ he said blearily. You could have used his breath to clean my oven.

‘Rory, did you drive here? You’re completely smashed.’

‘Naw, I walked. I was fiddling around with the camcorder today . . .’

I groaned and flinched, dreading that he might tell me why. Bianca had cast him in her sex video, I recalled. ‘Yes?’ I said.

‘And anyway,’ he hiccoughed, ‘unbeknownst to me, Jenny video-ed the r-r-r-race.’

‘The what?’

‘The Mothers’ Race. At her S-s-s-sports Day. It was bumpy and there was a lot of footage. Really. I mean, she shot half an hour of her foot. But Bianca did push you. I’ve replayed it twenty times. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.’

When he bundled me up in his arms, I felt hidden, sheltered. From within the deep, crinkly folds of his cuddle I thought I heard him ask me to take him back.

‘What?’ I pulled away to look at him. It was a change of direction which could give a girl whiplash.

It was then my husband got down on a penitential knee and made a cursory stab at reconciliation. ‘Please take me back. I don’t know what came over me. I must have been having a midlife crisis.’

‘Um . . . How can you have a midlife crisis when you’ve never left puberty?’

‘I feel so guilty. Believe me, if I were one of my own dogs, I’d have myself put down. It’s the only humane thing to do. I should never have abandoned you for that woman.’

‘Where is Bianca, by the way?’ In a helicopter flying too low towards an electric cable, one could only hope.

‘What I’ve realized is that Bianca . . . well, she’s only in love with herself.’

‘She’ll have no competition there.’

Most love affairs, when stripped to their bare essentials, are as ridiculous as people stripped to their underwear. And my husband’s was no exception.

‘She needs a humility transplant.’ He hiccoughed again.

‘Well, you aren’t qualified to be the donor, Rory, take it from me.’

Rory laughed. ‘You see how clever you are?’ His smile was like an embrace. My heart beat insubordinately. For a moment, it seemed that he really could metamorphose back into the man with whom I had fallen in love.

‘I’ve changed, Cass, I really have.’ He took me in his arms once more.

Looking up at his face, I studied him. Can men change? I asked myself. Gear – yes. Tyres – yes. Underpants – occasionally. But their behaviour? Never. A new invention was required. The monogamous husband. Patent Pending.

‘The only thing you’ve changed is that you’ve grown longer nose hair,’ I told him.

For a moment he looked thrown, then rallied. ‘Lemme guess. You’re still carrying a little residual anger over the whole YOU SLEPT WITH ANOTHER WOMAN thing. If only you’d never taken me to those bloody classes, Cassie!’

‘Hey, I did not make a fool of you, Rory. You did that all by yourself. We went to the classes because we were unhappy. You left me. And you know what I realized? That I don’t need you. I was doing everything on my own anyway. Actually there’s much less work to do without you. Women don’t need husbands any more. If Jane Austen were alive today, she’d be writing about a Mr Bennet, arranging to marry off his four sad sons.’

Rory, whom I’d always thought would only ever cry if the local football stadium got washed away in a global-warming-related freak wave accident, sniffed back a tear.

‘Just because I don’t always express my feelings, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’

I attempted a sympathetic smile, but it was too tiring. ‘I’d like to feel sad for you, I really would, but I’m all depressed out. I just don’t have any depression left in me.’

‘Don’t you . . . Don’t you love me any more?’

It was a painful question. His mouth stiffened to meet the blow.

‘I just don’t need you any more.’ It was breaking what was left of my heart, but for the first time in my life, I was independent. And the way I saw it, if I was standing on my own two feet, then he could never again walk all over me.

‘But . . . but . . . I . . . can’t survive without you.’

‘Oh, you’ll survive. You’ll bivouac and build a campfire by rubbing two twigs together and slay an elk or whatever it is you men do.’

And then he enveloped me, hands everywhere. ‘Take me back.’ It was like being at the mercy of an octopus.

‘Get off me, Rory. See? You haven’t changed. You still think sex is the solution to everything.’

‘But how else can I prove my love for you?’

‘Gee, I dunno. In a court of law perhaps?’ I