Free Nip 'N' Tuck by Kathy Lette

witty Hugo? The holder of the World Indoor Record for Lovely Husbandliness?
    ‘As a couple we could give credibility to an idea Sven has had for a … health clinic.’
    ‘A
what
?’
    The phone rang then – something to do with an airlift of Chechnyan children who needed immediate surgery – and, moments later, Hugo was reinstated in his suit and headed back to the hospital. ‘Have a think about the cuisine,’ he called, from half-way down the stairs.
    I tugged the blankets over my head. Anxieties clung to me like a wet shower curtain. He wanted me to be a suave and dynamic dinner-party hostess? Just on the very day I’d become a newly signed-up member of Losers Anonymous? Why didn’t I become a sophisticated ‘Trophy Wife’? A ‘Domestic Goddess’? Why didn’t
he
just plop on to some shore and evolve?
    Bugger it, there was no way I would play little wifey at a dinner party for
her
. Apart from the fact that Britney had recently devoured my husband, it should be illegal to have to cook for someone who’s written a cookbook. Anorexic women like her should be skewered on a toothpick and eaten as an hors d’oeuvre. That’s what I would tell Hugo when he got home. End world hunger – eat an actress.
    Besides which, catering wasn’t my forte. (Even though I could now grate Parmesan on my pubic area.) I’d only ever once attempted anything beyond cold cuts and then I’d nearly fallen into the blender and made a crudité of myself. No bloody way would I do it. Domestic Goddesses who say they get high on housework have obviously been inhaling too much cleaning fluid. Definition of a ‘hostage’? A woman who has to cook for damn visitors.

7
    When You Wish Upon A Michelin Star
    THE NOTION OF wives doing all the cooking and housework is no longer publicly fashionable. But I know for a fact that it goes on behind closed doors.
    Two weeks later, on a hot Sunday night in July, with the kids still not bathed and in bed, I endured the usual hostess panic that since nobody was going to turn up there’d be too
much
food; or if they did show they’d have new lovers or lawyers in tow so there’d be too
little
; or everyone would have food allergies, which would mean either insulting me by
not
eating my dinner or eating the meal and throwing up over each other. I called for Cal to help me with the children and catapulted back into the kitchen just in time to catch the cats stripping the last of the sesame-seeded seared tuna out of the salad. All that remained was a little sad spag and a frond or two of wilted seaweed. Any hope of cordon-bleu sensation bit the gastronomic dust.
    ‘Listen, Cal,’ I said, when he bounced in five minutes later to find me desperately rummaging through the freezer, ‘I’m just not up to going to your uni ball any more. Why don’t you ask Victoria?’
    ‘
Victoria?
She’d never go out with the likes of me. This modelling business your sister’s in, well, it’s all about contacts. Right? Entrée into places. Stuff like that? Well, the only entrées I’ve got access to are on a menu. Oh, sure, I can get entrée … as in prawn cocktails and canned soup. I can get the power table at McDonalds’ with a minute’s notice.’
    ‘That’s all right. Victoria doesn’t eat in public anyway. Models live in a state of permanent terror that they might actually develop some muscle tissue.’
    When Hugo arrived to find his wife armed with a hair-dryer trying to defrost eight chicken breasts, he gave me a homicidal look. I’m not exaggerating. If looks could kill, I would have been donating my organs to medical science right there and then. Actually I wasn’t sure if he was angry about the chaos, or that I’d invited Victoria without consulting him. (Victoria would never forgive me for denying her a Close Encounter of the Sven Kind.) Hugo says my sister doesn’t visit, she
invades
, which she was doing right now, cascading into the kitchen in a swirl of silk scarves and duty-free