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

‘My husband gives very good headache,’ she went on dully. ‘I just thought it was something to do with our stage in life. Well, his stage. I’m so desperate for sex that I had a cervical smear test from a male doctor last week and actually enjoyed it.’

If Jazz had meant it to be funny – well, it wasn’t. Hannah and I tried to mumble something conciliatory, but Jazz oscillated her hands through the air as though shooing away an invisible wasp.

We watched as she started manically rushing around the kitchen organizing desserts.

‘Even my fantasy life is boring. When I order a pizza, the pizza boy is not cute. He’s acned and fat and anyway, after I pay him, he leaves.’ Her valiant attempts to take this lightly were falling flat. She had now laid out twenty plates and was frisbeeing mango slices onto each one like Fanny Craddock on amphetamines. ‘But I didn’t know he was seeking satisfaction elsewhere. I’m obviously too dumb to notice.’ She lifted up a chunk of her blonde hair by way of explanation. ‘If I were a brunette, I’d have been on to him straight away. I suppose he’s only stayed with me for my cooking. An oral orgasm to Doctor Studlands means a fine gourmet meal. Honestly, if I were to serve myself up naked for dinner with a bit of watercress up my bum, David would just ask what’s for dessert. And tonight it’s papaya, mango and kiwi compote with lime mint salsa and coconut chocolate cake, as it happens,’ she said, squirting curlicues of cream onto the ziggurat of puddings she’d assembled frenziedly on consecutive plates.

‘Jazz, dah-ling.’ Hannah steadied our friend’s arm. ‘David’s obviously had an erectile problem, but he’s clearly trying to fix that now. This Viagra is obviously for you.’

Jazz’s face flickered and tensed. She shoved the Viagra packet into our hands. It was half-empty. And it was a repeat prescription. Sadness seemed to devour her. Then she threw the bowl of whipped cream at the wall where it detonated. Looking back, it was this moment which pinpointed her change from frustration to something much more ferocious. She turned on us, blonde hair flying. ‘Mind you, the world’s best-kept secret is how bad married sex actually is.’

‘Speak for yourself, dah-ling,’ said Hannah huffily.

‘Don’t tell me your sex-life is good, Hannah. Any wife who starts decorating the house as compulsively as you do is NOT having good sex. Basically, if the floor’s getting laid, then you are not.’

Hannah flared her eyebrows. ‘There is time for both, Jasmine. In marriage, couples develop a sort of sexual shorthand. Short and sweet. A sensual haiku.’

‘Ha! Sounds like that joke: Why don’t married women blink during foreplay? Because they don’t have time.’ Jazz spat out the punchline.

‘Well, I’m sorry for you, Jazz, but Pascal makes me very happy in bed.’

‘Yeah, right. And Doctor Shipman was a mercy killer.’

‘Well, Pascal should make you happy in bed, Hannah,’ I said, in an effort to dissipate the growing tension. ‘He spends enough time in it! That man has only got up before midday once in his life – and that was at Uni when his mattress caught fire, do you remember?’

Hannah cut me a slit-eyed glance. ‘Just because Cassie and you have awful sex-lives, don’t presume that—’

‘Hey! I didn’t say that Rory and I have—’ But before I could counter Hannah’s claim, Jazz reared her head defensively.

‘You’re just of the Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Marry No Evil school, Hannah. At least Cassie is honest about how lousy things are in bed.’

‘My sex-life is not lousy!’ I reiterated. I thought of the joy of feeling my body all relinquished and pleasured and hot beside Rory’s, my nightie squelched up around my waist and the pleasant ache in my groin the next day as I minced, bow-legged up the tube escalator to work . . . Hang on – when exactly was the last time my walk was all John Wayned like that?

‘I don’t want to discuss this now. I have a headache,’ Hannah said irritably.

‘And I’m about to get one,’ I sulked.

‘Oh, then it must be bedtime,’ Jazz concluded bitterly.

A crespuscularity of mood crept over us. It was only shattered when Jazz’s seventeen-year-old son, Josh, ambled downstairs for food supplies. There was a Penguin Classic in one jean pocket, a half-written poem in the other. Jazz waved her hand like a windscreen wiper in front of her face to sweep away her emotions. She ruffled her son’s sandy-coloured hair as he raided the fridge. ‘Try and leave me the odd crumb this time,’ she said affectionately. ‘So much for your father’s medical prowess. He hasn’t found a cure for adolescence yet, has he?’

Jazz maintains that she spoils and pampers her son because one day he’ll be picking out her nursing home. But in actual fact she has to make up for David’s lack of paternal interest. Ever since Josh was born, she’s carried her own body weight in castor oils and Calpol, baby walkers, Play-Doh and unsweetened kumquat and guava juice – enough baby stuff, in fact, to establish a comfortable wilderness homestead.

David, on the other hand, did not take to parenthood. He took to travelling to war-torn environs instead. ‘That’s the trouble with marrying an activist – they’re so damn active!’ Jazz told people breezily. But as far as she was concerned, her son was the cleverest person on earth – now that Einstein has kicked the bucket. And Josh was clever. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d changed his own nappy as a baby. But David seemed oblivious. Josh is an only child, but he still isn’t his father’s favourite.

So it was for the sake of her son that Jazz reapplied her lipstick, put on her bright hostess look and returned to enjoy her wedding anniversary party. Only Hannah and I noted the tiny, uncharacteristic dab of lipstick on Jazz’s eyetooth, and that one of her shoes, a little too big,