Husband Replacement Therapy

by Lette, Kathy

  ‘Fan-bloody-tastic! Now, promise me you’ll give up your tutor too,’ Emerald lectured. ‘As if being a parent isn’t stressful enough! What, with balancing meals, supervising digital detoxes, and discouraging tattoos, side-boob, piercings and the perception that the Love Island contestants are role models.’

  ‘You know what? You’re right. I really don’t have to add tutoring on omniscient narrators and quadratic sequences into my already over-booked schedule,’ Amber concurred.

  ‘Mind you,’ I joked, ‘I do have one burning question for your tutor – when did parenting get so hard? The exam is multiple choice. Are you an over-anxious parent? a) Yes. b) Yes.’

  ‘What parents desperately need is a lesson in how to chill out about parenting,’ Emerald said. ‘Let me tutor you in how to forget about being perfect. First, pour yourself a big cocktail. Second, put on your headphones so you can’t hear your whiny kids’ demands . . .’

  ‘Then pop your feet up and dive into some “continuous prose”, otherwise known as a novel,’ I finished the thought.

  ‘Speaking of which, I’m so sick of this pretentious crap,’ Amber said, and with that, flung the huge hardback across the deck.

  I’d never seen her do something so reckless. ‘Well done, sis.’ I applauded, amazed. ‘Go to the top of the class.’

  ‘Oh, quick! Look at that albatross,’ Emerald said, pointing out the magnificent bird, with its massive wing span, gliding effortlessly above the boat’s bow. ‘The babies leave the nest and fly to sea and don’t land for two years. Unlike our kids, who never really leave the frickin’ nest. My kids might be away at uni, but they still bring home all their dirty laundry and expect me to iron it.’

  ‘This break has been such bliss it’s made me think about flying the nest to escape my own kids,’ Amber admitted.

  ‘Well, I didn’t think a cruise would float my boat,’ Emerald confessed, ‘but I haven’t thought about work once. If only we didn’t have to go back. Why don’t we just take a gap year, girls? Gap years are so wasted on the young.’

  ‘Um, Em, having trysts with twenty-two-year-olds is your gap year,’ I reminded her.

  Both my sisters spluttered with laughter, their earthy chortles sounding like cars on gravel. When they’d calmed down, Emerald said, ‘Okay, so I’m rediscovering my mojo, getting fit, not thinking about work and reinventing myself as a smoking hot sex goddess. I had a facial, for god’s sake! And wore gold hotpants to the Big Band Bash in the Molecular Bar. Me! And Amber’s eating and tanning and letting her hair down – her chin hair – and having “me time”, while wishing she’d sent her kids off to boarding school the minute the umbilical cords were cut, and, I can’t believe it, wearing leggings and flip-flops . . . But what about you, Ruby? What’s new with you?’

  Amber’s eyes narrowed, her gaze quizzical and calculating. ‘Yes, you look different somehow. Are you feeling okay?’ she asked, anxiously.

  ‘Me? Oh, yes. Fine. I’m just worrying about the flak we’re going to cop from Mum when we get back,’ I said quickly. ‘She’s sent me a couple of extremely curt emails. We’ll have to buy matching Mum-proof flak jackets.’

  ‘What’s that on your chin?’ It was Emerald’s turn to scrutinise me now. ‘Is that beard rash? You’ve been snogging some love god, haven’t you, you, cheeky minx!’

  My lips felt as though they’d been novocained. ‘W-w-what?’ I stammered. ‘No, I haven’t.’ Oh, god, I was lying to my sisters again. I’d become so adept at lying, I really only had two options: join Her Majesty’s Secret Service or become a conservative party politician. But I’d promised Brody – and I was clearly in enough trouble with the karma police as it was. I broke out into a sweat that had nothing to do with the tropical sun. I felt like an adolescent, all angst-riddled and blush-ridden. ‘Must be a snorkelling mask rash,’ I ad-libbed, rolling onto my stomach so I could bury my face in my towel.

  ‘I didn’t know you needed a snorkel to “go down”!’ Emerald jested.

  ‘I dunno what you’re talking about . . .’ Liar, liar, pants on fire! How many pairs of pants had I immolated on this cruise, I vaguely wondered.

  ‘Now that you’ve rolled over, I can read something imprinted onto your back. Hmm, what does it say? Life boat cover – remove only in emergencies.’

  ‘Really?’ I momentarily fell for Amber’s ruse and rolled onto my back again.

  ‘I was only joking, Ruby, but you’re blushing bright red. So, you have been making out with someone?’

  ‘No! It’s not stubble rash. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . an over-exuberant facial scrub.’ I was a bad sister. I should be made to wear a large badge identifying me as a ‘sister trainee’, I scolded myself.

  A ruckus by the pool saved me from further interrogation by my nosy siblings. Not that I didn’t want to talk about Brody with them, despite his warnings; I just didn’t know what I wanted to say. Anyway, there was nothing to say, because I was ending it, before I fell flat on my face – well, fell flat on both of my visages, because I’d become so two-faced of late I was positively bi-facial.

  ‘Right, laaadeeez!’ boomed a familiar American-accented voice over the tannoy. I recognised the counterfeit buoyancy of Brent, the entertainment officer, and spied him at the edge of the pool. It seemed to me that nobody could speak that enthusiastically without Class A narcotics being involved. ‘It’s time for the SPLASH Competition. So, tell me, ladeez, do you like to get wet?’ he said lasciviously.

  A few of the tipsier female passengers whooped accordingly.

  ‘Well, I’m about to make you very, very wet indeed. I’d like our heftiest males to report poolside, pronto. Points will be given for water displacement. If your belly flop wets the ladies on the upper balcony, double points. A little pathetic squirt that gets none of the ladies wet won’t get you any points. This is a competition where size does count, don’t you agree, laaadeeez?’

  The cocktail-clutching women clustered around the pool squawked their inebriated agreement.

  ‘And, laaadeeez, I’ll be needing you to hold up fingers for points, ranging from one to five. It ain’t gonna be pretty. Rough seas poolside, people! To kick-start proceedings, I’ve drafted in a few of our more substantial crew members. Give it up for BORIS and FLABBA!’

  On cue, two of the crew shambled forward, wearing bathrobes and clownfish caps à la Finding Nemo.

  ‘Okay, you big bruisers, show us what you’ve got.’

  With painful reluctance, both draftees sheepishly shed their robes. Barrel-chested and bulging of stomach, their massive groins were incongruously clad in teeny, weeny, bright red and white budgie-smugglers. Shuffling self-consciously towards the diving boards, both crew members looked as though they’d rather endure a freak wave, an iceberg, hull flooding, a full-on pirate invasion or Robinson Crusoe–type marooning than face this public humiliation.

  ‘Boris! Step forward, bro.’ The tallest, biggest bloke trundled to the pool edge. ‘Boris is one of our sous chefs. So, how have you been training for your belly flop, dude?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been eating a lot,’ he replied, half-heartedly.

  ‘Not your own cooking, I bet!’ Brent scoffed.

  The big chef looked genuinely baffled and hurt. But the entertainment officer had turned his attention to clownfish number two.

  ‘So, Flabba, as one of our valuable deckhands, can you tell us what your secret is for keeping in such fine physical condition?’ Brent condescended.

  ‘Rum and cokes,’ Flabba joked, trying to be convivial.

  ‘Great. So, you already have brain damage, that’s good – no need to alert health and safety! Right, are there no other takers for the splash competition?’ Brent gave a cursory glance around the crowd. ‘Okay then, let’s get started.’ Brent climbed to his observational perch on the lower diving board. A blast of Carole King’s ‘I Feel the Earth Move’ sounded from the speakers. ‘Now, if there’s a tie, we’ll have a “sudden death mode”, where I choose the prettiest ladies
on board to push you in simultaneously, then see which woman gets the wettest.’

  ‘God,’ Emerald said, leaning up on her elbows for a better look at the entertainment officer’s peacockish display. ‘This wet analogy is making me dry.’

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered. ‘I’m pretty sure that bloke’s only ever had one long-term lover – his right hand.’

  A crestfallen Boris climbed onto the high diving board and flopped in first, sending up a tidal wave of water to drench the front row of women, who squealed playfully. Boris emerged moments later, his pale belly pink from the impact.

  ‘I didn’t realise it was whale-spotting season!’ The entertainment officer wisecracked, showcasing flawless white veneers. ‘Only, Boris didn’t get that way eating krill, did you, duuuuude? Ladies, your verdict please.’

  The audience of tipsy females hollered and hooted their piña-colada-fuelled encouragement, holding varying numbers of digits aloft.

  ‘Right, Flabba. Your turn. I want pain. We’re looking for bruised nipples. I want you bright red from your Adam’s apple to your ankle, and all the dangly bits between, bro.’

  Flabba reluctantly ascended the ladder to the top diving board then propelled himself forward. Midair, he suddenly jerked into a half-dive in an effort to soften his entry into the water.

  ‘Oh, shame, Flabba, shame. There’s a technical term for what you did. “The butt-pucker”. You chickened out, dude! Now, do it again, and this time I want a double tsunami with a twist.’

  The reluctant, sodden contestant number two was about to climb back onto the diving board when an angry voice reverberated across the deck. Passengers swivelled in the direction of the commotion. My heart did a little tap dance when I realised it was Brody in his Listerine-green medical uniform.

  ‘Hey, bud, release these crew members immediately.’ Brody snatched up some towels lying on the end of a sun lounger and chucked them at the shanghaied, dripping men.

  ‘What? Why?’ the furious entertainment officer demanded, all charm evaporating from his voice.

  ‘It’s a breach of health and safety rules. If there’s an emergency, the crew’s on call. Imagine if some poor guest requires mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and wakes up to find herself in a lip-lock with a half-naked clownfish,’ Brody improvised, climbing up onto the lower dive board to address his adversary face to face. ‘She’ll be psychologically scarred for life. Besides, both these men have abdominal issues. I need them excused on medical grounds.’

  The two half-drowned, dragooned crew members seized their moment. Boris and Flabba swiftly disappeared below decks.

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’ The entertainment officer gnashed his cosmetic orthodontia, increasing his resemblance to a piranha. ‘You are such an a-hole, Quinn, you know that? Getting the crew involved is naval tradition.’

  ‘So is administering one hundred lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails, but we don’t do that anymore,’ the doctor retorted. ‘Mind you, you’d probably misinterpret that as foreplay.’

  And then the medic gave a little bounce on the diving board. It wasn’t a big movement, but it was enough to propel the entertainment officer off his perch on the end of the board, arse-first into the pool. Brent’s ungainly, scrambling, sprawling fall, landing right next to the wall, created a wave of water big enough to knock two women right off the edge of the pool.

  ‘Oops!’ the doctor said.

  Emerald and Amber cheered with delight and held up their hands, giving the doctor a perfect five.

  I surreptitiously held up both hands – because Doctor Brody Quinn was a perfect ten.

  20

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I feigned fatigue, claimed a headache and waved my sisters ashore for a full day’s fun in Noumea. (My loving but competitive sisters fought over which one of them would stay to take care of me, which only amplified my guilt, but I finally fobbed them off. I know, I know, straight to jail, do not pass Go.)

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I shaved my armpits and legs and moisturised every inch of my flesh.

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I pfffted with one spray and pfffted with another.

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I put on my laciest, sexiest, most temptingly sheer peekaboo underwear, purchased from the onboard boutique.

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I drew the curtains in the cabin and swept the ornamental pillows off the bed.

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I checked my phone one last time to make sure there was still no communication from the absentee infidel, otherwise known as my soon-to-be-ex-husband.

  I am going to sleep with him, I said, flicking on the ‘Do not disturb’ sign.

  I am going to sleep with him, I told myself as I opened the door at his knock to find the ship’s doctor standing there, all tousle-haired and gimlet-eyed.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ were the first words out of my mouth after he’d crossed my bedroom threshold. ‘I’m too nervous.’

  ‘Oh, good. Me too.’ The doctor sighed with relief.

  ‘Don’t you like sex?’

  ‘Of course I like sex. It’s a pastime I rank just above breathing. It’s just that I don’t want to break up a marriage. Are you sure it’s over with your husband?’

  ‘Yes . . . No . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. This is ridiculous. I’m acting like a teenager, except with wrinkles instead of pimples.’

  We stood in silence for an agonising minute.

  ‘Your sunburn looks a bit less hideous today,’ he finally said.

  Insofar as I’m aware, no one had ever used a second-degree burn as a flirtatious manoeuvre before. If this were a rom-com, Brody would have placed his hands around my waist and drawn me so close I’d be able to inhale the musky spice of his skin, taste his warm breath on my face and feel the pulse of lust stir in him as he gnawed his way through my lingerie with his teeth. But we weren’t in a film. We were two strangers, one of whom was still married and sneaking around behind her sisters’ backs, and the other, well, a misanthropic, possibly psychopathic doctor who’d butchered a man in surgery and had lost his leg to a landmine or a crocodile or a crazed girlfriend.

  But then he looked at me with those piercing eyes and that crooked smile, and there it was – the pang of lust. Pang is putting it mildly. Calling it a pang is like saying that a meteor hurtling towards earth is only a little life-threatening.

  ‘The trouble is, I’ve been married to the same man for twenty-eight years. Harry was my boyfriend at school, for god’s sake. I’ve only been to bed with one other bloke since I got married, and that was a total disaster. It’s made me worry about how I look naked. I mean, I have had two children . . .’

  ‘Hey, I only have half a leg, so I think I trump you there. A stump trump.’

  ‘Okay, true. But the light’s so bad in here, I can’t see if I have any chin hairs, even with the illuminated make-up mirror.’

  ‘You have lights around your mirror?’ the doctor asked, amazed.

  ‘Yes, it’s on the dressing table.’

  ‘You have a dressing table?’

  ‘Yes, over there by the coffee machine.’

  ‘You have a coffee machine? I’m dying for a cup. Where’s the milk?’

  ‘In the fridge.’

  ‘You have a fridge?’

  ‘It’s by the walk-in wardrobe.’

  ‘You have a walk-in wardrobe?’

  ‘It’s next to the bathroom.’

  ‘You have a bath?’ Brody poked his head into my marbled ensuite, adding, ‘With bubble bath and expensive conditioner and a shower cap? Well, not anymore you don’t.’ As he stretched up to retrieve the little bottles of luxurious lotions from my shower shelf, a band of stomach showed between his jeans and his T-shirt – a taut, muscled band – and I was suddenly lighting up all over like a Christmas tree.

  As Brody pocketed the toiletries, I joked, lamely, ‘I think you’re more arouse
d by my cabin than my curves.’

  ‘Sorry. My shower’s so small, I just soap the walls and spin around. The cabin’s so tiny I have to draw up a roster with myself to determine which days I can breathe. It ain’t so glamorous below decks, I can assure you. And I’m one of the luckier ones. As a doctor I get my own berth.’

  We stood facing each other awkwardly once more.

  ‘Look, forget the coffee. Do you want to go on deck and get a cocktail?’ I asked. ‘Or . . .?’

  Brody ran his fingertips gently down my arm. ‘I think “or” would kinda hit the spot.’

  ‘The G spot, I hope. After all, you are a doctor, right?’

  The doctor cleared his throat and would have said something witty, I’m sure, except my tongue was down there already. Then Brody’s hands were on my hips. Not the way Harry grabbed me, like a drunken octopus, but with purpose and passion. And then it was as if someone had pulled the pin from a hand grenade. We tore at each other’s clothes and scrambled onto the bed. I hadn’t felt this kind of urgency since I’d been at the front of the queue for the Boxing Day sales. I yanked off his T-shirt and jeans while he ripped off my knickers. I tugged at his boxers and then he took off his prosthetic leg – okay, not your average bit of foreplay, but at this stage I couldn’t have cared if he revealed a pair of cloven hooves.

  I could no longer speak, but what I lacked in lucidity I made up for in enthusiastic moaning and gasping. I felt like an astronaut who’d crash-landed on an unexplored planet. It was a sensation I vaguely remembered: bubbly, aerated, light, sparkly – sequined, even. What was it? Desire. Ah, yes, that’s what it was. Hot, red, raw, half-crazed lust. There was no time to worry about stray chin hairs or belly stretch marks, because he’d pulled me on top of him and I was shimmering. I felt my spine arch and heard a long, low, slow moan, which, I realised with a shock, was emanating from my own lips.

  As the reverberations shuddered through me, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d experienced anything like this. It felt like rediscovering a long-lost talent from my youth; like executing a perfect pool backflip, shinnying up a tree or cartwheeling endlessly across a green field.