Altar Ego by Kathy Lette

hypochondriac!’
    ‘Well then hypochondria is the only disease you
haven’t
got!’
    ‘You really think I’m a hypochondriac?’
    ‘Oh God. Now you’re going to get hypochondriacal about being a hypochondriac. Julian, your ailments are killing me! One measly headache and it’s swelling brainstems, one pee too often and it’s prostate cancer …’
    ‘At least I’m not a
psychological
hypochondriac. You take your emotional temperature all day. Am I happy? Could I be happier? Is he really the right man for me?’
    ‘Yeah? Well, It’s time we took the temperature of this relationship. With a
rectal
thermometer.’
    The only sign that I’d stung him was the way the car bumped over the road-Braille of cat’s eyes. I went down a mental gear. ‘All you need to do, Jules, is take more exercise. Look at you.’ I patted the pot belly straining against the seat belt with tenderness. ‘You’re getting podgy, darling. You haven’t seen your testicles for over six months.’
    ‘Testicles! Huh! I don’t have any testicles! You took them on my wedding day. Need I jog your memory?’
    ‘It’s the only thing you
do
jog. When we met, you had buns of steel. Lately your buttocks have the consistency of, I dunno … lasagne. Vegetable lasagne. With too much milk.’
    ‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, Rebecca, but I’m a lawyer. I conquer the Great Indoors. The only thing I exercise is caution. Which is why I waited until I was forty to choose the woman I wanted to marry. But since you eschewed the band of gold …’
    ‘There you go. Eschewed. Did you have to say “eschewed” at the reception? Why can’t you just say “rejected”? Why can’t you just use a normal word now and again?’ The overhead fog lights had turned us both a toxic orange. ‘Why do you always have to show that you’re suffering from First-Degree Knowledge?’
    ‘So that’s why you resent me? Because my brains have gone to my head?’ he asked incredulously.
    I groped under the seat for my cigarettes. ‘What I resent is the fact that you were at bloody Oxford for so long that you’ve got ivy growing up the back of your legs. All work and no play makes Julian a dull boy.’
    ‘But all play and no work will get Julian defending serious cases of unlawful parking in Bognor Regis. I work hard so that we can enjoy the finer things in life.’
    ‘Oh yes, like all night unpaid work-a-thons – you haven’t charged a client for months. Sex with socks still on ’cause you’re too tired to take them off …’
    Flicking on the dome light and rummaging in my handbag, I thought about Julian’s mistress – his work. In a way I’d have preferred it to be another woman. Then I could simply carwash his Saab in hydrochloric acid, bathe in his fine wine collection, and pen the odd piece about ‘A Woman Scorned’. But what could I say about a man who lavished love on his law books? It was giving me subpoena-envy, it really was.
    ‘What about all the wonderful holidays I’ve taken you on?’ he retorted, once we were safely ejaculated into the motorway traffic. ‘Would you turn that light off?’
    ‘Yes. In the coup-ridden capitals of the Universe … I’m sick of you carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, Julian.’ I turned off the light and punched in the cigarette lighter. ‘Get a porter!’
    ‘You’re thirty-two, Becky.’ Julian snatched the cigarette from between my fingers and extinguished it. ‘You’ve had enough fun. It’s time you settled down and started a family.’
    ‘Huh,’ I sulked, ‘you actually have to have sex now and again to get children …’ I gnawed on a nail. ‘The last time we had any physical contact was when I got that fish bone stuck in my throat at the River Café and you gave me the Heimlich manoeuvre. You haven’t given me head for months!’
    ‘Honestly, Rebecca!’; The Saab tyres slurped angrily at roadside puddles. ‘Must you speak so crudely? It’s not as though you ever