Victoria Lambert
Gosh, someone really should Hoover the stairs, I think, idly, as another stratum of dust gathers. Someone really should weed the front garden, too - which currently resembles an overgrown bombsite. And someone should definitely tidy up the house so that it looks inviting and serene, instead of 50 per cent book shop, 40 per cent tack room, 10 per cent laundry. Rarely, however, does it cross my mind that this person should be me.
You see, to be frank, I am not just "not a good wife" - as Sally Bercow put it. I am an appalling wife. A "bad wife", if you will.
Indeed, when you combine my lack of interest in running the household with an inability to budget, remember the extended family's birthdays, write Christmas cards or monitor homework - all the classic wifey tasks women are supposed to juggle alongside their jobs - I'm surprised I haven't been contacted by the Office of Fair Trading for trying to pass myself off as a "wife" at all. (I can't even show them my marriage certificate as I think I've lost that, too.)
The litany of sins goes on. I happily drink my husband's last beer (well, he always polishes off my chocolates), and once brought home three guinea pigs the day after I had agreed we were absolutely getting no more pets.
As for my cavalier attitude to cooking - both husband and daughter have developed a code word. "This is fine," they say, bravely, when the cabbage and asparagus and whatever-else-I-found-in-the-fridge soup isn't cutting the mustard.
No, I am not a "good wife", whatever that means. And guess what? I don't care. If we're all alive at the end of the day, then, quite frankly, I consider my work is done.
Rachel Halliwell
We've been married 23 years, yet still my husband bangs on to anyone who will listen about what a lousy wife I am and how I cruelly tricked him down the aisle. The thing is, he's right. For the three years we courted, I presented myself as his perfect woman, him being an outdoor-loving eco-warrior with a penchant for heavy metal music. We spent our weekends tramping through the Lake District.
"I love that you love what I love," he would murmur contentedly through chattering teeth, the heavens raining down on us as we rough-camped in a farmer's field.
Meanwhile, I smiled through heavy metal concerts so loud my ears felt like they were bleeding inside. And lugged boxes of newspapers and empty wine bottles to the recycling centre when most people were still cheerfully chucking it into landfill.
Yet it was all a ruse. You see, I hate camping, can't stand heavy metal music, and if I'm in a bad mood I get a thrill from throwing an empty tuna can straight into the kitchen bin. But I was mad about the man, and wily enough to know that an Egyptian cotton-loving Michael Jackson fan with a cavalier approach to recycling might not cut it with him. So I did what I had to do.
He realised he'd been conned when, soon after our wedding, we went on a hike and he caught me thumbing for a lift behind his back. Later, I shone my torch from our sodden tent up to a cosy-looking hotel and said: "Next time we stay there."
Only last night he wailed that our marriage is founded on a bed of lies after I insisted he turn his God-awful music right down.
"Where did that wonderful woman go?" he asked sadly, before heading to the kitchen to fish yet another empty tuna tin out of the bin.
Christina Hopkinson
What is a good wife anyway? The phrase conjures up Fifties images of a beautiful woman in a frock and lipstick, greeting her husband with a hot supper and an even hotter kiss. The Bible has plenty to say on the subject, too, some of it sensible ("the heart of her husband trusts in her"), some of it less so (the good wife "seeks wool and flax" and is not a "slave to much wine").
Or, to update these ideals, would the good wife now do all of the above as well as earn a huge salary? I remember hearing a group of four husbands (including my own) bemoan the fact that their partners earned so much less than the friend's wife who'd just taken up one of those American jobs with "vice-president" in the title.
But I neither earn millions nor keep a spotless house. I make lentil stews when he prefers meat; I nag about clothes left on the floor when I could pick them up myself. I make him get out of bed first in the mornings; I wear man-repeller pinafore dresses and expect him to muck in with the bath/bed/book evening routine with the children.
There's lots of euphemistic stuff in the Bible about wives "submitting" to their husbands and I'm sure I don't do enough of that either. What is the "good wife" quotient on this? Three times a week? More? Less? Though to be fair to myself, it's not as if I'm submitting to anyone else's husband either, least of all his cousin. What's irritating is there's no equivalent phrase for men. This makes me all bolshy and strident, whining "not fair" - definitely the reaction of a bad wife. But the fact that my husband puts up with all my wifely failings means that perhaps he is, after all, the good husband. And I'm probably not so bad after all.
Christina's novel 'The A-List Family' is published by Hodder
Fiona Gibson
I married Jimmy when I was 31 and our twin sons were born a year later. We had met as carefree, gad-about-town types and were flung into parenthood with barely a thought as to how we might adapt to our new roles. While I threw myself into looking after the babies full time, any semblance of "good wife" husband-nurturing was pretty much forgotten.
I did get it together once to bake him a birthday cake, but its dismal lunar-like appearance - on top of a testing day with our one-year-old sons - tipped me over the edge. Jimmy came home to be greeted by his demented wife throwing the substandard sponge at him and running away crying.
I took to eating baby mush meals at the twins' tea time. Jimmy would be lucky to be served something called an "ocean pie" that reeked of margarine and would have shrunk to the size of a Duplo brick during its incineration in the microwave. Our tiny terrace house became a playground for mice. "Poor housekeeping," was the pest control guy's summation of the cause.
Although we are well beyond the baby years now - our sons are 18, our daughter 15 - my husband does his own ironing and more than his share of the cooking. As he should do. If he asks me to drop off a jacket at the dry cleaner's, it is likely to languish there for months. If he has the audacity to request a back rub, I'll give him a half-hearted jab and promptly fall asleep. Ah, well. While I'm sure a little TLC would be appreciated, I believe that modern marriage should be a partnership of equals. And if Jimmy were to come home to find me in a pinny, presenting a light-as-a-cloud Victoria sponge... well, then he'd have real cause to worry.
Fiona's latest novel, 'As Good As It Gets?', is out now (Avon)
Judith Woods
I cavil slightly at the notion of being either a good or a terrible wife, as it has rather a retrograde pinny-and-pipe sound to it. I would also aver that bonking my husband's cousin would make me an appalling human being rather than simply a defective spouse.
Having said that, Sally Bercow and I are alike in one crucial respect: no, not the draped sheet. Or the roistering with the in-laws. On this occasion.
Give up? Neither of us is wearing a wedding ring. Gasp! This is, of course, celebrity code for "look at me, see how conspicuously I am hurting". Not being a celebrity, my naked finger signals "yes, I've lost that replacement ring you gave me. Again. Sorry."
As far as my specifically wifely duties go, I think this is my main (possibly only) shortcoming. I used to wear one, but then my husband annoyed me, so I dramatically removed it. He didn't notice. By the time he did, I'd lost it. If this sounds a little careless, I must say in my defence that three years had elapsed so draw your own conclusions about who was really to blame.
Anyway, he bought me another.
But I, ahem, took that one off in another fit of temper and lost it, too. The last one was white gold and studded with diamonds. Lovely. But, yes, I took it off. Not in a moment of pique but because my finger had mysteriously swollen.
As I googled my symptoms, I knocked it off the table and it fell between the floorboards.
That was two years ago. Am I being unreasonable to think that if he really loved me he'd rip up the flooring?
Or, I could slip off quietly to the jewellers and buy a replacement. If I only knew what Sally would do - I would do the exact opposite.
