THE HUSBAND HUNTERS

by LUCY LAING

  The only thing I needed was a man to try it out on - a man whom I didn’t care what I fed him, so there would be no extra pressure. My eye fell on Nick, who was holding some images up to the light box by his computer.

  I told him my idea.

  ‘You see, I need someone unimportant to test it out on,’ I said. ‘Someone whom I’m not trying to impress, so I can practise it a bit.’

  I saw his doubtful expression. ‘It would be a free dinner,’ I cajoled.

  ‘OK’ he said. ‘But I don’t want food poisoning as I’m going to Africa to do some wildlife photography next week.’

  ‘Ha, ha, very funny,’ I said. ‘Actually it might be a good opportunity to slip some poison down your throat, then at least I would get some peace around here.’ I flicked through my diary for a free night. ‘How does Thursday suit you?’

  ‘That’s fine, looking forward to it,’ said Nick, grimacing.

  Thursday was here before I knew it. Damn, it was lunchtime already and I hadn’t even started buying any ingredients for the orange duck thing. I typed it into the internet and came up with a recipe.

  ‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ I shouted to Maria, as I ran out the door and headed for Marks and Spencers.

  I trailed up and down the aisles, getting the ingredients. It would have been much easier to make my pasta dish, I thought, as I chucked duck breasts, sugar and balsamic vinegar into my basket.

  I struggled into my flat later that evening with the shopping bags. What a load of faff, I thought unloading the shopping in the kitchen. Why can’t men just be satisfied with the ‘whore in the bedroom’ bit? I’d done a full days work, the last thing I wanted to do was start slaving in the kitchen now. I fancied lying full length on the sofa watching Coronation Street.

  I smoothed out the recipe. Scour the side of duck breast and season with salt and pepper. God this was easy, I thought, slashing at the duck breast with a kitchen knife, and throwing some salt and pepper carelessly over it.

  Zest orange and blanch in hot water. I scraped at some of the skin of the orange with my grater. I grated a bit of skin off my finger, which started to smart, and I peered into the zest, trying to fish it out. Never mind, Nick will never taste that, I thought, wrapping some kitchen roll around my grated finger.

  I didn’t know what blanching was, so I chucked the rest of the orange in a pan of boiling water and hoped for the best. I was pleased with it so far. It had been going like clockwork.

  I couldn’t believe Nigella Lawson got paid thousands of pounds to do this. It was so easy. Maybe I should give up my job at the model agency and start my own cookery programme, I thought, putting the duck broth onto simmer. I looked at my watch to time the duck breast cooking for two minutes. Heck, I’d better get a move on, Nick will be here in 15 minutes. I hadn’t had time to have a shower or change, but that didn’t matter, I thought, adding the sugar and grand Marnier into the pan.

  Now was the fun bit. I had to light the grand Marnier, and then afterwards let it simmer. I struck a match and the flames whooshed up towards the ceiling fan. It took me by surprise, I hadn’t expected them to go up so high. This was amazing. I had thought cooking was really boring, but it was turning out to be pretty good fun.

  I waited for the flames to go out, but they didn’t. They started to roar a little bit. I’m sure this wasn’t meant to happen. The recipe definitely said that the flames should subside after a few seconds. I looked at the pan. Oh my God, it was on fire. What was I going to do?

  The doorbell rang. I raced to open the door.

  ‘Come quickly,’ I yelled. ‘The kitchen’s on fire.’ Nick ran into the flat. The flames had engulfed the top of the cooker and the extractor fan, and were roaring even further upwards, towards the ceiling. I started screaming at Nick to do something.

  Quickly he ran to the side of the kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher that Scarlett had insisted we have there. I’d laughed at her at the time, but now I could have kissed her. Quickly Nick aimed the extinguisher at the pan, and a jet of foam shot out. Within seconds, the flames had gone, leaving the pan smouldering on the stove. My legs suddenly turned to jelly, and I had to sit down very quickly on the kitchen floor.

  Nick fished around in the pan, and pulled out too very small charred balls. They just looked like a pair of testicles, I thought, having a sudden urge to burst out laughing. I caught Nick’s eye and he started laughing too. Then I couldn’t stop. I was half laughing and half crying at the shock of nearly burning to death in my own kitchen.

  ‘C’mon, let’s order a pizza,’ said Nick, pulling me to my feet. Twenty minutes later we were sat on my sofa sharing a double pepperoni pizza.

  ‘I’m a disaster,’ I moaned to Nick, balancing a piece of pizza on my knee. ‘How am I ever going to find a husband if I can’t cook.’ I explained to him about Tash’s ‘whore in the bedroom, goddess in the kitchen’ theory, and he laughed.

  ‘If men need a goddess in the kitchen, then you are doomed to be single for the rest of your life,’ he laughed. ‘But most men are happy with beans on toast, so I wouldn’t worry.’

  I told the girls about my culinary disaster at the HHC meeting two days later.

  ‘It was so embarrassing,’ I said, holding my head in my hands at the humiliating memory. ‘I was left with what looked like two charred testicles, and we had to end up ringing for pizza.’

  Tash shook her head. ‘That’s what you get for trying to rush things, Bee,’ she chided. ‘You should have waited for your cookery lesson and then I could have shown you how to make it properly. You obviously had the pan for too hot. It’s a good job it was only Nick who you were cooking for, and not a real date.’

  I noticed Kaz was looking a bit down in the dumps.

  ‘What’s up Kaz?’ I said.

  ‘It’s James,’ she said, twirling a piece of pasta onto her fork. ‘He’s got engaged on holiday. That puts me well and truly out of the picture now.’ We all gasped. Kaz had been making such progress.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do now,’ said Kaz. ‘He and Caroline went away for a week, and he came in all smiling and brown this morning, and told me that he’d asked Caroline to marry him. I can’t believe it. After all the pins I’ve stuck in that bloody voodoo doll as well. I really thought I’d nailed it.’

  She pulled the voodoo doll out of her bag, and we all gasped again. It was a wonder poor Caroline was still standing. The doll literally had hundreds of pins stuck into every inch of its body. You couldn’t even see its face anymore. It looked like a huge metal hedgehog.

  ‘I may as well forget it now,’ said Kaz, flinging the doll into a nearby bin. ‘She should have every ailment under the sun by now, but she’s still training to do that flipping marathon next week. Her in growing toenail has even healed now,’ she added viciously.

  I retrieved the doll from the bin and surreptitiously put it in my handbag. I didn’t want the waiter finding it afterwards and Kaz being arrested for attempted bodily harm. Also all those pins would come in handy.

  ‘What’s wrong with us all?’ said Tash. ‘We had made such progress and now nothing. Bee’s been stood up and produced a charred pair of duck testicles - that’s all she’s got to show for herself. And Kaz’s gym skirt mission was looking good, but now she may as well go back to her tracksuit. And not a husband in sight for any of us.’

  It did sound depressing. But at least I had one snippet of news for the girls.

  ‘I managed to track down Pete Griffiths,’ I announced, importantly.

  The girls perked up.

  ‘How?’ asked Rach, leaning forwards with interest. ‘

  ‘Through Facebook,’ I said. ‘A girl I used to go to school with is on my list of Facebook friends, and she’s friendly with Pete Griffiths’ sister.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Kaz, encouragingly.

  ‘She told me he works in the local B and Q, so I drove over there and waited outside until he came out of work. ‘

  ‘What did he look like?’
asked Rach excitedly.

  ‘Well it was a disappointment,’ I admitted. ‘He’s bald, put on about three stone in weight, and looks as if the only football he ever gets to see is on the TV, whilst balancing a can of lager on his belly.’

  ‘And that’s not all,’ I added. ‘A woman came to pick him in a battered Ford Mondeo with two screaming kids in the back, and then they drove off. So it doesn’t look like it was worth fighting over him all those years ago.’

  The minutes were there at 9am when I walked into work the following morning. Kaz must have been up all night to get these done so quickly, I thought, pressing ‘open’

  PROGRESS REPORTS.

  * Bee to have a course of ten cookery lessons with Tash before she even thinks about going on another date. All cookery books are to be removed from her kitchen. Bee to realise what a lucky escape she’s had. Not only from the fire, but because it had only been Nick she had been attempting to cook for.

  * Congratulations to Bee for tracking down Pete Griffiths. ( I felt I had redeemed myself slightly here, after the orange duck disaster). Rach and Bee now to completely bury the hatchet as it marks the end of a 15 year subconscious feud between them.

  * Commiserations to Kaz after discovering the man of her dreams is about to walk down the aisle with someone else. Kaz to keep the gym skirt safely at home in case James gets cold feet, or Caroline meets an untimely end at the marathon. Everyone to keep their eyes peeled for a suitable replacement for Kaz. Soph asked whether there were any more suitable unattached teachers at school. Kaz said the only other man was Mr Brown the deputy head, who was about 90. She added that parents evening was coming up, so she would watch out for any single attractive dads.

  * Bee has located an email for Jennifer Aniston’s fan club. A draft email to be sent over, inviting her to become a member of the HHC.

  As I finished reading the minutes, my phone rang. it was Kaz.

  ‘You’ll never guess what has happened,’ she said, almost hyperventilating down the phone. ‘Lisa was waiting for me at the school gates this morning. Pete broke her nose over the weekend during another row. This time she wants to do something about it - and she wants my help. ‘

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘It was such a long time ago that he hit you.’

  ‘I’ve still got the photographs to prove it,’ said Kaz, triumphantly. ‘I never thought I’d feel like this, but now I finally feel strong enough to do something about it - and I want to help Lisa too. I’m going to see him in court.’

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

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We had been planning our holiday for months. It was a tradition each year that we went away for a week all together - usually to the cheapest and liveliest spot we could find.

  It all started when Kaz, Rach, Tash and I had been in sixth form. Our parents had let us go away for the first time on our own and we had gone for a week to Ibiza. We hadn’t seen much sun admittedly. We had been so high on freedom that we’d spent the week partying as though we had never been allowed outdoors before. We’d stumbled in from the clubs at about 6am, always drunkenly shouting to each other that we’d be up at nine and sleep on the beach. But it would always be after lunch by the time one of us woke up bleary eyed and looked at the alarm clock. We came back from Ibiza actually whiter than we went.

  Since that first trip, the annual holidays had got slightly tamer, but only just. Once we even tried to be holier than thou and swore off alcohol for the week, deciding instead we’d go on a riding trek around Derbyshire.

  Kaz hadn’t been too thrilled at the idea.

  ‘We want a bit of sun, sea and sand,’ she had said. But Tash, whose idea it had been to go horse trekking instead was adamant.

  ‘It will be good for you, having no red wine for a week, Kaz,’ she had said firmly. ‘Think of it as a detox. Your skin will be glowing from no alcohol and all that fresh air.’

  It was all right for Tash, she’d been away with her parents to visit relatives in Dubai just a month previously, and had come back nut brown. The rest of us had been stuck in the beginnings of a miserable British summer, where the weather forecasters promise a sizzling BBQ summer in about May and everyone gets their hopes up and doesn’t book a summer holiday.

  But the reality is that it pisses it down for about 12 weeks on the trot and you spend weeks gazing out the windows watching your BBQ slowly turning to a heap of rust.

  But Tash had been adamant.

  ‘This year it has to be different,’ she had said, firmly. ‘We’ve been away too many times to the same resorts where groups of lads run down the streets and pull their trousers down, trying to impress you with their alcohol shrivelled manhood.’

  Actually I always think those resorts are quite fun. I mean how many times in Cheshire do you get men whipping their trousers down in front of you and providing you with a good laugh? But I kept my thoughts to myself. When Tash was determined to do something, we always somehow got swept along with it.

  Admittedly the horse trek had been a bit of a disaster. At one of the youth hostels a group of four girls had locked us out the main communal bedroom as they said we stank of horses. We had to go and get the manager to open up the door for us. The four girls spent the rest of the night sneering at us and we all felt like a bunch of tramps. As we rode wearily home on the seventh day Tash said perhaps we would go to Magaluf the following year

  This year we had booked a ten day trip to Italy. I had persuaded the girls that it would fun to go on a coach. When I had first suggested it, they had all looked at me as if I’d grown another head.

  ‘Why on earth would we want to spend 24 hours on a coach, when we could be there in two hours on a plane?’ Rach had asked.

  I had then proceeded to list the benefits of going on a coach as you could see a lot more of the scenery during the trip, but I could see I wasn’t fooling the girls. Eventually I admitted that there had been three plane crashes reported in the news in the last six months, and if we got on a plane, it would be bound to crash, and then where would we be.

  ‘Probably 100 feet down on the bottom of the ocean,’ said Tash, cheerfully. ‘But at least we won’t be hot and sweaty at the end of it.’

  ‘C’mon it will be fun,’ I pleaded. ‘We’ve never driven through Europe before, it will be a cultural experience.’

  Eventually the girls relented. I think they realised the only way I was going on a plane, was to be dragged onto it kicking and screaming. So we booked the holiday, going to Italy by coach, to a lively resort on the coast.

  On the first week in June, we all stood at Manchester bus station waiting to board the coach for a 36 hour trip to Italy.

  It was only 9am, but already the sun was beating down as we sat on our suitcases on the pavement. It was typical. A heat wave had been predicted in Britain for the next week, just as we were going away.

  ‘Phew,’ said Tash, fanning herself with her passport. We were waiting for Rach, who was the only one who hadn’t turned up. She was cutting it fine. The coach was due to arrive at 9.15am, and there was no sign of her. I rang her mobile. She answered it hysterically. I hadn’t even had time to say hello before she screamed down the phone that she couldn’t‘ find her passport.

  ‘Oh my God. Rach can’t find her passport,’ I said to the girls, who all looked at me in shock.

  ‘I’ve turned the whole house upside down looking for it,’ she screeched. I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

  ‘Calm down, Rach,’ I said. ‘How long have you been looking for it?’

  ‘Since 7am this morning,’ she said, bursting into tears. ‘I won’t be able to come on holiday if I don’t find it.’

  ‘When did you last have it?’ I asked. ’On holiday last year when we went to Majorca,’ she cried.

  ‘You hid it under the lining of your suitcase so you wouldn’t lose it,’ I reminded her. There was a silence and then some scrabbling on the end of the phone. I looked up and saw the coach coming
down the road on its way to pick us up. Rach lived just ten minutes away.

  ‘I’ve found it, you’re a genius Bee,’ she gabbled. ‘Tell the coach to wait for me,’ she added, hanging up.

  Luckily the coach driver agreed to wait for her, and 15 minutes later her dad’s car came screeching down the road and she jumped out clutching her suitcase.

  We weren’t very popular with the other passengers.

  ‘Great, we’ve got to spend the next 36 hours sitting with all these,’ I whispered to Tash, as we looked around at the stony faces. Rach burst into an embarrassing round of thank-yous when she climbed up the steps onto the coach, and the sea of stony faces just stared back at her. I pulled her down on a seat.

  ‘Sit down and shut up,’ I told her.

  The coach journey was fine for the first hour. We all chatted excitedly about Italy. I’d been once before with my parents when I was 12. My mum had been frightened of flying too, so she’d persuaded my dad to drive all the way there. It had been great for me as I’d read a book the entire way there, and mum had slept most of the way. But dad hadn’t enjoyed the journey much.

  The girls were excitedly discussing Italian men.

  ‘Now don’t go falling for any men on holiday,’ I had warned them, reminding about my disastrous romance with Vahid.

  ‘Don’t worry Bee,’ Tash said. ‘None of us would ever do anything as stupid as that, so there’s no need to worry.’ I looked out the window, biting my tongue. Anyone could have made the same mistake, I thought gloomily. And it hadn’t been that bad, I consoled myself. There were women who had been fleeced for a lot more than me, and had even sold their houses to give money to their toy boys. At least I still had my flat.