Altar ego, p.1
Altar Ego, page 1
ALTAR EGO
ALSO BY KATHY LETTE
Till Death Do Us Part
HRT: Husband Replacement Therapy
Best Laid Plans
Courting Trouble
Love is Blind (But Marriage is a Real Eye-Opener)
The Boy Who Fell to Earth
Men: A User’s Guide
To Love, Honour and Betray
How to Kill Your Husband (And Other Handy Household Hints)
Nip ‘n’ Tuck
Dead Sexy
Altar Ego
Mad Cows
Foetal Attraction
The Llama Parlour
ALTAR EGO
KATHY LETTE
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the UK in 1998 by QPD
This edition published in 2024 by Head of Zeus,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Kathy Lette, 1998
The moral right of Kathy Lette to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781035901937
Cover design: Jessie Price / Head of Zeus
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
About the Book
‘Query: would it be a serious breach of etiquette to run out on my own wedding?’
This is what Becky Steele finds herself asking, an hour before she’s due to walk down the aisle. After finally managing to fit into her meringue dress after weeks of drinking only skimmed water, she’s suddenly worried that wedlock is little more than a padlock.
Yes, she loves Julian, but is she ready to be a proper grown-up, and give up the joys of the single life? Julian might be the right man, but has she had enough wrong ones?
Then temptation arrives in the form of gorgeous rockstar toy boy Zack. Becky doesn’t know which way to turn, but she knows there can only be one Mr Right. The question is, which one?
Contents
Also by Kathy Lette
Title Page
Copyright
About the Book
Dedication
Part One: The Wedding 1. I Do
2. I Don’t
3. The Undress Rehearsal
4. Send In The Crones
5. Bridesmaid Revisited
6. Posh Frock, No Knickers
7. A Lick And A Promise
8. Yodelling In The Canyon Of Love
9. Raw Emotion
10. Resting On Your Orals
11. Eating The Arm Candy
12. How Many Rock Stars Does It Take To Screw In A Light Bulb? One: Rock Stars Will Screw Anything
13. How To Have An Affair. A Beginner’s Guide
14. Courtus Interruptus 164
15. The Mourning After the Knot Before
16. To Love, Honour And Betray
17. The Fountain Of Age
18. We Interrupt This Marriage To Bring You A News Bulletin
Part Two: The Affair 19. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do – But Dividing The Book Collection? Unbearable
20. The Trophy Bonk
21. How Gauche It With You?
22. Welcome To Tonsil-Town
23. Liberated, Hip, Post-Feminist …? Or Amoral Slut? Defend Your Answer
24. Better Latent Than Never
25. Warning. The Following Sexual Positions Are Not For Amateurs. Do Not Try This In Your Own Home
26. The Dark Side Of The Tune
27. Till Divorce Us Do Part
28. Survival Of The Hippest
29. I’m Not Pleased To See You – It’s A Gun In My Pocket
30. I Waxed My Bikini Line For This?
Part Three: The Divorce 31. An Impediment Of Reach
32. Remembrance Of Flings Past
33. Nocturnal Omission
34. Cross My Legs And Hope To Die
35. The Three Of Us Make A Really Good Pair
36. Ping! There Go Those Elastic Morals Again!
37. Laugh? I Almost Died
38. Not The Full Matinee Jacket
39. I’m Not Waving
40. For Sale. One Husband. Has Had Only One Careful Lady Owner
41. A Pina Colada, A Non-stick Wok And Thou
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
For my sisters, with love
Part One
The Wedding
1
I Do
QUERY: WOULD IT be a serious breach of etiquette to run out on my own wedding? That was the question I asked myself as I put a leg over the window ledge of my parents’ bathroom, grimly regarding the ten-foot drop into the putrid metallic depths of the dustbins below.
The mirrored cabinet was perfectly positioned to eye-witness my own pathetic escape. I stared in disbelief at the meringue dress which I had drunk only skimmed water for four weeks to fit into. (The tradition for wearing white at weddings doesn’t seem to have been dented by the fact that the bride holds the Girls’ Night Out record for the shortest amount of time between meeting someone and shagging them – nine minutes.)
Across the Crescent directly opposite my parents’ crummy Islington flat I could see the idyllic stone church, the coiffured, confetti-clutching guests, the gleaming chauffeur-driven Rolls … This was a fairy-tale wedding, all right. Scripted by the Brothers Grimm. How the hell did I, Rebecca Steele, man-izing, feisty, thirty-ish New feminist (with a small f – a member of what Julian, my intended, called ‘London’s Muffia’) get into this God-awful mess?
Actually, it all began with fellatio. The getting out of it, that is.
The previous evening we’d been having the traditional Girls’ Night Out – you know, where you lie to each other that you look great in stretch lycra, swap mascara-de-blobbing techniques, compare breasts (whose are biggest) and bottoms (whose have dropped) and stretch marks (‘you think yours are bad …’), acupuncture your nostril with a minuscule umbrella every time you take a sip of cocktail whose name is spiked with an innuendo you’re drunk enough to find funny, discuss male partners’ anatomical details at length (or not) – including width (imperative for any mothers in our midst), only to regain consciousness twenty-four hours later in the jockstrap of a spent Gladiator.
About midnight, the mandatory ‘where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?’ conversation had lurched on to techniques for getting out of swallowing.
‘Listen, doll, I just say to the guy that he’s so big, it’s making me gag. And when I gag, I always get the urge to bite down,’ money-bags Anouska admitted, emboldened by the wine she was slopping down the front of her size-8 Prada suit.
‘That’s pathetic.’ Kate had to raise her slurred Aussie drawl above the throb of the male strippers’ backing tape. ‘He actually swallowed that?’ This was followed by the witch-like cackling which characterizes these all-girl gatherings.
‘My sister,’ Anouska went on, ‘you know, Vivian …’
There was a collective moan. Vivian is Anouska’s older, plainer half-sister; an arugula-d, aerobic-ed kind of person universally detested for her competence.
‘… She tells her hubby that she can’t swallow because she’s trying to lose weight, you know after the baby …’ Anouska paused, dramatically. ‘He’s seven.’
Cue witch-like cackling. Kate laughed so hard that pina colada jetted out of her nostrils.
The giant ashtray that went by the name of the ‘Tooltique’ was pulsating with females baying for full-frontal nudity. The disconcerted strippers looked for help from the female bouncers only to discover them making the crudest catcalls for more crotch. They needn’t have worried. Women go on Girls’ Nights Out for the psychological striptease.
‘But if you’re not in the mood –’ I paused, lazily decapitating a maraschino cherry with my teeth ‘– why do it?’
‘Mood?’ queried Anouska. ‘Nobody’s ever in the mood. Fellatio is just something you put up with, doll. Like the weather …’
‘Absolutely.’ Kate tore open a packet of salt and vinegar crisps with her teeth. ‘Men only like blow jobs because they know we can’t talk with our mouths full … Proof of how insane men are. I mean, if you were a bloke, would you put it in a mouth, where there are teeth? The teeth of a female who’s been discriminated against for centuries?’
It was then I made my mistake. ‘I like fellatio.’
There was an awed silence while this shocking information was fully absorbed.
‘Oh, yea, penis-breath,’ my two ‘besties’ (best friends) Kate and Anouska chorused.
‘No, I do.’
‘You’re just saying that ’cause you’re not married. Once you’re hitched you can stop pretending to bloody well like it,’ Kate asserted.
‘Yeah,’ Anouska groaned, ‘the rest of us have gallons of ejaculatory fluid still to be endured.’
‘Marriage is just something to do when you’re too bloody tired for sex,’ Kate gloated.
But I was the only one listening. Every other eyeball in the club had catapulted out of its socket and on to the stage. Even Anouska had roused herself from her face down position in the guacamole.
The trouble with nude male dancing is that not everything stops when the music does.
I chucked Kate’s chin towards the undulating dancers. ‘Just because you have no libido …’ I teased.
‘It’s not a lack of sex drive, you big boofhead.’ Kate brushed away my hand defensively. ‘It’s just an overabundance of celibate feelings. I have nothing against half-naked men … Hell. I wish I did … It’s just marriage I hate.’ She tossed a fistful of crisps into her maw with alarming savagery.
As well as being my best friend, and my boss at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, 35-year-old Kate is a Zeitgeist surfer. She hadn’t always been a professional sceptic. A failed love affair – she’d followed her English lover to London, only to find out he was MWC (Married With Children) – had given her the ability to disbelieve anything. She’d mastered the power of Negative Thinking. According to Kate, the end of absolutely everything is nigh. She only eats in restaurants that have resuscitation diagrams on the walls and worries about aeroplane passengers flushing their toilets directly above her head. Kate McCready likes nothing more than optimum brooding conditions.
‘The medical term for a woman paralysed from the waist down and the neck up is “marriage”, you know,’ Kate killjoyed. ‘Matrimony should be avoided with precisely the same zeal that one accords … I dunno – British beef.’
I was used to Kate’s Feminazism, but still, it was a bit rich the night before my wedding.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I said, proving yet again that a career in Avon-Ladying was definitely beyond me.
Anouska, picking avocado out of her tawny corkscrew curls, backed me up. ‘Marriage is the new rock and roll … Look at Spice Girl thingo … and …’
‘Huh!’ Kate turned the blowtorch of her exasperation upon Anouska. ‘You only say that because you’re bloody desperate to get a hubby.’
‘How do you know that I want to get married?’ a singed Anouska whinged.
‘Gee, I dunno,’ replied Kate sarcastically. ‘Highlighting chapters seven to sixty-two of the Complete Wedding Handbook could have been a clue … Over half of marriages end in divorce. If marriage was a horse, no self-respecting gambler would take a punt on it. Why the hell do you want to get married?’ she demanded through a mulch of chewed crisps. ‘Hmm?’
Kate and Anouska have nothing in common – except me. Kate is chairperson of at least ten pressure groups. The only political gesture Anouska ever made was to join the Harvey Nichols 24-Hour-Opening Lobby. While Kate has ambitions to be the youngest female prime minister ever, with maybe a couple of Nobel prizes for services to humanity thrown in, Anouska’s entire aim in life is to make the ‘Bystander’ section of Tatler.
‘Well?’ Kate barked, her short blonde hair lacquered so severely into a helmet that even I nearly saluted.
Anouska, shrinking, replied feebly. ‘I’m … I’m just programmed that way, okay?’
‘Programmed to become obsessed with china patterns?’
‘You’re just jealous,’ Anouska rallied, ‘because nobody’s ever asked you to get married!’
‘Wearing taffeta after the age of twelve is embarrassing.’
‘E … E … Everybody should marry,’ Anouska spluttered. ‘It’s natural. Unless you’ve got a very good excuse, you know, that you’re a lesbian or a eunuch or are so visually challenged that you need to get your mirrors insured!’ she said pointedly.
I blanched on Kate’s behalf. Don’t get me wrong, Kate had started pretty, but since university had been taking Ugly Pills – shit-kicker shoes, no make-up and nipple hair you could weave into macramé hanging baskets. Kate McCready’s idea of protection in bed is to take a small, perfectly formed handgun.
But if she was hurt, she didn’t show it.
‘I do not want to perform my personal hygiene routine in front of anybody, thank you very much, I want to know that the pubes on the bloody soap are my own. Savvy?’
I laughed at her then. ‘You can’t reject love on the basis of autonomous toiletries!’ I fumbled an olive pip out of my mouth. ‘People marry for security and …’
‘Security! Huh.’ Kate contemptuously shoved her red-framed specs up the bridge of her slightly hooked nose. ‘England has the highest divorce rate in Europe, you big galah!’
‘It’s the greatest commitment you can make, isn’t it? It’s a –’ I tried to remember the way Julian phrased it ‘– a public display of a private passion.’ I gloated inwardly. Eat that, Feminist-breath.
‘Oh,’ Kate purred flippantly, fluttering her eyelashes, ‘It’s a Hallmark card moment …’ The sweetness in her voice evaporated. ‘But why bloody marry? Couldn’t you just lease?’
‘You’re so lucky getting married, Becky,’ said Anouska covetously. ‘You can get fat and hairy now.’
Anouska was an It Girl, fast becoming a Past-It Girl. At twenty-nine, party invitations were starting to dry up. She’d worked in the Press Office at the Savoy, been the muse of a Haute Couture Designer, even once Done Something With The Queen’s Pictures. Recently she’d passed herself off as a Fashion Therapist, advising rich women that gold was the ‘new silver’, and brown was the ‘new black’. But marriage was the next career move. Nicknamed the Mountie, ’cause she always got her man, Anouska’s motto had always been ‘guys I can’t get, are guys I’ve not met’. But her downfall was that she was tiara-hungry. This was a woman who wanted to buy tiaras in six-packs. Having always been the most beautiful girl at school, she’d held out for a Royal and had actually dated Prince Edward for a while. But when thirty loomed its ugly numerical head, and with her dad, the South African arms dealer, under investigation for sanction-busting, and constantly pilloried by Private Eye magazine, she’d been forced to downgrade her marriage expectations to Marquis, Earl, Viscount – even Honourable of late. A marital limbo dancer, she just kept getting lower and lower.
‘These days if your skin’s cleared up, you’re too old to marry, doll. Men are walking down the aisle with a foetus in a veil.’ A great sob rose in Anouska’s pale, pearl-entwined throat. ‘I’m approaching the age of being dumped for a younger wife and, and I’m … I’m not even married yet!’
Her blubbering increased in intensity, just as the dancers reached a delicate moment of soulful groin gyration. As Kate propped her up and I mopped her up, rubber-necking revellers were shooting our table death rays.
‘Hey!’ I said, cheerily – it was time to get this Girls’ Night Out back on hedonistic track. ‘What’s the difference between men and pigs? … Pigs don’t get drunk and act like men!’
Kate rolled her eyes. ‘It’s pointless telling chauvinist jokes,’ she counterblasted, ‘when you still marry them.’
As the strippers pelvic-thrust themselves into a lather, one bronzed hunk slipped and fell. The atmosphere, so frenzied and incendiary, became suddenly maternal. As women rushed forward to cradle and coddle, my thoughts turned to my wedding day … I was a woman who’d been on the go, but going nowhere. A ‘new direction’ for me had always ended up horizontal. I’d left a tub ring of men high and dry and been thrown out with the bath water by just as many. But I wanted to be a fish in water for a change. Julian, with his buttery blond hair, caramel-toffee eyebrows, burning-blue gas-flame eyes, and that succulent mouth from which rolled a judicious voice – Jules Verne deep, vowels as plump and round as plums – was my chance for a centred, sane life … and by hell was I going to take it. I’d never been so sure of anything in my life.
2
I Don’t
GETTING MARRIED? WAS I insane?
The next morning I’d woken, in the bed I’d slept in as a child, to a different feeling altogether. There were so many reasons not to. Was marriage really romance’s prophylactic? I never, ever wanted to become a Fellatio Refusnik; to make love to a man out of duty. Okay, sex was good now, but what if our orgasm warranty expired? What then, hmmm?
