Authors: Kathy Lette
‘Lizzie! Oh, Christ. It’s not what you think …’
I tried to retreat from the room, but it was as if my entire central nervous system was being remote-controlled by a puppeteer. My hands, legs, arms, mouth all jerked awkwardly trying to ape real human movements. My heart was beating so loudly and quickly, I felt sure they could see it pulsating in and out of my chest cavity like a character in a Merrie Melodies cartoon. The very air seemed to shiver, as though in recoil from the scene.
‘Remember me?’ I finally squawked. ‘I’m whatshername –
the mother of your two children
.’
Hugo had leapt back as though electrocuted. His fly! Oh, God, was his fly open? ‘Have you just had sex with That Woman?’
‘It was only a kiss.’
He was beside me in a trice, tossing a lick of hair from his handsome face with a flick of his head and whispering, ‘Look, if George Clooney suddenly asked you for a kiss, you couldn’t turn it down, could you? I mean, look at her.’
I followed my husband’s gaze towards the chaise, where Britney lay, supine, laughing insouciantly at my suspicion. Her legs were as long as the limousines she used in lieu of them for transportation. Her tangerine-coloured tresses set off her lightly sautéd tan. The icing on her cupcake of loveliness were her breasts: 32D, I reckoned, at an envious glance, and as buoyant as the bubbles in the champagne flute from which she nonchalantly sipped. The woman was so perfect that she kept fit, no doubt, by doing step aerobics off her own ego.
That was when I caught sight of my own reflection in one of those dressing-room mirrors studded with merciless bulbs. My uncollagened mouth was as open as my unrehydrated pores. Britney draped a silken arm across her ample chest. Even her elbows were moisturized, for God’s sake.
My
skin was like stucco. You could make a bloody patio out of me.
‘Yer see, hon,’ she gloated, in a belated but cruel response to my earlier Ophelia crack, ‘beauty may only be skin deep – but ugly goes right down to the bone.’
It was then that the wave of ageing
Angst
engulfed me in one gigantic roar. Why was I born so plain? Why was I born at all? Happy bloody thirty-ninth birthday to me.
‘I came looking for you … She was changing. And …’ Hugo panted ‘… we just naturally seemed to have a make-it-all-up kiss. I mean, she is a star,’ he shrugged, ‘and I’m a man—’
‘Don’t kid yourself.’
‘A normal red-blooded man who—’
‘Well, your DNA suggests you’re a male,’ I shrilled, ‘but your behaviour is more that of a rutting elk.’
‘Really. I don’t know what came over me—’
‘Britney Amore, apparently.’
Embarrassed to be having a marital meltdown in front of
Her
, I backed into the hall. Hugo followed, making defensive noises about it being just a brief exchange of saliva. (‘I’m innocent, officer. I just tripped and fell and my tongue ended up embedded down this woman’s throat.’) On the drive back to north London he delicately turned the knife of accusation I had held against him. Hadn’t I noticed that we’d fallen below the national average sex wise? My diaphragm must be home to at least three strains of mould spore from under-use. But once home he promised fulsomely never ever to go near her again, and I good-naturedly promised not to tell anyone about his misdemeanour – especially Sven. It was just a kiss. It meant nothing, I did understand that, didn’t I?
My brain understood, but if my vagina could monologue it would have only one thing to say: you lying, cheating, hypocritical bastard.
4
Too Old to Lambada, Too Young to Die
A WOMAN OF
thirty-nine prides herself on her worldly smarts. We know never to order anything on the menu described as a ‘medley of’. We know that any product’s packaging which reads ‘easy to assemble’ will contain more components, screws, wires and thingamajigs than a NASA space shuttle …And that husbands are prone to pork younger women. Okay, I know what you’re thinking – not
all
men fancy eighteen-year-olds …You’re right. Some fancy
sixteen
-year-olds. It’s a given. Still, every time I thought of my husband’s betrayal it felt as though a slavering wolverine was trying to claw its way out of my abdomen via my oesophagus.
Hugo? Between the legs of a woman he’d met for only ten minutes? Hugo Frazer MD, the man who’s so terrified of diseases that he wears a condom while masturbating? Hugo Frazer MD, who showers before taking a bath in which he uses separate washcloths on different parts of his body so as not to cross-contaminate from one orifice to the other? Who gargles after oral sex? Hugo Frazer MD, whose body is so sterile, a bacterium would die of loneliness there? But there he was. The Howard Hughes of Husbands, discovered with an unprotected part of his anatomy inserted into a vagina monologuist. But
was
it just his tongue in her mouth? Or had he also explored a more unmentionable aperture of this strange woman’s body? Was this the same man who, when making love to me, stopped at timed intervals to time his own pulse and respiration rate? Post-coitus I’ve often felt that, like a kindly children’s GP, he was going to give me a jellybean for saying, ‘Aaargh.’
The next morning, as I jockeyed for position among the designer jeep gridlock of horn-happy mothers late for Hampstead school runs, steering with one hand because I was leafing through an architecture book to find inspiration for the Greek temple I was planning to construct from ice-lolly sticks at subsequent traffic lights (why is it that kids never tell you about their homework until they’re halfway out the door?), I paused to change gear with my teeth, while simultaneously fielding light, frivolous topics like ‘If God made us, then who made God?’, and balancing a Corinthian column between my legs with an ice lolly under each armpit, I found myself pondering a profound question: why the hell did I ever get married?
Adultery only happened to other couples. I’d read that it was on the increase, but I’d never dreamt my Hugo would cheat. We were completely entwined – emotionally, economically, socially, physically; spun together like silkworms. I just couldn’t believe he could do this to me.
Two traffic fines and a dented bumper later, I delivered the kids to school. Just as I contemplated returning my family to their manufacturer to request a new model (because this one was obviously faulty) Julia and Jamie drowned me in kisses so wet the assistance of surf lifesavers was required. And a great poignancy squeezed into my bones as I felt full of freshly minted mother love. Kids have that way of just slipping in between your heartbeats. And Hugo, the man I’d loved most of my adult life, was their father. I had loved him so hard and for so long, it would take a restraining order to keep these feelings out of my heart. I loved the competent way he steered me through crowds, a sturdy, protective hand in the small of my back. I loved the fact that he always knew just how much to tip. I loved the inky arabesques of his handwriting on those indecipherable prescriptions. I even loved his singing voice, which sounded as though he was chewing off his own foot. I loved him because he was worthy and good. My man had made his name in a charitable cause, helping children injured by land mines, for heaven’s sake. And, by God, I was going to keep him. I would start by abiding by his wishes and being absolutely one hundred per cent lip-zipped discreet.
‘Hugo played doctors-and-nurses with that soap actress from
Tell Me Where It Hurts
.’ I sobbed into my mobile five minutes later.
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Elisabeth, you’ve been sniffing your kids’ homework glue again, haven’t you?’ diagnosed my half-sister.
‘Or maybe it was just a vigorous exchange of saliva … I’m not sure. You must promise not to tell anyone, Vick …’ I swabbed my leaking eyes with a sleeve.
‘Darling, I hate gossip – but don’t tell anyone I said so! Your secret is safe with me.’
‘Yeah, you and Matt Drudge.’
‘I won’t tell anyone, darling … Well, only about twenty or thirty thousand of my closest friends. Where are you?’ she barked.
I glanced out of the window at the sooty Victorian buildings, recognizing, between hot tears, the Planetarium. ‘Marylebone Road. Why? What are you up to?’
As if I needed to ask. My sister is a petted frequenter of many salons – nail, face, body, groin – but she is most renowned for her long blonde tresses. And, believe me, it costs over two hundred pounds a month to get hair that natural.
Her crimping salon was literally one street away. ‘But I’m …’ I glanced at my Swatch. ‘Jesus!
Very
late for work.’
‘That Uberslut! What are you going to do to her?’ Her husky voice went metallic and staccato as it broke up on my mobile.
‘I’m pondering the Uzi machine-gun, hostage-taking and gradual-posting-of-bits-of-her-body-for-ransom option.’ I lurched my large family car into an illegal double-yellow park outside the exclusive salon. ‘That option looks quite attractive at this point.’
‘You can’t hate Britney Amore as much as
I
do. Have you any bloody idea how long I’ve been grooming Sven for marriage?’
‘Vick, come on, you didn’t have a real “relationship” with Sven. You just had three hundred and sixty-five one-night stands with the same person.’ I cut the ignition.
‘But I need a man. A
rich
man. I have designer footwear needs! Then there’s the clothes – Moschino, Versace, Valentino. That John Galliano dress alone was three and a half thousand. All put together by my very expensive stylist, of course. Underwear – La Perla – we’re talking a hundred and fifty for matching bra and pants. Then there’s two thousand a year gym membership so that the body looks good
in
the La Perla. Prada shoes – plus yoga, acupuncture and osteopathy to recover from
wearing
Prada shoes. A weekly personal masseur – fifty pounds. Facials once a month, seventy-five. Weekly nail technician specializing in transfers, piercings and varnish airbrushing, fifty-five. Pedicure, forty-eight. Hair-cuts, eighty pounds a trim, not including highlights every fortnight with seventy-pound white-truffle moisturizing shampoo …
Darling, people who say that money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop
.’
I was walking through the crimpers now; phone cupped to my ear. It was a posh inner-city salon where they dyed your hair in the same sort of organic stuff they seemed to serve for lunch. It was what Cal called bullshit millennium food – balsamic this, sourdough that, wood-fired everything else.
‘I am going to win Sven back, Lizzie. At all costs … Which is why I’m forking out for a few little procedures …’
Her lips came into view first. They were twice as big as they had been last night. These were childbearing lips. Swollen and bruised purple, it looked as if two velvet beanbags had been velcroed to my sister’s lower face. I skidded to a halt. ‘What the hell …’ I dropped my mobile phone on to the mock marble floor where it skittered beneath the kneeling Filipino pedicurist, who was busily separating my sister’s toes with wads of tissue. A manicurist, also of third-world extraction, was kneading Victoria’s left hand as her right propped open a glamour mag at a page entitled ‘Hasta La Vista Body Hair’. Victoria’s entire cranium was wrapped in tin-foil plumes, which a colourist was lacquering in foul-smelling bleach. But it was the lips that demanded total optical astonishment.
‘Beauty,’ Victoria’s Velcro beanbags proclaimed, ‘is one of the most lovely and natural things money can buy … For God’s sake! Don’t kiss me!’ she shrieked, shrinking. ‘Can’t kiss anyone until my own tissue grows around and locks the scaffolding into shape.’
‘Yeuch!’ I backed off. ‘Way too much information.’
‘In a couple of months, apparently, it will feel normal to both eat and talk again.’
‘Oh, well,
that
’s comforting.’
‘The doctor used alloderm. It’s a sheet of human collagen taken from dead people. They feed the sheet through a small incision and—’
‘Lips to die for.’ I shuddered. ‘Literally.’
‘It’s the Julia Roberts look.’ Actually it was the I’vegot-a-vagina-sutured to my face look. ‘Sven will love it.’
For a moment, I pondered Sven’s fifty-six-year-old gargoyle excrescences. ‘Victoria, have you actually
looked
at the man lately? He’s so hirsute he needs
nostril
mousse. What’s foreplay for you two? Combing nits out of his back hair?’
‘Any man on the
Sunday Times
Rich List looks exactly like Brad Pitt to me.’ Her face flickered and tensed. ‘I’m tired, Lizzie.’ The normal swagger in her voice was extinguished. ‘And I’m lonely. I’m so lonely I’ve started to talk to my daughter! Speaking of which, Sven offered to sign Marrakech and that bloody little egg-head turned him down. Can you believe that? And he’s not happy with Britney Amore. He really opened up to me last night.’
‘And let me guess, confessed to a few major felonies?’
‘You’ve got Sven wrong. He’s charming, he’s polite—’
‘What? He says “please” before he rapes you?’
‘He’s realized that he’s always loved me. He told me, right after we …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Right after what?’ I asked, flopping exhausted into the leather swivel chair beside her.
My sister took a deep breath. ‘Right after we made love last night.’
I gazed at her, stupefied. ‘Am I the
only
one not having sex around here?’ I finally managed to blurt, modulating the outburst when I realized that every neck in the salon was craning in my direction.
‘It’s all right, darlings,’ Victoria announced to the gawping patrons. ‘She’s just having an out-of-marriage experience … Look on the bright side,’ she lowered her voice, ‘you’ll lose
so
much weight now!’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You have
way
too much time on your hands, Victoria, do you know that?’
She then leant into my ear. ‘Sven’s going to dump the Fellatrix
pour moi
.’
I felt a sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach. ‘Oh, God. If Sven leaves Britney Amore for
you
, that will leave
her
free to steal Hugo!’ It would be the mating version of Musical Chairs.