Altar Ego Read Online Free Page A

Joy
zillions
of times … But before, I could always leave him if the sex went off.’
    ‘Ya silly cow! Sex is
not
the most important fing in a marriage!’
    ‘Maybe not for your generation. I mean, if the sex was bad,
you
wouldn’t know. We’re the first generation of wives who’ve had a lot of sex before marriage. Been there, licked that. We
know
what we’ll miss …’
    ‘You’ve ’ad a lot of sex before marriage?’ my mother interrogated, tartly.
    ‘Mum I know that the kind of cloud nine, euphoric feeling of love will pass …’
    ‘Yeah,’ Kate slipped in acerbically. ‘Maybe even by the first morning of the honeymoon.’
    ‘How
much
sex before marriage? Who …?’ My mother’s kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed. ‘The fact that yer damaged goods is even more of a bleedin’ reason to marry quickly.’ Brutus, mimicking his mistress, bared his furry fangs in contempt. ‘Exactly how shop-soiled are ya?’
    I felt a cold wave of malevolence rise in the pit of my stomach. ‘Remember, when I was fifteen, that thing I told you was an elbow moisturizer? Well, it was my cervical cap.’
    ‘Elbow moisturiser?’ Kate guffawed. ‘A diaphragm looks more like a Frisbee for your Mum’s Chihuahua.’
    ‘Or a rubber yarmulka for a tiny Jewish doll,’ Anouska giggled.
    Anouska, Kate and I spluttered into helium-filled laughter. We bent double with illicit chuckles and chortles.
    ‘You people are sick …’ My mother’s eyes were hard as boiled sweets. ‘You lot need psychiatric help. I want you and yer 2,000 quid dress out that door and up that aisle, pronto.’
    ‘Yoo-hoo.’ The smile on the well-groomed head that bobbed around the bathroom door epoxy-resined in place at the sight of the mayhem within. ‘What’s going on?’ asked Anouska’s half-sibling, Vivian.
    ‘Cold feet,’ explained Kate wearily, lowering her bulk into the empty tub and lolling, spreadeagled. ‘Nuptial frostbite. Lost all feeling from the knee down – maritally speaking.’
    Vivian shook her hennaed head in sad disbelief. Although looking like one of those women who come to your house to demonstrate something, she is actually a highly respected solicitor, Earth Mother of two, charity fund-raiser, skilled dinner-party hostess and housewife superstar (she has damask linen napkins and
launders them herself
after every meal). What can I tell you? The woman sun-dries her own tomatoes. She obviously employs a team of people to sleep, eat and have sex on her behalf. Vivian had her last baby induced so that she could make a meeting. Networked the labour ward, then went back to court twenty-four hours after her episiotomy – making every other Working Mother bite right through her briefcase. Vivian is a good woman – in the worst sense of the word.
    ‘Talk to her!’ my mother yapped, her bouffant listing perilously.
    The whole room strained to hear Vivian’s words of wisdom. ‘Um … did you like the Magimix?’
    ‘Abou’ the flippin’ marriage!’ said my mother in a voice brittle enough to qualify for osteoporosis pills. ‘You are the Matron of flippin’ Honour, ain’t cha?’
    Julian’s idea. Vivian is not my friend. Like his collection of Bartok and Boz Scaggs albums, I’d simply acquired her by cohabitation.
    ‘You young people are so impatient,’ Vivian condescended. ‘You move on because you can’t keep up the romance,’ said the Woman Who Does Everything More Successfully and Fabulously Than Every Other Woman in the Known Universe. ‘But that first flurry of passion evolves into something so much richer.’
    ‘This from one half of a couple whose idea of foreplay is to give each other enemas,’ I retaliated.
    If we’d been sitting at a table, Anouska would have kicked me under it. ‘Becky!’ Anouska scolded, ‘I told you that in confidence.’
    Vivian gasped. ‘You
told
her?’ Suddenly arctic, she flounced to the door. I was tempted to put Vivian into the blender she’d given me as a wedding present and