THE HUSBAND HUNTERS

by LUCY LAING

  ‘Actually, he stood me up,’ I said, looking Nick square in the eyes. ‘He wanted to get his revenge on me for giving him the boot a year ago. He left me standing for nearly an hour in the rain and never showed up.’

  ‘Whaaat?’ Nick’s mouth fell open so far I could make out the gold filling he’d had done at the dentist last month. ‘I thought that only women did stupid things like that.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ I said, taking a sip of my coffee.

  ‘Well, I think he’s daft,’ said Nick. ‘Who in his right mind would stand you up - especially not in that hot dress you were telling me about?’

  ‘What, an old crone like me,’ I said, jokingly, pulling a stupid face at him. ‘He obviously can’t see past my wrinkles.’ Nick laughed and walked towards the door, with his camera bag slung over his arm.

  ‘You knock spots of most of these models here,’ he added over his shoulder. I smiled to myself. Nick wasn’t usually too forthcoming with the compliments, so that made me feel slightly less humiliated about Paul.

  That evening we had an emergency meeting at my flat as the restaurant was full. We had to sort Rach’s head out - and fast.

  She arrived first, followed by Soph and Kaz. We sat and waited, and thirty minutes later Tash came flying through the door.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she panted. ‘One of the horses was ill at the stables and we had to get the vet.’

  We poured Tash a large glass of wine, and then we all sat around my dining table to discuss Rach’s situation.

  ‘No way are you to start seeing him again,’ said Kaz, banging her pen down on my table. ‘He was a complete shit to you, and you would spend the rest of your life not knowing whether you were going to come home and find him shagging the nanny, the pizza delivery girl, or the next-door neighbour. You wouldn’t be able to trust him as far as you could throw him.’

  ‘I know that. But it was so difficult seeing him there after all this time. He hadn’t changed a bit, and I still fancied him,’ confessed Rach.

  ‘Yes, but we all fancy people that we don’t do anything about,’ I said, logically. ‘Look at me. I would turn myself inside out if it meant having Colin Firth as my husband. But I don’t start stalking him and sitting outside his house, do I?

  ‘Yes, but that’s only because you don’t know where he lives, Bee,’ Tash pointed out. ‘If you did, I’m sure you would drive past his house a few times, and then mysteriously your Mini would break down outside.’

  I admitted that yes, I would, and perhaps using Colin Firth as an example wasn’t the best idea.

  ‘Anyway, Rach, the club has decided that for your best future interests, you are not to allow Mike a second chance,’ Tash declared. ‘And what’s more. I think we should think of some form of revenge on him. You ran out leaving him naked in Sarah’s bed sheets, and you didn’t even get to throw a drink over him or anything. He got off scot-free.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Rach. ‘I never thought of that. I would have loved to have thrown a drink over him.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Kaz, a slow smile starting to creep across her face. ‘I have got the best idea. Why doesn’t Rach agree to see him again, go round to his house and sew prawns into his bedroom curtains, and then leave? I’ve always wanted to do that,’ she added excitedly, looking round at us all with her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Why would she want to put prawns into his curtains?’ asked Soph, looking puzzled. ‘What good would that do?’

  ‘Well, idiot, when the prawns start to go off, they will stink out his bedroom,’ explained Kaz. ‘Can you imagine when he next brings a girl home and all she can smell are dead rotting prawns. She will run a mile from him.’

  We all started to laugh.

  ‘It’s a great idea,’ insisted Kaz. ‘There is none so deserving as that shithead Mike.’

  We all looked at Rach, who was laughing as hard as the rest of us.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she declared. ‘It will serve him right.’

  And there it was, right on top of the minutes the following morning.

  PROGRESS REPORTS.

  * Rach to buy the cheapest crappiest prawns she can find – preferably past their sell-by date. We told her she needed a dry run to test it out on an old pair of curtains at home beforehand to see how long it would take her.

  Rach still has a spare key to Mike’s house, so Rach to phone Mike and arrange to go and see him, but go half an hour early, sneak into his bedroom and sew as many prawns as she can into his curtains before he comes in.

  * Bee to track down Pete Griffiths. I had explained my idea to the girls, and they all thought it was a great idea. Rach protested that she didn’t hold any grudge against me, but Tash said that she clearly did as I had popped up in her past life nearly two hundred years ago and I had done exactly the same thing, and Rach was quite saintly in fact in even still having me a friend. I thought this was going a bit too far, and tried to defend myself. But the girls were adamant. I had to track down Pete Griffiths to try and end centuries of deep-seated damage to Rach. Kaz suggested I try Facebook first of all.

  * Kaz reported that she had worn the skirt again in front of James and this time he had offered to carry her hockey sticks out to the field for her. She said he did keep looking in the direction of her skirt, but there was also a year twelve football match going on behind her, so she wasn’t sure whether he was looking at her legs or the ball. Rach said that knowing men and football, he was probably looking at the ball, which didn’t please Kaz.

  *************************************

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I called Rach the next morning. She had already put her plan into action. She had called Mike and told him that she was going to come over to see him in three days’ time.

  ‘He thinks that I’m prepared to give it another shot,’ she said. ‘Can you believe his arrogance? I’m so pleased that you lot made me see sense. Can you imagine anything as wimpy as going back to a man like that? I’d prefer to have no man at all in my life than one like that bastard.’

  I was taken aback. Rach had been crumbling at the thought of taking Mike back only a few days ago. Now she was planning ‘Prawn Revenge’ as we’d termed it. I was proud of her, and of the club too. It was helping her be strong and true to herself - just how we’d planned it should be when it was first set up. I almost wanted to tell Nick when he walked in later that afternoon about the prawns but I held off. He saw us as a bunch of mad old crones anyway, so this might be pushing it one step too far in his eyes.

  Rach told me that she’d already had a dress rehearsal. She’d borrowed a pair of old curtains from her mum and had spent the evening unpicking hems, sewing prawns in, and then sewing them back up. ‘I can do twenty prawns in thirty minutes,’ she told me, proudly. ‘I’m all set.’

  I could hardly wait for Rach’s phone call. She had promised me she would ring me as soon as she had left Mike’s house that evening. She only planned to be there an hour - half an hour to sew the prawns in before he got there, and then thirty minutes explaining why she never wanted to see his sorry ass ever again.

  On the dot of ten, my phone trilled. As soon as we’d decided on Prawn Revenge, Kaz had sent a Jaws ring tone to all our mobiles, so now whenever Rach phoned any of us, the Jaws theme tune would come belting out and make us laugh. It thudded across my living room and I leapt off the sofa to answer it. Rach was high with excitement. She’d done it. She’d let herself into Mike’s house half an hour early, dashed up to his bedroom and spent a frantic thirty minutes unpicking the hems of his curtains and sewing a whole bag of twenty-five prawns into the two curtains.

  She was almost choking with laughter.

  ‘I had to wash my hands about three times afterwards, as they stunk of prawns,’ she said. ‘Then I just had time to stuff the empty bag into my handbag when I heard his key in the lock.’

  ‘Was he surprised to see you already there?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘Yes, but I told him that I’d got t
he time wrong and had let myself in,’ said Rach. ‘Men are so naive.’

  Rach then told Mike that she’d thought long and hard about getting back together, but she was worried that she couldn’t trust him again after what had happened with Sarah.

  ‘He whined that he had changed now and that he couldn’t live without me, but I stood firm,’ said Rach. ‘I gave it thirty minutes, then I walked out. I decided that he probably hadn’t got laid for the last fortnight and he had been getting desperate.’ I laughed.

  ‘That’s so true,’ I said. ‘Good for you, I’m proud of you. Now we’ll sit back and let the prawns do their job.’

  The girls were creased up with laughter at the next meeting a few days later, when all the sordid details of Prawn Revenge were revealed. Kaz choked so hard that her red wine came down her nose and we had to thump her on the back for a few minutes.

  ‘Can you imagine when those prawns start to smell in a few days’ time, he’ll be going crazy trying to find out why his bedroom stinks like that,’ said Tash. ‘I’d love to be a fly on his wall - or a prawn in his curtain, for that matter - watching all that go on.’

  ‘How can we find out if it’s been a success?’ asked Soph.

  ‘I’m still in touch with one of his friends’ girlfriends,’ said Rach. ‘She has promised to find out what happens.’

  We all congratulated Rach on her hardened approach to Mike.

  ‘It’s all too easy for women to fall back in with men because they think they can’t do any better, and that’s what this club is about,’ said Tash, firmly. ‘We only want the best husband material - no second rate stuff will do.’ We all cheered our approval at that one, apart from Rach, who wouldn’t quite meet our eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her. Rach had been admirable in her change of attitude to Mike, but now she looked unsure.

  ‘Well, I’ve got something to tell you all, and I don’t know if you’re going to like it,’ she said, looking around nervously at us. We looked at her, slightly panic-stricken. Was Rach going to say she wanted out of the club - or that she was a lesbian? I noticed Tash taking a surreptitious look underneath the table to see if Rach was wearing Doc Martens.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last couple of days,’ she said. ‘And I’ve come to a conclusion. I don’t want a husband - at least not at the moment anyway.’ We gaped at her. Not want a husband. How could she possibly say that? This is what this club was all about - to fill in that missing void in our lives.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ spluttered Tash. ‘I know I always fall for other people’s husbands and I’m the worst possible example to follow, but I do eventually want one of my own.’

  ‘I know, and I do possibly one day too,’ said Rach. And then she dropped her bombshell. ‘But I’ve decided I want a baby more than anything.’ We all gaped for the second time at her. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Rach had always been mad about children. But she was a successful doctor - how could she possibly fit a baby into her life?

  More to the point - how could she possibly have a baby if she didn’t have a man in her life?

  ‘You’ve forgotten one thing,’ Kaz pointed out to her. ‘You need to find a husband first. Babies aren’t created out of thin air, you know.’

  ‘It’s not as mad as it seems,’ said Rach. ‘I’m simply going to use a sperm donor.’ For the first time in the years that I’ve known the girls, not one of them could say a word, including me. We knew Rach loved kids, but not to this extent.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she said, smiling around at us. ‘It’s not a problem now to be a single mother, either by adoption or by sperm donor. Look at Angelina Jolie.’

  ‘But, Rach, think of all the practicalities,’ I said, desperately. ‘Angelina has a whole army of staff to help her out, and she earns about a trillion dollars for each film she makes. Not to mention having a sex god like Brad Pitt on hand too. You, on the other hand, will have to work all the hours God sends, with no one to help you out, for a fairly crap wage. It won’t be all sunglasses and glamorous baby slings, you know.’

  ‘The next thing we know Rach will have been inseminated six times, and she will have given birth to six rainbow children and be trailing them around the globe,’ said Kaz shaking her head and staring gloomily into her wine.

  ‘Look, girls, it’s something I’ve thought long and hard about, and I want to do it,’ said Rach. ‘Having a baby is more important to me than having a man, and that’s what this club has helped me see. It’s made me realise that I can’t settle for second best, and what the important things are in life. And if a suitable husband comes up later, then that’s great. But this is going to be my priority.’

  I got up from the table and gave her a hug.

  ‘If that’s what you want, then I’m behind you,’ I said to her, looking around at the girls. They nodded in agreement. ‘As long as you don’t become too mumsy and disappear into a Wisteria Lane type bubble and drop all your friends,’ I added.

  The girls knew I had a whole swarm of bees in my bonnet about women who ditched their friends when children came along. I’d had a friend called Sadie at the model agency when I first started, another booker on the front desk, whom I’d been good friends with for about two years when she fell pregnant.

  I’d been thrilled for her, but then as soon as her baby daughter arrived, she disappeared into a domestic hellhole - a world of breast milk, rigid sleeping patterns that couldn’t be disturbed even if a nuclear bomb was dropped in Cheshire, and catchment areas for local schools.

  She never wanted to get together for a natter any more, go out for a quick drink, or even have a normal conversation about the things we used to talk about. And she never answered her mobile phone after six. It was as if she’d turned into a Stepford Wife.

  ‘Honestly,’ I had grumbled to Rach at the time. ‘When children were born in Victorian times, people’s lives didn’t change at all. They had about five children hanging off their grubby aprons at any one time and the older ones were sent up chimneys, whilst they carried on trying to scrape together enough food to put on the table. Now for some reason, children take over and life is changed forever. I just don’t understand.’

  My eyes had started boring into Rach by now, so she quickly soothed me.

  ‘Bee, you know I won’t,’ she promised. ‘You girls will still be as important to me. And the club too,’ she added. ‘Just because I’ve decided to have a baby doesn’t count me out of trying to find you lot suitable husband material either.’

  We closed the meeting shortly after that. Rach’s bombshell had shaken us and it would take a while to get used to the idea. We had talked Rach through a list of Ten Commandments that she would have to stick to once her baby was born.

  1. Mobile phones to be answered at all times - as they are just as important as a baby’s cries.

  2. Rach must have at least ten normal conversations a day that are not about babies.

  3. She must find a reliable babysitter who can work at any hour of day or night, which means she can still come on nights out with us.

  4. She can’t start neglecting herself and must definitely still have her nose job, as it’s something she has always wanted to do. Kaz said that if the baby takes after her and not the sperm donor and its nose is on the large side when born then she could ask for a ‘two for one’ offer. Kaz was quite excited at this money saving tip for Rach. I pointed out dryly that if Rach started asking a cosmetic surgeon to give a baby a nose job, they were likely to call social services.

  5. Rach must not turn into a lesbian, and must remember that men are still good for some things, like changing light bulbs on high ceilings, or getting spiders out of the bath.

  6. She must always speak in her normal voice, and not silly baby language.

  7. The picture on her Facebook site must remain the one of us five together taken last Christmas.

  8. She must complete at least one sudoko or braintea
ser puzzle each week to stop her brain going to mush.

  9. She must still go on our regular Saturday crusade to Karen Millen, where we spend at least an hour in the changing rooms trying on dresses we can’t afford.

  10. She must still read Closer magazine each week. There would be nothing worse than trying to discuss the latest Brangelina gossip - and having hour-long debates over will they split or won’t they - with someone who just isn’t up to date.

  I put that last one in, as I’m obsessed with Brangelina and devour any possible titbits about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. Who could resist the charms of Angelina? Not only is she one of the sexiest woman in the world, she visits all the war torn countries as a refugee ambassador and even flew in to visit Brad on his film sets flying her own plane, for God’s sake. She is a Mother Theresa in tight black leather. Jen hasn’t had much luck in finding another husband since Brad. In fact, if Rach ever dropped out of the club, we could always invite Jen to join the HHC. I’m sure with us looking over her, she could do a lot better.

  I printed a copy of the Commandments out for Rach as she didn’t have a printer. I was going to make sure they were pinned up somewhere where she was going to see them every day. I wasn’t going to have her vanishing down Wisteria Lane without a struggle. My phone suddenly rang.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment at the fertility clinic next week,’ Rach shrieked down the phone. ‘I could be pregnant in a few weeks’ time.’

  ***

  ‘Have you heard the news about Rach?’ I asked Tash, when I bumped into her down at the stable yard early the next morning.