How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints) Kathy Lette (books recommended by bts txt) 📖

lights were invented, not as you might imagine to ease the flow of cars in each direction, but to enable the distraught mother on the school run to flail around insanely at anything within striking distance – which in this case ends up being the Hound of the Baskervilles. Scream in pain as arm gnawed off by offended Doberman.

Miss one green light because busy stemming flow of blood. Miss second green light because picking chewing gum out of Jenny’s hair and making Leaning Tower of Pisa from toothpicks for Jamie’s art assignment. Miss third green light writing late notes on yesterday’s parking ticket with eye-liner. Now so late I don’t even stop outside my kids’ schools. I just slow down long enough to hurl my eleven and thirteen year olds out onto the pavement like mailbags. Same with Cujo the killer dog.

Turn car for Primrose Hill. Put foot flat to the floor on the accelerator and land smack bang in a gridlock of 4 × 4s. Why do London mothers on the school run opt for four-wheel-drives which would only come into their own in, say, the Kalahari or Kathmandu?

Their only motto seems to be Death Before Giving Way. Sandwiched between the high bumpers of motorized monsters, my little Honda only comes up to the hubcaps of what Hannah self-deprecatingly calls ‘Jews in Jeeps’ and what Jazz refers to as ‘derangerovers’. Panic rises in chest. I’ve five minutes to get to school and present myself, all calm and capable, before my headmaster. Reverse up one-way street – and become the first person in motoring history to be given a ticket for speeding backwards.

Might have got away with this radical manoeuvre if I hadn’t drawn attention to myself by crashing into a miniature Smart car. But the policeman reckons he’s been following me ever since I veered into the bus lane whilst talking on my mobile.

‘Sorry, Officer,’ I gabble. ‘I think I’m high on library paste from making a Leaning Tower of Pisa in rush hour. And anyway, I’m a mother – a working mother – and we really should have our own lane. A pink lane. Right next to the bus lane. I mean, we need help, goddamn it! Anyway smart cars are not all that smart if they can be crushed like a cigarette packet from one incy wincey little bump. They’re just a good way of keeping the population down, don’t you think? So actually I’ve done society a service by demonstrating this design fault – which should cancel out all the road rules I broke during this slavering-animal-instigated, whining off-spring inspired, deranged Working Mother (now there’s a tautology) incident,’ I plead, showing him my bleeding dog bite. ‘Don’t you think?’

The cop cocks an amused eyebrow, says he feels sure the insurers are bound to frame my statement of claim, then books me, before escorting me and my mangled arm to the Royal Free Hospital.

As the nurse stitches my wound, I ring Rory. Tell him what happened. Suggest in a thin-lipped way that he do the school run from now on, concluding with the fact that children in the back seat cause accidents.

‘Accidents in the back seat cause children. That was how Jamie was conceived, remember?’ he hints lasciviously.

‘Rory! I’m in a hospital! I need looking after. And all you want to do is take my temperature WITH YOUR PENIS?’ I notice that Casualty has gone terribly quiet all of a sudden and lower my voice. ‘You have to look after the kids tonight, okay? I rang the Head from the car to say I’d be late . . .’

‘Of course you were late, Cassie! How can any teacher be on time when there’s that sign outside which says School Ahead. Go slow?’

‘Rory, this is no laughing matter. Scroope informed me over the phone that he’s devised something called a Threshold Assessment Form for job applicants. I have to fill it in before my meeting with him, rescheduled for tomorrow morning. It’s fifty-seven pages long.’

‘Hey, have I ever let you down foxy?’

‘You’re right. I couldn’t ask for a better husband,’ then, under my breath, ‘as much as I’d bloody well like to.’

‘Well?’ Jazz asks when we bump into each other in the chemist in Camden during my lunch hour. She’s at the counter. ‘I’ll have some soluble vitamin C tablets, a jar of Echinacea tablets and,’ she raises her voice by ten decibels, ‘tampons.’ She clocks my arm wound. ‘Let me guess. You missed your meeting?’

‘Not a bit,’ I reply sarcastically. ‘It’s rescheduled for the morning. Rory’s going to mind the kids so that I can swot. Scroope is making the contenders fill in some ridiculous questionnaire.’

‘Don’t forget the TAMPONS. The biggest box you’ve got!’ Jazz calls out to the assistant. ‘But you’re the best qualified, Cass. You’ve been in charge of Year Six for five years. You get the best SATS results. The Head’s always receiving letters from happy parents saying you’re fab for getting their kids into their first choice of schools. Ofsted Inspectors give you top marks all the time for innovation and creative flair. The staff love you, as do the rug-rats. So what’s he waiting for?’

‘He prefers the Chalk and Talk method of teaching, where the teacher stands at the board writing stuff and the kids learn by rote. He’s devised this questionnaire as a way of catching me out. Then he’ll have an excuse not to promote me.’

‘Really? You think you’ll have trouble with the questions?’

‘No,’ I said patiently. ‘It’s the answers I’ll have trouble with.’

‘My TAMPONS? . . .’ Jazz nags the attendant. ‘Thanks. Actually I need SUPER TAMPONS, if you don’t mind.’

‘What did the doctor say?’ I ask.

Jazz’s face takes on a stricken expression. She lowers her voice to a scandalized whisper. ‘Apart from discovering that what you thought might be the menopause is really a three-month pregnancy, what is the worst thing that can happen to a woman our age?’

‘I dunno. What?’

‘Discovering that you’re having an early menopause, of course! I’m peri-menopausal, apparently.