Free The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous by Jilly Cooper Page A

saw me, and he's a big bugger so I legged it before he blacked my eye.'
        Then you could have used the eye-gel,' said Ferdie, sourly sweeping up dog biscuits. 'Well, you screwed up that bloodstock account job.'
        'I'm desperately sorry, Ferd, I couldn't just leave her. The other problem is basically my car's been nicked. When I came out of her flat in Drake Street it had gone.'
        'Probably towed away.' Ferdie was furiously crashing plates and mugs into the dishwasher.
        'It wasn't. I stopped off at a champagne tasting at Oddbins on the way home. They let me use their telephone. Then I went to The Goat and Boots. That's where I met Syd, that blind bloke. His guide-dog was incredible; she was called Bessie. You'd have loved her, Jacko.'
        As he opened the kitchen door, Jack rushed out and an icy blast rushed in.
        'We'd better call the police about your car,' said Ferdie.
        'Rachel was so pretty in a leggy sort of way.' Lysander glanced at his watch. 'Hell, I've missed Coronation Street.' Going into the sitting room he switched on the television. 'I must find out who won the 2.15. Where's the remote control?'
        But, as he up-ended a box of tapes on to the floor in an attempt to find it, Ferdie flipped.
        'Just shut up for once,' he howled, 'and go to fucking bed.'
        Next morning Ferdie had to relent because Lysander woke up, as he so often did, crying for his mother.
        'Oh Ferd, I dreamt she was alive, the fog came down and I couldn't find her.'
        Dripping with sweat, reddened eyes rolling in terror, bedclothes thrown all over the sitting room, Lysander reached for a cigarette with a shaking hand.
        Slumped in despair, he let the bubbles subside in the AlkaSeltzer Ferdie brought him. The cartoons on TV AM which usually produced whoops of joy failed to raise a smile. He was too low even to switch over to Ceefax for the day's runners and his horoscope.
        'What's the point of Russell Grant rabbiting on about a romantic day for Pisces when I've got to go and tap Dad?' He started to shake again.
        Ferdie sighed. As Lysander's car hadn't been found and he'd promised to be at Fleetley, the public school in Gloucestershire where his father was headmaster, by eleven-thirty, Ferdie agreed to drive him down for a fee. Not that he'd ever get it, and he'd have to pretend to the office that he was out viewing properties.
        'You ought to get something inside you,' he chided Lysander. 'You haven't eaten since yesterday morning.'
        'I feel sick.'
        Lysander jumped at the telephone, always hoping it might be his mother and her whole death a terrible dream.
        Picking up the receiver, Ferdie listened for a minute, before snapping: 'He's not here, and if he were, he wouldn't have anything to say,' and crashed it down again.
        'You're going to feel even sicker. That was the Sun. Beattie Johnson's dumped in The Scorpion. They'll all be baying at the door in a second. We better move it.'
        On top of The Financial Times and the Estate Agent's Gazette, the newsagent on the corner placed a copy of The Scorpion.
        'Lover Boy's in trouble again,' he told Ferdie with a smirk. 'Remind him he owes me sixty quid for mags and fags.'
        'I'm first in the queue,' said Ferdie, grabbing a packet of toffees. 'Oh my God!'
        On the front of The Scorpion was a ludicrously, wantonly glamorous photograph of Lysander surrounded by foliage and wearing nothing but a flannel. 'who could blame Martha winterton?' said the huge headline.
        'What the hell possessed you to pose virtually naked for Beattie Johnson?' asked Ferdie as he got back into the car.
        'I was having a bath when she arrived,' said Lysander sulkily.
        Lysander, whom Ferdie described as the Geoffrey Boycott of reading, was still digesting the full horrors when the BMW shook off the remnants of rush-hour traffic and reached the