How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints)

by Kathy Lette

  19. I’m Having My Period So Can Therefore Legally Kill You

  ‘He’s bonking his therapist? You’re kidding. Where do they make love? On her couch? After fifty-five minutes does she say, “Your time is up”?’

  ‘It’s not funny, Jazz. I tell you though, if things get any w . . . w . . . worse, I’ll have to ask you to stop h . . . h . . . helping me,’ I sobbed.

  After school, I’d shoved some money at Jamie and Jenny and dropped them at McDonald’s, cursing myself for being such a bad mother. Guilt gland throbbing, I recalled how I’d asked the doctor the day Jamie was born to wake me after the Caesarean – when he was oh, say seven. But the guilt wasn’t enough to stop me from abandoning them to a McShit meal while I careered to Jasmine’s.

  She was showing another property valuer around. Apparently, Studz wanted yet one more house evaluation for insurance purposes. Lately, estate agents were constantly coming and going in their black, shark-like cars.

  ‘Here,’ Jazz said to me. ‘Drink this while I get rid of this guy.’ She plonked a stiff gin and tonic on the kitchen table, rescued her freshly baked bread out of the oven, then turned her attentions to the sharp-suited salesman.

  ‘So, before you go,’ she said pointedly to him, ‘just out of interest, how much do you think I’d get for the place?’

  ‘Oh, the house is worf free mill, easy. No doubt ’bout that. It’s a fine property. Georgian masterpiece. State-of-the-art kitchen, magnificent spiral staircase, underground swimming pool, unique double height wood-panelled library, bewdifully presented.’ He spoke like a brochure as he gazed admiringly at the crystal decanters, the neat piles of Christies’ catalogues, the gleaming grand piano. This house had been Jazz’s labour of love.

  ‘Gosh! You’d certainly get a juicy commission, wouldn’t you? If I wanted to sell, that is,’ Jazz small-talked, opening the hall door in way of a hint. ‘What would you earn on that?’

  The ginger-haired man snapped his briefcase shut. ‘Peanuts on this joint, Mrs. It’s owned by the bank.’

  Jazz stood as straight as an exclamation mark. ‘What?’

  ‘Mortgaged up to the hilt, love.’

  ‘That’s a mistake. We paid it off a decade ago.’

  ‘Yeah, but then youse remortgaged a few years back and then again recently.’

  Jazz barked out a nervous laugh. ‘No, we didn’t.’

  ‘Well, whoja fink keeps employin’ me to come round ’ere and do the evaluations? I’ll let meself out, shall I?’

  ‘It must be a mistake.’ She moved after him down the hall.

  I hurried to her side. Jazz held onto my arm as though she were drowning. Before she could find her feet, Studz padded into the kitchen from the basement swimming pool. He was as taut and trim as a tennis pro.

  ‘Oh, look who’s here. That heroic champion of the underdog.’ Jazz’s voice dripped with sarcasm as she marched back down the hall. I instinctively ducked out of sight into the living room. ‘I’ve just had a very interesting chat with that valuation chap who tells me that you’ve remortgaged our home. Is this true?’

  ‘Yes. Actually it is,’ he replied calmly. ‘I needed more money to fund my new invention . . . I’ve got a team working on an anti-ageing serum. Far more effective than collagen. That’s what’s taking all my money. It’s also taking longer than I thought to perfect. We’ve been conducting trials in Africa. But there have been a lot of setbacks and side effects . . .’

  ‘You’re using your poorest patients as guinea pigs?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve done enough for them. Now they can do something for me.’

  ‘I thought you preferred the prestige of helping the underprivileged?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I have cachet. Now I want cash. But I need to spend it to make it. Hence the re-mortgaging.’

  I saw Jazz reel as though he’d hit her. ‘And you did this without consulting me? What am I? A child? But wait. The house is in both our names! I paid the bloody down payment, when you were still a junior doctor.’

  ‘Remember those papers I asked you to sign once, when I was rushing to the airport? They weren’t insurance papers. They were papers granting me emergency signature rights.’

  Jazz bent double as though winded from the punch. ‘This is my home! Don’t you care about your family? Your son?’

  ‘It will be good for him to grow up the hard way, like I did. I didn’t have anyone holding my hand . . .’

  ‘Yes, you did! You had me! Me, for all those fucking years. How can you do down your own son? It’s sick. It’s insane.’

  Studz still didn’t know I was in the house. I tried to think of a good excuse to leave, like, ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve gone into labour!’ But then the phone shrilled. Jazz snatched it up from its cradle. ‘Look,’ she barked into the receiver, ‘he’s got no money. You might as well find some other fool to fuck.’

  ‘Give me the phone,’ Studz ordered. He wrenched it from her and spoke monosyllabically. Gone was his famous flippancy. There was no warmth in his tone. Only anxiety and anger.

  Jazz scrutinized him shrewdly. I found David Studlands as indecipherable as his doctor-like handwriting. But Jazz knew him inside out.

  ‘What’s going on? It’s your Plath-alogical ex-patient, isn’t it? Don’t tell me she’s stalking you!’ Jazz let out a harsh burst of nervous laughter. ‘That would serve you right.’

  Studz looked momentarily unsettled. ‘How did you know about Maryanne?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. The imprint of her vulva on your face kind of gave it away. That’s where the money’s going, isn’t it? On diamond pendants and Mayfair penthouses. It’s not all going to your anti-ageing research. Is it?’

  It was awful to witness the throes of a dying marriage. They were like two gasping fish out of water. I was sitting out of sight on one of Jazz’s antique chairs. Its slender, shapely little legs gave the impression that it could canter away. And I was willing it to do so now.

  ‘She’s threatening to report me to the General Medical Council,’ Studz sighed. ‘I could escape with a two-year supervision order, but . . .’

  ‘What? Are you serious? This woman is blackmailing you?’

  ‘Thanks to you, yes. Because you blabbed to her about me seeing other women. Then she got nasty. She’s threatening to sue my arse off.’

  ‘You’re a surgeon. Can’t you just sew it back on?’ Jazz replied frostily.

  ‘Not if I’m struck off. And what would my life be without my work?’

  Jazz clenched her fists. ‘What will my life be without my house?! You bastard! The first duty of a doctor is to do no harm. That’s what Hippocrates said. You should be struck off the Medical Register. Having sex with a patient is completely off-limits. Every doctor knows it’s a career-ending offence.’

  ‘Christ! It’s not my fault. Female patients often fall in love with their doctors. Freud calls it transference. It was nothing more than a faux pas . . .’

  A faux pas? I thought to myself. Yeah, a faux pas right up there with ‘never get involved in a land war in the Middle East’.

  ‘At first it was stimulating. Maryanne’s an intellectual. Conversations with her were so invigorating,’ Studz said, unaware of how he was crushing his wife. ‘Then she became besotted. Leaving poems in my briefcase. Sticking love notes on my car. Turning up at places she knew I would be. I mean, I should be able to sue her for harassment. Anyway, when she found out about the other women, she became psychotic. Unhinged. She followed me everywhere. The woman needs help. What did she expect? It’s the biological destiny of men to pursue new sexual attachments. We are programmed to—’

  ‘Programmed? What are you, A VCR?’ Jazz scoffed.

  ‘It’s the natural cycle of—’

  ‘Only washing machines have cycles, David.’

  ‘Of course, I broke off with her. But that’s when things got ugly.’ His shifty eyes jumped around the room. ‘She went to a lawyer and made an affadavit claiming that she came to me looking for help for depressi
on and I took advantage of her insecurity. And that the affair only exacerbated her illness. She will testify that I exploited her physical and emotional vulnerability.’

  ‘What proof does she have?’ Jazz demanded, ashen-faced.

  ‘Well, there are my text messages – which she kept, I’m afraid. You might as well know the worst of it. She’s threatening to sell her story to the News of the World with details about how I took her to sex clubs in New York and Paris, where I asked her to have sex with strangers so that I could watch.’

  Jazz slumped down into a chair. Through all this I had been doing my very best impersonation of a pot-plant. In fact, I kept trying to tiptoe to the door, but every time I made a move, lost my nerve. ‘If only you practised safe sex, David, and would just go fuck yourself,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself – and how little I deserve it,’ Studz sulked egotistically. ‘Haven’t I spent my life trying to help people?’

  ‘Yes, the world so needs more men like you, Studz, willing to tackle its problems and challenge injustice . . . That’s a quote for the notes I’ve written for your eulogy because I am going to kill you. Why didn’t you tell me about the blackmail earlier, before you re-mortgaged our home for the second bloody time?’

  ‘It would have been a breach of patient/doctor confidentiality,’ he joked darkly, carving himself a warm slab of the bread Jasmine had baked.

  ‘Now you have morals! That’s fucking helpful. I took you for better or for worse. You just took me for everything . . . I’m about to do what I should have done a long time ago, David. I’m divorcing you.’

  ‘I can’t afford a divorce. Or the scandal. If you divorce me I’ll get custody.’ From my hiding place I watched as he casually slathered homemade marmalade onto his bread. ‘And then you’ll get no maintenance. That “sleeping rough on the streets of London” look. Do you think that will work for you?’

  Jazz guffawed. ‘You’ll never get custody. Who would ever believe you are a good dad? You don’t even know you have a son. You’re just vaguely aware of someone a bit shorter living in the house.’

  ‘Still, a father like me is better than a whoring mother.’ He reknotted his swimming towel, offering me a choice view of his infamous manhood.

  ‘You’re the whore, David. The girl from Cats, the Hollywood bimbo for UNICEF, the Newsnight reporter, our masseuse, your researcher, the . . .’

  ‘Ah, but can you prove it? Whereas I have a whole dossier on your Bedroom Olympics. Including your current ex-con. What was he in for? Murder, wasn’t it? Oh, the judge is going to love that.’ He took a hearty bite of his bread and munched appreciatively. ‘When you stopped pestering me for sex, I guessed you were getting serviced somewhere else and had you followed.’ He mopped crumbs from his cruel lips. ‘Some rather good snaps too. Especially the ones on that student’s mobile phone, which he “lost” didn’t he – of you being penetrated with a champagne bottle. Very embarrassing when that comes out. I mean, it wasn’t even vintage. Good God, I don’t even think it was French!’ he concluded viperishly, licking the marmalade from his fingers, one at a time.

  Jazz looked at her husband in staggered disbelief. If my eyes could shoot out lethal rays like Disney superheroes, I would have vaporized him on the spot.

  ‘Remember on our wedding day when you said you would die for me, David? Well, I think it’s time you kept your promise!’ Jazz then launched herself with a bestial cry at her husband’s throat. She had raked two deep scratchmarks down his chest before he could push her off him.

  ‘There is no way you will ever get custody,’ Jazz panted. ‘I clean for you both. Cook every meal for you both. I doubt you even know Josh’s birthday! What makes you think I won’t go to the News of the World myself?’

  Studz smiled maliciously, mopping at the faint trickle of blood on his cheek. ‘The blaze of publicity, the door-stopping, the lurid accounts in the papers . . . You just wouldn’t do it to Josh.’

  Studz casually cracked open a beer and looked down on his wife with smug impertinence. So much for his image of humane champion of the underdog. Dr Studlands seemed to have the caring compassion of, say, Don Corleone.

  ‘Josh is seventeen. He gets a say in who he lives with, you know,’ Jazz said. ‘And he’ll want to live with me.’

  ‘Not when I tell him he has a slut for a mother. And that if he doesn’t choose to live with me, I might just have to prove it in court. Photos and all,’ he stated with bloodless indifference.

  The man seemed to have had his remorse nerve extracted.

  Jazz fell back against the kitchen counter. I watched in horror as she picked up the six-inch breadknife lying there and lunged. But her husband seized her wrist, squeezed hard, and the knife clattered onto the kitchen tiles, having only grazed his arm.

  ‘Do you have any idea how easily I could dispose of you? I’m a doctor. I know how to eradicate people so that nobody ever finds out . . . Not a bad idea, actually. I must up your life insurance.’

  Studz laughed as he sauntered down the hall. I emerged from hiding in time to see Jazz snatch up the knife and flash after him. Dread sliced into my stomach as I too lurched into the hall. The front door was banging against the wall. I was down the stone steps two at a time, despite the agony in my foot. And there she was, slashing again and again, plunging the knife in up to the hilt.

  David’s Jaguar car tyres hissed plaintively, then wheezed a dying breath. And then she sat in the driveway, devastated, wailing with anger at what her husband had done and sobbing with self-loathing for the way she had lost control.

  ‘Who ever would have thought that I could behave in such a way? A mild-mannered, middle-class mum like me?’ she whimpered into my shoulder.

  It was then I found myself agreeing with Jazz. It was time Studz died a slow, wretched death, involving multiple orifices.

  20. When Humiliating Things Happen to Desperate Women

  There are two inevitable things in life. People die and husbands leave you for younger women. That’s all I could think about as I nuked something vaguely edible in the microwave for the kids, garnished it with the guilt I felt for leaving them yet again, found a babysitter I could bribe at short notice (if only supermarkets stocked a babysitter in a can; simply open and heat up), hunted down Hannah at a Charity Ball for the Serpentine Gallery and persuaded her the situation was urgent enough to abandon the event. In the car to Jazz’s place, I filled her in on the fact that Studz had not been playing with a full deck of credit cards. We finally arrived, with heavy hearts, at Hampstead Heights.

  When our two-woman cavalry pounded on her door, Jazz greeted us in an apron, her hair bundled onto her head, flour on her hands, beaming broadly despite the fact that her eyes were puckered into squints from crying – and clutching a syringe.

  ‘Jazz, what have you got in the needle?’ Hannah coaxed, taking in her wild-eyed demeanour with unease.

  ‘Oh, something life-threatening.’ Jazz waved the needle around cavalierly. ‘My husband threatened to kill me. Cassie was my witness. Survival of the fastest. That’s my new motto. I’m going to kill the Good Doctor before he kills me. By inducing a heart attack. Easy-peasy really.’

  ‘Jazz, love, give me the syringe, there’s a good girl,’ I sweet-talked, as though cajoling a child. ‘You know Studz didn’t mean it?’

  In the grapple, the needle was discharged. An oozing globule of yellow slime hit the stone step between our feet.

  ‘Lard! Lard! Lard! From now on, I’m going to inject all my husband’s food with heart-attack-inducing amounts of lard. David has always loved my cooking – I think that’s why he stayed with me, in fact. So, I’m making him dinner.’

  I trailed her to the kitchen, where she proceeded to reload then plunge the fat-laden syringe into a pale plump chicken in a roasting pan. ‘But you’re cooking a half-thawed chicken,’ I noted, scraping icicles from the puckered flesh.

  ‘Oh yes, I know. In fact, I’ve already half co
oked it, then frozen it again. Now I’m cooking it again. It’s a new recipe, called Salmonella Chicken.’

  ‘But Salmonella poisoning can kill.’

  ‘That’s right. And where there’s a will . . . I want to be in it.’ She was like Blanche Dubois in an amateur production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

  ‘Jazz, you’re a convent girl! What would the nuns say?’ Hannah remonstrated, appalled.

  ‘Funny you should say that. I gave up on religion at the age of fifteen. But this afternoon, after you left, Cassie, I realized that there is an afterlife, you know. It’s after your husband dies.’ Jazz twirled, her dress fanning out around her, like a demented Doris Day. ‘We must devise an advertisement for our next boyfriends. Only happy, supportive, non-alpha males may apply. Men who will cook and clean for us while we work.”

  Hannah’s countenance took on a sucked-on-a-lemon look. ‘There is more to life than work,’ said the woman who had been known to call out in her sleep, ‘Take the highest bidder! But get him up by ten per cent!’ ‘Why don’t you sit down and I’ll pour you a nice stiff drink?’ Hannah suggested, sympathy spilling across her face.

  ‘Doctor David Studlands has taken a Hypocritical Oath. The reason he’s in Africa so much is because he’s guinea-pigging those poor people to perfect some anti-ageing invention. And he’s remortgaged our house to do so. Apparently he’s taken leave without pay so much these last five years and has so many debts that the bank’s foreclosing. And he’s being blackmailed. Did Cassie tell you?’ Jasmine pushed the hair from her face with pink-varnished talons, leaving flourmarks. ‘I understand Sylvia Plath now, I really do. Marriage truly is a fun-packed, frivolous activity – occasionally resulting in death. Lard! Lard! Lard!’ She reloaded the syringe and injected the half-thawed carcass once more. ‘How else can I get rid of him? I mean, men often punch themselves in the stomach to show how tough they are, but rarely when they’re holding a ten-inch carving knife. However, if I kill him and make it look like an accident, which is what he’s no doubt planning for me then I’ll get his life insurance money. Like most wives, I can always use an extra one or two million. Especially now that I’m h . . .’ She paused, not quite able to bring herself to say the word ‘homeless’. ‘Now that I’m domiciliary-deficient.’