Free The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper

evening frozen and exhausted, Ferdie caught the telephone on its last ring.
        It was Roger Westwood in a rage. He'd lunched with the Chief Executive of the PR firm and asked him back to the office to meet Lysander.
        'And the little fucker never showed. Didn't even bother to call. Christ what
        kind of idiot did that make me look?'
        Ferdie had to crawl. 'He left here at half-past one, Roger. I don't see how he could have lost the address.'
        'Well, he's lost the fucking job. After all the business I've put your way, Ferdie, you could have come up with someone better.'
        'Look, I'm really sorry.'
        But Roger had hung up.
        I am too young to have a coronary, thought Ferdie. How the hell could Lysander do this to me?
        Fumbling to turn on the lamp by the fire, he once more surveyed the chaos. Jack, fed up with being alone, had chewed several tapes. Ferdie put the rest back in their box.
        In the kitchen, nothing had been returned to the fridge. The milk had gone off, the pink grapefruit juice was tepid. Lysander had polished off his whisky last night. In a fury Ferdie ate quarter of a pound of cheese and the last of the Scotch eggs. His brooding was interrupted by Jack leaping on to the sofa, bristling with rage and wagging his stumpy tail as he peered out of the window.
        Wearily joining him, Ferdie swore in disbelief. There, staggering down the street, was Lysander, arm in arm with a blind man, both of them being led by a resigned-looking guide-dog. Ferdie threw up the window.
        'We are two little lambs that have gone astray, Baa, Baa, Baa,' sang the blind man and Lysander tunelessly as they tottered across the road.Windows were going up all along the street. The gays opposite were nearly falling off their balcony. Passers-by stopped and stared as Lysander paused, swaying, outside the front door. Breaking a bar of chocolate into pieces he gave it to the drooling guide-dog, then handed Ferdie's last fiver to the blind man. He took so long getting his key into the latch that Ferdie let him in. Lysander's hair was flopping all over his face. The faded orange tan had a blue tinge.
        'Christ, it's cold!' Bending down to gather up an ecstatically yapping Jack, Lysander had great difficulty getting up again.
        'Where the fuck have you been?' yelled Ferdie.
        'In The Goat and Boots,' said Lysander with a hiccup.
        'Why didn't you go to that interview?'
        'Ohmigod!' Lysander's palm smote his wide-open mouth, 'I completely forgot. I'm really sorry. I'll ring and explain, Basically I just nipped into the chemist to get some condoms, when this poor, poor girl rushed in to buy some eye-gel. Can you beat it? Her husband had just left her.'
        'Oh no,' moaned Ferdie.
        'Well, I had to look after her.' Gently putting Jack down Lysander wandered into the kitchen fretfully upending the empty whisky bottle. 'Honestly, she was so sad and so beautiful, and she had adorable children -God, I love kids and
        her husband's a Russian diffident. We went back to the flat. We got a bottle on the way and she was just telling me all about this bastard Rannaldini, who's led her husband astray. She said he was legendary.'
        'Legendarily difficult,' snapped Ferdie.
        With mounting anger he watched Lysander get a tin of Pedigree Chum out of the fridge, fork it into a blue bow of Bristol glass which normally lived in the sitting room, and scatter dog biscuits all over the floor.
        'Who is he?' asked Lysander.
        'Rannaldini. About the greatest conductor in the world. Jesus, you're a philistine.'
        'Well, he's Boris's boss. Rachel played some of Boris's music. It sounded quite awful like
        a lot of buffaloes in a labour ward. But it reminded her of him so she started crying, and I was comforting her when Boris walked in. He'd decided not to leave her. He wasn't at all diffident when he