SHARI LOW

The Motherhood Walk of Fame

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007

Copyright © Shari Low 2007

Shari Low asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Spiderman Words and Music by Stephen Lemberg © Kama Sutra Music Inc, USA EMI United Partnership Ltd, London WC2H 0QY (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co, USA (Print) Administered in Europe by Faber Music Ltd Reproduced by permission All rights reserved. Batman Theme Words by Neal Hefti © 1966 EMI Catalogue Partnership and EMI Miller Catalog Inc, USA EMI United Partnership Ltd, London WC2H 0QY (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co, USA (Print) Administered in Europe by Faber Music Ltd Reproduced by permission All rights reserved. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560032

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334919

Version: 2018-06-18

With huge gratitude to the two fabulous women who

guided this book to print: Sheila Crowley at AP Watt

and Maxine Hitchcock at Avon. Ladies, thank you–

working with you has been an absolute joy.

To the rest of the wonderful team at Avon–

I love my new home!

And to the others who give their unfailing support:

Linda Shaughnessy, Rob Kraitt, Teresa Nicholls and

the rest of the team at AP Watt. I’m counting my

blessings…Sxx

To Betty Murphy–we’ll never stop missing you.

And to my big guy and two little ones…

Everything, always…

Now can one of you go put the tea on.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1 Step One

Chapter 2 Step Two

Chapter 3 Step Three

Carly Calling …

Chapter 4 Step Four

Chapter 5 Step Five

Carly Calling …

Chapter 6 Step Six

Carly Calling …

Chapter 7 Step Seven

Chapter 8 Step Eight

Carly Calling …

Chapter 9 Step Nine

Chapter 10 Step Ten

Carly Calling …

Chapter 11 Step Eleven

Chapter 12 Step Twelve

Carly Calling …

Chapter 13 Step Thirteen

Chapter 14 Step Fourteen

Carly Calling …

Chapter 15 Step Fifteen

Chapter 16 Step Sixteen

Carly Calling …

Chapter 17 Step Seventeen

Chapter 18 Step Eighteen

Chapter 19 Step Nineteen

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

I knew something was wrong. As I bit down on an apple Danish, one of my five daily fruit and vegetable portions as recommended by Government health guidelines, I had that vaguely edgy feeling of unease–the one I normally get when PMT is raging and I want to commit acts that’ll guarantee me a starring role on Crimewatch.

Actually, I never watch that programme. The minute the theme music starts I have to switch over, because a feeling of crushing guilt comes over me even though I know that I don’t own a balaclava and I was nowhere near the Kensington Post Office three weeks ago last Thursday at 10.24 a.m.

Still, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was bugging me. It was just another normal Monday morning. And up until that point, everything had been pretty much uneventful. My husband, Mark, had risen at some ungodly hour, staggered to the bathroom, peed with his eyes still shut, shaved with one eye open, returned to our bedroom and dressed in the dark. Due to this well-practised regime, all his business clothes were of the same colour to avoid ritual humiliation and ridicule.

He tripped over his briefcase at the bottom of the stairs, before picking himself back up, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl and checking his reflection in the hall mirror. At that point, by some power of cosmic wonderment, his transformation was complete. Gone was the zombied, scruff-ball dosser who couldn’t even manage to pee in a stationary receptacle without leaving splash marks on the surrounding area; and in his place was Mark Barwick, corporate lawyer and all-round babe-magnet.

He then got into his flash sports car, flicked on the flash radio and set off on his mind-numbing commute from our Richmond semi to his flash office in a flash tower block in a flash area of London.

Of course, I’m assuming all of the above because it would take medical intervention and explosives to wake me at that time in the morning. But his routine hadn’t varied in the seven years we’d been together so I doubt that he somersaulted out of bed, had a quick espresso and a chocolate croissant then spent twenty minutes deciding which tie suitably expressed his mood that day.

And anyway, Mark only has one mood–stable. No ecstatic ups. No wrist-slitting lows. Just…stable. Which is a good thing. Great. Fantastic. How I love having a stable, dependable guy who is the perfect balance for my rather more changeable disposition. I do. And never, ever have I been tempted to call him a boring, predictable git. At least not out loud. Oh, okay, but only to my pals.

I took another bite of the Danish and realised that gnawing, restless feeling was still there. That ruled out hunger then. I ran through the other possibilities.

Kids. One deposited at preschool, and the other one had just started nursery that very week. Mac, the oldest at four, was in his third month of preschool and he loved it. Touch wood, I hadn’t yet been called up to the headmistress for a dressing-down, primarily, I suspected, because I’d endeavoured to keep him on the non-violent side of Power Rangers by telling him that cameras in the lampposts around the school allowed me to watch his every move via the internet. I’m sure the teachers must wonder why he keeps looking heavenwards and shouting, ‘I didn’t mean it, Mum, honest!’

Mac definitely has his mother’s genes. His vocabulary is starting to broaden now but they’ll be ice-skating in hell before it includes the word ‘stable’.

Mac’s little brother, however, is a whole different splash in the gene pool. When I was pregnant for the second time I told Mark that I wanted to name the new baby Big. I figured we were a shoo-in for a McDonald’s sponsorship deal. But in the end we settled for Benny, and he’s the cutest, most adorable little thing on earth. Not that I’m biased. But honestly, he should be doing the conga in a cowboy suit in a nappy advert.

Anyway, my kids were fine, so I crossed them off the ‘Why am I discontented today?’ questionnaire. They were wild, mad, crazy, and no doubt destined for borstal, but for now they were fine.

Maybe career? I find it difficult to discuss my career in isolation as it’s actually inextricably linked to my family background. You see, I am not, as appearances, birth certificates and DNA suggest, the daughter of a haughtily superior schoolteacher and a woefully inadequate finance salesman who shared every penny the family ever had with his pals Johnnie Walker and Jack Daniel’s. I am, actually, the secret love-child of Jackie Collins and Sidney Sheldon. I haven’t quite worked out how I managed to find my way to a Scottish maternity ward all those years ago, but I’m sure that Jackie had a good reason for giving me up for adoption. Maybe the Mafia were after her and she feared for my safety. Perhaps she didn’t want me to grow up spoiled and superficial and thought I’d become a more grounded, soulful person if my childhood was spent in an area of urban deprivation on the outskirts of Glasgow (in which case, Mom, I can assure you that it worked–I’m lovely, now please come and get me). Anyway, whatever the reason, for my whole life I knew that when I grew up I wanted to be a writer, just like my real parents. I’d write a ton of salacious best sellers, go to live in LA, have a kidney-shaped swimming pool and do dirty things to brooding Italian studs.

Sadly, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. My first book, Nipple Alert, did pretty well for a debut. Fab! magazine even said it was a ‘riotous romp’. Okay, so they say that about everything with a pink cover, but it’s a start. My second book, Pre-Mental Syndrome, sold pretty well too. Not Marian-Keyes-oh-my-God-let’s-buy-a-Ferrari well, but it sold out its first and second print run. So I should be loaded, right? Wrong. Why did no one tell me that unless you sell ten gazillion books the dosh doesn’t trickle in until about 347 years after you’re dead?

So to keep the bank manager off my back and my secret credit card in the black, I write a pathetically pretentious weekly column on the joys of motherhood for Family Values magazine. Which should really be called OK Ya!, because it’s nothing but an upmarket, incredibly naff suck-up to upper-class and celebrity mothers. Excuse me, my gag reflex is trembling again. The magazine demands that it’s written from the perspective of the perfect mother, so to write it I need a massive stretch of imagination and a sick bag on hand for the really nauseating bits. But hey, I’m a mother with a Tonka-truck of bills so I’ll take the money and keep on churning out the gospel according to a mother that I’d want to kill if I ever met her.

Life hasn’t exactly turned out how I imagined, has it? Sunny Beverly Hills? Great career? Kidney-shaped pool? Italian studs? I got pissing-down Richmond, a ridiculous job, a puddle out the back door, and I suppose if Mark clutched a pizza and kept his mouth shut he might just pass for someone who once spent half an hour in a transit lounge in Rome.

I opened the back door and lit a Benson & Hedges. Filthy habit. I’m so glad I stopped doing it in public years ago. Far better to freeze one’s arse off in secret in the valiant pursuit of an iron lung than to acknowledge to your husband and children that you have the willpower of Pavarotti in Pizza Express.

I could hear music coming from next door. I use that term loosely. It sounded like the greatest hits from the Nepalese panpipe charts. Then I caught sight of two feet dangling upside-down in midair, through next-door’s kitchen window. There’s only one thing bloody worse than a neighbour who listens to Nepalese panpipe music, and that’s a neighbour who listens to Nepalese panpipe music while they’re doing yoga. How’s a girl supposed to enjoy toxic free-radicals and poisonous chemicals destroying her skin and clogging her lungs when the neighbour is spoiling the environment with spiritual music and invigorating exercise?

It shouldn’t be allowed. Especially when the neighbour is supposed to be your best friend. If she were any kind of pal she’d be out here with a sneaky Silk Cut and a Bakewell slice.

Friends. In the past I’d have waged my worldly goods on at least one of them having a situation that could be responsible for this gnawing feeling, but nope, nothing dramatic, disgraceful or worrying sprung to mind there either. Kate next door is nauseatingly happily married to an architect called Bruce, a nauseatingly great mother to a Walton-like brood, nauseatingly toned and together, and has a nauseatingly glam part-time job as a fashion stylist. Just as well I love her a nauseating amount really. Although, I do realise that it breaks the solemn code of friendship: thou shalt not have a friend that’s skinnier, smarter or more successful, as envy giveth thou frown lines and wrinkles.

Kate and I have been best friends since we were kids on a council estate about five miles from Glasgow. There was a gang of us: me (Carly Cooper, now Barwick–or it would be if I had ever got around to officially changing my name after I got married), Kate, Carol, Sarah and Jess. And we stuck together through thick (Carol flunked O-level cookery), thin (and she makes Posh look like she’s got a high-grade Dairy Milk habit), richer (Sarah married a millionaire), poorer (after she escaped a life of abuse and poverty with her first husband), sickness (Jess once had an affair with politician Basil Asquith, who turned out to be the MP for Very Sick and Perverse Sexual Habits) and health (yoga, panpipes).

Strangely, we didn’t do that normal thing where you lose touch after school, then find each other twenty years later through Friends Reunited, drag your partners along to a reunion party, only for pheromones to fly like pigeons on steroids and the next thing you know you’re throwing your car keys in a bowl and it’s a wife-swapping scandal in the News of the World. Or does that only happen in the Cotswolds?

We all, via jobs, men or missing each other, ended up living in London together for years and although we’re a bit more scattered around now, we’re still pals. We’re kind of like Girls Aloud, only with lower breasts and slight hints of jowls.

In fact, some of us are real family now. Carol, once Scotland’s favourite model and for many years the international face of the Visit Scotland tourism campaign, married my brother Cal, also a model and once the face and bollocks of the Calvin Klein underwear range. What was I thinking when I was in the womb? I was obviously so busy floating around doing frivolous things like developing internal organs that I left all the best-looking genes to my brother. Anyway, they now live in one of the really big expensive houses up on the edge of Richmond Park with their twins in the attic and my other brother Michael in the basement. Michael asked them if they’d mind if he slept over one night. That was four years ago.

Jess lives in France now with partner Keith and her son Josh. I think she went for the peace and quiet. She was a major tabloid story here when her affair with the MP was rumbled and splashed across the Sunday Echo. Lord, do I have any normal friends? Anyway, she then married the journalist who exposed the story, had Josh, discovered her husband was a no-good cheating bastard, left him and met Keith–a lovely builder who adores her. They renovate old properties in a wine region in the South (could be Champagne, Chardonnay, Lambrini…I’m never sure) and keep chickens.

And Sarah? Aw, get ready to say ‘aaaah’ and have your faith in human nature restored. Sarah left school, went straight into a horrendous relationship with a psycho, had two kids, finally fled from Sleeping with the Enemy a year later, met Nick Russo–celebrated restaurant owner and the man I lost my virginity to, although I’m sure the two aren’t connected–fell in love, married him and now they’re in New York overseeing the opening of Nick’s fourteenth restaurant.

Lord, when I read all that back I realised nope, I don’t have any normal pals. Although for the first time in about, well, forever, we were all settled, happy, in good relationships and there wasn’t a drama, dilemma, disaster or devastation in sight.

Nope, all was well with the world. My life was a paragon of peace and tranquillity.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

But sometimes those inexplicable gnawing feelings are more than just your hormones reminding you of their existence. They’re subliminal signals from the Goddess of Womanhood that it’s all about to go the way of the Wonderbra generation–unanimously tits up.

Family Values Magazine

PUTTING THE YUMMY IN MUMMY THIS WEEK…MAKING TIME FOR YOU

Remember, ladies, it’s not just the children who need to be nurtured. What about Mummy and Daddy? Yes, we all get tired, stressed and our priorities change, but it’s essential that you take time for yourself and your relationship. Make sure you get to that weekly Pilates class, think about taking up a new hobby or interest to stimulate your mind and, most importantly, find time to pamper yourself.

Have one afternoon every week that is just for you–how about a manicure, a facial or a cheeky little pedicure to reduce those stress levels and leave you looking gorgeous at the same time? Don’t lose touch with your inner self–take at least fifteen minutes every day for reflection and contemplation. And remember, girls, when you travel the road to contentment, take your cosmetics with you. Colour on those cheeks, gloss on the lips…just a few moments of maintenance every morning will leave you feeling refreshed and ready to face the day.

If you’ve had a particularly hard week, there is nothing like a gentle massage to ease away the memories of those sleepless nights. And for that gorgeous, sensuous treat, ladies, you don’t even need to leave the house. It’s important that we don’t forget our partners, so remember to set aside one night a week and fill it with love and lust. Make a mouth-watering feast, light those candles, turn the music down low and remind each other that desire and parenthood can co-exist in glorious splendour.

The result? Happy parents, happy children, happy home.

Step One

I knocked on Kate’s door and then wandered on in without waiting for a reply. It was probably just as well, because her body was tangled in a position that looked like it was a therapeutic pose for someone suffering from acute constipation.

‘Morning, Madonna,’ I greeted her, while switching the ‘off’ button on the CD.

‘Morning, Fag Ash Lil. How’s you?’

I made some kind of yeeeeurghhh sound that I felt conveyed just the level of discontentment.

‘Very articulate,’ she said. ‘You know, with those profound, descriptive abilities you should really be a writer.’

I pulled the CD out of the machine. ‘One more word and the panpipes get it,’ I warned her. I glanced down at the CD pile and shoved the top disc onto the CD player, which just happened to be ‘Ancora’ by Il Divo.

II Divo–an Italian term for which I believe the exact translation is ‘great arse and a fine set of lungs’.

I poured a coffee (decaf), sat down at the kitchen table and put my feet on another chair. Kate didn’t bat an eyelid but I knew the minute I left she’d sponge down both table and chair with Flash antibacterial. Her whole house was spotless. Not in a freaky ‘I’ll stab you to death if you drop crumbs on my angora shag pile’ kind of way. Just in a super-organised, highly efficient, natural earth mother kind of way.

Kate had been mothering all of us since we were kids. When I was six, she refused to play in the snow with me unless I put gloves on. When we were teenagers she used to put condoms in my bag on the way to the pub. When my boys were babies she insisted on disinfecting my kitchen on a weekly basis because she said that I was–and I quote–‘obviously brought up in a lighthouse because I didn’t seem to be capable of getting into corners’.

Her kitchen was a gleaming showroom of wood units, marble worktops, plants, copper pans, pottery things that served no obvious purpose, kids’ paintings and collages made from leaves and wool. In my house the kids’ stuff made the kitchen look cluttered and messy. In this house it looked charming.

Like I said, the laws of womanhood would normally decree that I would have to hate such perfection, but with Kate it was impossible because she was so goddamn humble and lovely. She was gentle. She was beautiful. If your granny knitted the perfect woman it would look like Kate. Even her children liked her. All three of them–Cameron, Zoe and Tallulah. What were the chances of having three children and all of them thinking that you’re great? My earliest memory is of my mother irritating me incessantly by trying to put ribbons in my hair to make me look like a girl when it was plainly obvious to everyone else that I was a boy. Looking back now I can only assume that my willy fell off somewhere during the long journey with Jackie from Beverly Hills.

Kate disentangled her limbs then folded them into a different position as effortlessly as a bit actor from Wallace & Gromit.

‘Are you sure you’ve still got a skeletal system or have you done a Cher and had bits of it removed?’ I asked. I could honestly say that in my whole life, despite numerous experiences involving alcohol and imaginative sex, the back of my head had never come into contact with my ankle.

She laughed. ‘This one is great for the pelvis and the sex life,’ she said. ‘Do you know that scientists reckon that a woman has seven G-spots?’

‘Yeah, well you’d better call out some Sherpas and a tracker dog cos six of mine are missing.’

The front door slammed and Carol breezed in, all copper tendrils, size-eight hipsters and shopping bags.

‘Jesus, it’d freeze the balls off a brass gorilla out there,’ she said, shivering for effect. She’d never been very good with metaphors. She gave me a hug, then looked at Kate.

‘I know I’ll regret asking, but what are you doing?’

‘Counting her G-spots,’ I interjected.

Carol looked puzzled. ‘Why the plural? I thought we only had one?’

Thank you!

‘Nope, according to some anthropologist expert we’ve got seven,’ said Kate. Although how she could talk when she was staring her privates in the face was beyond me.

Carol giggled. ‘Oh, well there’s something for Cal to look for later then,’ she announced.

I made a very immature teenager, grossed-out face à la Hollyoaks, circa 2001.

‘Carol, we have laws! I’ve told you before–do not talk to me about your sex life with your husband. Due to the fact that he’s also my brother, it gives me mental images that will eventually lead to a psychiatrist’s couch or an appearance on a daytime talk show. Anyway, let’s not talk about sex because my memory is in no mood to be tested this morning.’

Sad, but true. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had one of those ‘alcohol and imaginative sex’ encounters. Don’t get me wrong, Mark and I could do that whole jungle hot and heavy thing. Once upon a time.

The first time I had sex with him I was still a teenager and the earth moved. And not just because we were in a standing position and I was wearing platforms the size of Mini Metros. We had an on-off thing all through the hormonal teenage years, and then lost touch until years later, when we bumped into each other at Cal and Carol’s wedding. Actually, that’s a lie. We didn’t exactly bump into each other. For reasons that I’ll summon up the courage and the accompanying mortification to reveal later, I had stormed off in a flurry of embarrassment, tears and snot, only for Mark to appear out of the blue and rescue me.

Within months we were married and it would have been impossible for me to be happier. Life was bliss. On weekends we’d climb into bed on Friday nights and stay there until Sunday, getting up only to shower, answer the door to the pizza delivery guy and change the batteries on the TV remote control. I couldn’t believe my luck–Mark Barwick, the gorgeous, smart, funny, laidback sweetheart of a guy, who had been bailing me out of trouble since before puberty, had actually taken me on. I should probably add ‘brave’ to that list. And not only that but he shagged me silly from dawn till dusk and seemed to enjoy it. Who needed yoga?

My wedding present to Mark had been to throw out every method of contraceptive I possessed. Foolishly, I flushed ten packets of pills, fourteen condoms and a diaphragm down the toilet. It kept a plumber in business for weeks.

But we were soon to hit a blockage of a different kind.

Six months of lost weekends later we were surprised that I wasn’t pregnant. A year passed and we were verging on astonished. Another eighteen months on and we were seriously worried. And two years after that we discovered that I had polycystic ovaries. And that was before they were trendy. Now everyone’s got them. They’ve become one of the barometers of modern-day chic. Everyone who’s anyone has had a boob job, Botox, goes to Barbados in the winter, South of France in the summer, is on the waiting list for the new Chloe bag, shops in Harvey Nicks and has polycystic ovaries. Even Victoria bloody Beckham has them. Oh, the irony. I had to have one thing in common with that incredibly thin, jet-setting, millionaire, diamond-laden, David-Beckham-shagging woman, and it’s the fact that our ovaries don’t work properly. And to add insult to injury, despite the dodgy ovaries she’s still managed to shoot out three kids. Although calling them after a bridge, a missile and a bloke with a fondness for balconies was a bit harsh.

However, in my case, the whole reproductive thing seemed to be on strike.

For Mark and I that meant sex became a battle to conceive rather than an enjoyable pastime to while away the hours between a Friday and a Monday. All of a sudden it was ovulation tests, fertility drugs, thermometers, laparoscopies and endless gynaecologists sending their Marigolds up to places that no one except your partner should ever visit.

It was horrible. Bollocks. Unfair. And really, really crap.

It was all those clichés that you read about in the Daily Mail when Felicity from Chelsea decides to share her infertility experiences with the world. Yes, I called my husband to come home from work because I was ovulating and wanted the eggs fertilised. Yes, I did the legs up against a wall after sex. Yes, every month on the day before my period was due I would get all desperately optimistic and do a pregnancy test. And then another sixteen just in case it was a faulty batch.

And somewhere in the middle of all that the romance kind of slid away. Actually, that sounds too gradual and gentle. In reality it went downhill like an Olympic skier on a Lurpak lid. It broke my heart.

Then one day, something really strange happened. It was the launch party for my second novel and I’d spent the whole day in a flurry of excitement, dread and panic. What if no one came? What if the book didn’t sell? What if that cow from that glossy celebrity magazine gave it a bad review? (Incidentally, she did, and one day I swear I’ll track her down.) Anyway, flurry, flurry, flurry…and then I realised that I felt ill. Nauseatingly, gut-twistingly ill. And much as everyone tried to tell me that it was excitement, nerves, stress, etc., etc., I knew differently. I knew. I just knew. A trolley dash round Superdrug, a quick detour into Marks & Spencer’s toilets and seventeen more pregnancy tests confirmed that I was not, in fact, a stressed-out, overexcited basket case. I was pregnant. Cheggers. Up the duff. Banged up. Or as Carol would say–I had a cake in the cupboard.

Some women were born to be pregnant. Demi Moore. Kate Hudson. Catherine Zeta-Jones. They glow, they bloom, they blossom. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them. I peed. I sweated. I swore. I went from slim to sumo in about three weeks and spent the rest of my pregnancy humping around the collective weight often adult seals. By the time I actually gave birth I was the size of an aircraft hangar.

So it’s fair to say that in those months, our sex life was rather infrequent. Definitely less often than a new moon and only slightly more frequent than an eclipse of the sun.

After what seemed like the gestation period of an African elephant, babe was born, ooohs, aaaaah, gurgle, gurgle, and we called him Mac. In actuality we could have called him Contraceptive because that was the effect. He was either sleeping between us, or on top of one of us, or we were taking it in turns to walk the floor with him while the other grabbed a quick hour of shut-eye on the couch.

But here’s the weird thing. I’ve heard of this same situation happening with other couples and normally there is one of two fairly predictable outcomes. After a few months, the sex life reverts to situation normal. Or alternatively, the bloke gives up waiting and takes to shagging his secretary.

In our case, it was neither.

On the bright side, Mark didn’t go off with his secretary–and I’d like to hope that has more to do with the fact that he adores me than the reality that his secretary weighs sixteen stone, has nostril hair and answers to the name of Harry. Instead he just kind of shut down on the sexual side. Gone. Fun over.

I suppose I should have paid more attention to it at the time, but to be honest I was grateful. After all, it’s not as if I was throwing my knickers at him and demanding he ravish me once a night and twice on weekends and bank holidays.

Aaaw, I thought, he’s just so considerate. So undemanding.

I thought it was all perfectly normal, to be honest.

And at least I did get the mandatory birthday and Christmas shag.

Nine months later, Benny came into the world. Two babies in sixteen months. And despite the probability that my privates could now be a prototype for a new Channel Tunnel, we were ecstatic–years of infertility and now we’d somehow managed to buy one, get one free.

It was great for our hearts and souls, bad for our sleep patterns and nuptials.

Another zombie-like year later, this time with two babies in tow, I realised that my idea of an orgasm was now a thin and crispy pepperoni and anything with Liam Neeson in it. I’ve always had a thing for him.

However, it wasn’t the end of the world. I loved Mark. He loved me. He was amazing with the boys. He kissed me like he meant it. He told me he loved me a dozen times a day. We’d cuddle up on the couch every night and enjoy those blissful six and a half seconds before one of us fell asleep. We both revelled in every little new thing that our kids did.

‘Guess what, honey, Mac said “mummy” today.’

‘Mac ate a whole banana.’

‘Benny managed to projectile vomit all the way to the other side of the coffee table.’

We were happy, contented and together. We still laughed at the same things, understood each other and led a pretty peaceful existence–apart from one time when I suffered a particularly nasty reaction to the dangerous combination of sleep deprivation, a hormonal blip and a few glasses of vino and tried to pummel him with a packet of Pampers for forgetting our anniversary.

But I was happy. Ecstatic. We had so much going for us: my husband was my favourite person over two feet tall, we had two gorgeous boys, a nice house (apart from the mucky corners) and great friends.

The positives definitely outweighed the negatives. I could live with the fact that my writing career wasn’t exactly setting the world alight, Mark was working horrendously long hours, and despite his flash salary the exorbitant cost of London living meant we only had £3.63 in our savings account.

I can remember the exact moment it struck me that I should be concerned about my sex life. Or lack of it. It was late in the evening and I was sitting on the couch. Mark was lying sleeping with his head on my lap. I desperately needed to pee but couldn’t work out how to manoeuvre myself from underneath his head without waking him.

The closing credits of Taggart had just rolled and I’d even refrained from belting out the ‘No Mean City’ theme tune at the top of my voice. I was aimlessly flicking through the Sky channels, trying to find something to watch, when I came across a documentary on the merits of naturism. At least I thought that’s what it was. Until the naked woman having a picnic in a field started sucking her own nipples and was then joined by a big hunky farmer in a state of excitement. Well, what the sheep in that field must have thought!

It was shocking. Scandalous. Outrageous. Although I did make a mental note to sign up for a subscription to Country Life. But most of all, it was very, very…horny. I even forgot the urge to pee as I got tingles in an area that had been a distinctly tingle-free zone for longer than I cared to remember. Almost without clear direction from my brain, my hands went wandering–one under my bra (grey, overstretched, another mental note: must go lingerie shopping) and one down to the button on Mark’s jeans. I fumbled for a few minutes, before finally popping it open. God, I was losing my touch. In my younger days I could undress a bloke with one hand, in the dark, while simultaneously biting his ear, talking dirty and parking the car.

Anyway…fumble, fumble, fumble, much squeezing of own nipples, breathing getting heavy (mine), zip coming down (his), penis located, gentle extrication from boxer shorts, gentle rubbing, then a little faster, a little faster still, then definite reciprocal hardening, then…SWAT!

He swatted my hand away like I was a mosquito attempting to land on his Ambre Solaire.

Okaaaay, I thought. He’s obviously still sleeping. He’s confused. He thinks he’s on a sun-lounger in Fuengirola and under attack by a predator. Of the winged variety.

So let’s try that again.

I psyched myself back into a lustful mood. The fireplace was now wearing my jumper and my bra was dangling from a lamp. My jeans were open, one hand was going south and the other was going back into Mark’s boxers for a repeat ambush.

I ran my finger around the tip of his cock, slowly, softly, as he hardened again. Meanwhile my clitoris was throwing a ‘Welcome Back’ party as the DNA codes in my fingers consulted their long-term memory as to what to do.

I gasped as the tingling reached my toes. My nipples hardened and I was starting to sound like Paula Radcliffe after 26 miles.

Oooooh yes. That’s it. Oh yes, I remember. Why oh why had I ever stopped doing this–was I crazy? Oh yes, just there. There. There. That’s it. Oh, he’s so hard now. If I could have manoeuvred on top of him I would have done, but fuck it, I was doing just fine where I was. Yes. Yes. There. Oh my…SWAT!

And this time it was accompanied by one open eye.

‘Honey, what are you doing?’ he murmured sleepily.

Now, call me picky, but there was a time when I wouldn’t have had to draw him a diagram.

I adopted my sultriest look, threw one tit over my shoulder (flexible tits are one of the benefits/drawbacks of two years of breastfeeding) and leaned down to kiss him.

‘I’m playing with your cock while whipping myself into an orgasmic frenzy,’ I whispered playfully.

Okay, so this is when, if it were a movie, he would open his eyes, smile, run his finger gently down my face and whisper that he loved me–before proceeding to bend me over the back of the couch and roger me until I screamed in orgasmic delight. Then I’d flop into his arms, satisfied and exhausted, content in the knowledge that I’d be walking like a cowboy for the next week.

Sadly, it wasn’t a movie. It was a three-minute commercial for the merits of chastity and abstention.

Groggily, he removed my hand from his nethers, turning his head to kiss my belly. ‘I love you, you mad woman,’ he whispered.

I could have burst with happiness. Right up until he rolled over onto his other side so that I could only see the back of his head and murmured, ‘Babe, I’m too tired. But you go on ahead. Knock yourself out.’

Who said romance was dead?

I peeked at the TV screen to see that Farmer Giles and the milkmaid slut were indeed still on course to shag until the cows came home. I flicked off the telly, as deflated as a certain part of my husband’s anatomy. I’d been rejected. Knocked back. Dizzied. Dinged. And I didn’t like it one little bit.

Over the next few days I couldn’t get it out of my head. I drew up a list of reasons for the collapse of our sex life:

1 Mark works far too hard in a very high-pressured job.

2 We have two young children.

3 He’s always tired.

4 I’m always tired.

5 We never go out as a couple and so have disconnected from each other.

6 I make no effort whatsoever with my appearance any more.

7 He’s stopped seeing me as a sexy woman.

8 I only wear fabrics that are washable at 40 degrees and dryable on a radiator.

9 The kids are always in our bed.

10 I couldn’t find my make-up bag if my life depended on it.

11 We never get a chance to really talk.

12 Don’t think he’d want to anyway.

13 I never flatter him.

14 He never flatters me.

15 My bras are all grey and overstretched.

16 When we met I was wild, exciting, unpredictable and horny.

17 Now I confuse porn with a naturist documentary.

18 When we met he was sexy, fun, interesting and horny.

19 Now he confuses a wank with a mosquito.

It was quite obvious, really. Somewhere in the midst of all the stress, infertility, pregnancy, babies, financial constraints and daily monotony we’d lost that spark. Hell, we’d lost the whole bloody blowtorch.

That night when he came home for dinner, I was a woman transformed. I had clean hair. I was wearing make-up. I’d alerted Friends of the Earth that a forest was being eradicated before shaving my bikini line. I was wearing tight, sexy jeans and a low-cut sexy top (black, silk, borrowed from Carol, and definitely not dryable on a radiator). The lights were dimmed. The candles were lit. I’d prepared a meal without the aid of a microwave and the kids were next door at Kate’s house.

‘What’s all this?’ he said with a grin when he finally got in just after eight. I’d forgotten how handsome he was at the end of a long day. His dark brown hair was ruffled, his face all rugged and stubbly. His green eyes, squinting slightly through tiredness, had the effect of making him look sultry. His tie was loose. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. I could have climbed on top of him right there in the hallway just like the old days.

Why had it been so long since I noticed all of this?

Perhaps because normally the minute he walked in the door I thrust a malodorous baby and a nappy in his direction, then raced back in to other child who was in his bed, screaming the place down because his mother had dared to leave the room in the middle of a story about three little pigs under house arrest.

I did my very best pout–the one that I hoped made me look like Angelina Jolie, but was probably a bit nearer a puffer fish who’s just been smacked in the mouth.

‘You, my big stud, are going to be pampered, preened and fussed over. I’ve made you a gorgeous meal. There’s wine, there’s food and there’s romance. And in return, all you have to do is shag me senseless. What do you think?’

Was it my imagination or did he hesitate slightly?

He tossed his jacket, pressed me up against the kitchen wall and kissed me like he’d just remembered how it was done. Oooooh, I liked that. With one hand he pulled up my top and whisked it right over my head (definite ripping sound–mental note to remember to give it back to Carol with a grovelling apology and a box of After Eights). I tore off his tie, then his shirt, and pressed my tits up against him as my tongue searched for his tonsils and my legs came up around his waist. Suddenly, he pushed them back down and took a step back, a playful look on his face. His eyes ran from the top of my body to my feet. Then, and believe me, I’m getting a hot flush just thinking about this, he dropped to his knees, opened my jeans and tore them down, to reveal–yes, drum roll and trumpets please–new, sexy lace knickers that actually matched my bra. Then he leaned over and ran his tongue very slowly up the inside of my thigh. My fingers were in his hair as I gasped, trying desperately not to come and spoil what I was sure were going to be the most deliciously filthy and downright buttock-clenchingly horny moments of my life.

He ran his tongue over my other thigh. Then at the top, he paused and moved my slut thong over to one side. And then slowly, sexily, gently, he blew. Thank God I’d done the bikini line or the resulting whiplash could have taken out an eye.

It was all too much for me. I yanked him up by the follicles, deftly unbuckled his belt, undid his button, wrenched down his zip then pushed down his boxers, releasing the most magnificent erection I’d seen since before that first little blue line appeared on a stick all those years before.

And when faced with that kind of apparatus, what else is a girl to do but climb on, hold on and scream until the neighbours call the police.

We’ve done it, I thought smugly, as we snuggled down, very sore, very sleepy and very happy. We’d rediscovered each other. We’d reconnected our hearts and re-engaged our libidos. Oh yes, baby, we’d relit our sexual fires.

But little did I know that Mark’s obviously lived in damp conditions because the bloody thing kept going out again. While my sex drive was once again motoring along like a Formula One car with no brakes, Mark’s was spluttering to life once every week or two, going out for a quick spin then crawling back into the pit lanes for a refuel and a rest. Over the following weeks, months and years, and much to my general discontent (although to the pleasure of Ashif, who ran the grocer’s at the end of the street where I bought batteries for a certain adult toy on a far too frequent basis) our sex life was reduced to the occasional mildly satisfying romp. Whenever I broached the subject with Mark, it was always the same–he was tired, he was under pressure, he worked long hours, he loved me, it would get better, now cuddle in, go to sleep, and cross my heart I’ll make it up to you at the weekend.

Occasionally he did. But more often than not life, kids, bills, work and sleep took over. Still, it could be worse. We still laughed. We had the family we always wanted. We genuinely loved each other. And Ashif was now able to send the wife and kids to Center Parcs for a fortnight. In the grand scheme of things, surely a less than perfect sex life was a small price to pay for all the other great things in our lives.

Definitely. Absolutely. It was.

‘CARLY!’ I snapped my head up, spilling my coffee on my tracky bottoms. It didn’t matter. They were washable at 40 degrees and dryable on a radiator. Well, if he wasn’t going to sustain the effort then neither was I.

Carol was laughing. ‘What are you thinking about–you were on another planet there.’

Which was ironic, since Kate was now doing something that required bending her spine into an unnatural position and sticking her arse in the air. I decided I was far too refined to make a joke about Uranus.

‘Sex,’ I replied truthfully.

Of course, what goes on between Mark and me, in the privacy of our own home and within the sanctity of our marriage is sacrosanct, and I would never, ever divulge the intimacies of our lives with anyone.

‘Mark still not putting out?’ asked Kate.

Busted.

‘He’d need a satellite navigation system to find my clitoris these days,’ I admitted.

‘So that’s why you’re looking so pissed off today then,’ Carol interjected.

But no, I was sure she was wrong. After all, my sex life had been crap for years–why would it suddenly upset me now?

‘Nah, I don’t think so. I’m just having a down day. No idea why.’

‘PMT?’ Kate asked.

‘No, that was last week–remember the whole dry-cleaners weeping over a ketchup stain/threatening a traffic warden expedition,’ I said ruefully.

‘Work?’ asked Carol, with a wary look on her face. Carol had the same reaction as most men when faced with an emotional woman–she donned a crash helmet and checked out the nearest exits. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It’s just that when God was giving out empathy and sympathy she was down in the ‘superficial aesthetics’ department picking out the best face, the best body and getting a manicure, pedicure and permanent teeth whitening.

‘Work’s work,’ I replied with a shrug.

‘See what I mean?’ grinned Kate, talking to Carol but gesticulating to me. ‘I just told her that with her acutely incisive powers of descriptive narrative she should really be a writer.’

There’s nothing worse than a pal with a gift for irony. Except a pal with a gift for irony who now had her legs spread like an acrobatic porn star.

‘Will you stop with that bloody yoga?’ I demanded petulantly. Carol had just put a chocolate éclair in front of me and Kate’s bendy stuff was putting me right off. She looked at me, took on board my distress, considered our lifelong bond, evoked the emotion of all we’d been through together, then carried on regardless.

I took another gulp of cold coffee. Work. Well, I suppose on a scale of phenomenal excitement to turgid banality it was somewhere in the middle. I was gutted that my books hadn’t propelled me directly onto the world stage and my bank manager’s Christmas card list. I always thought that the minute my novels hit the shelves my adoring public would form an orderly queue that would stretch for miles. I’d be the new big thing. I’d be windswept and interesting, Richard and Judy would be my new best friends, and newspapers and magazines would clamour for my opinion on the really important issues.

Crisis in the Middle East? Let’s ask Carly Cooper for her informed opinion as to the path to resolution.

Are ‘new’ men really just ‘old’ men with cosmetics? Carly Cooper will know.

Is a daily orgasm essential for great mental and physical health? Actually, for obvious reasons I’d probably have to pass that one on to Jilly Cooper.

Obviously, my stellar rise to hot author of the year and ‘she with the finger on the zeitgeist of modern social culture’ hadn’t quite happened. But then, I suppose that, like the whole sex thing, I’d been too busy with babies, house and banalities to notice.

I was under contract to write one more book for the publisher who’d purchased my first two, but I had to admit I was struggling to conjure up the motivation.

I really liked the people who worked at my publisher’s–all six of them. One of the factors contributing to my pitiful income and my definite non-arrival as a literary force was probably that I was signed to a small independent publisher who did minuscule print runs and had the advertising budget of the average office Christmas kitty.

With both books I’d already released, the first issues sold out within a few weeks–not difficult when most shops held a grand stock of about four–never to be replenished, because the publisher had already moved on to the following month’s titles.

If book deals were like recording contracts then I was the second runner-up on a past season of the X Factor who had a couple of tiny hits and was looking forward to a career on the cruise ships.

Still, I was grateful for the heady excitement of actually seeing my name in print, and following the old adage that as one door closes, a crow bar and a bit of brute force opens another, I did get my weekly column out of it. It might not be much, but it paid for the weekly jaunt around Sainsbury’s, with a bit left over for the holiday fund.

Was I disappointed? Sure I was. But then, I hadn’t quite given up yet. I still had nine months left before my deadline for the next book, so I’d work at that, submit it, and fulfil my contract. Then I’d decide what I really wanted to do when I grew up.

Writing had seemed like a great idea when I thought it was a step on the journey to fame, riches and my biological mother, but the harsh reality was that it actually involved endless hours of solitude spent sitting in a room making up imaginary friends. In some countries they locked people up for that. I was convinced all that solitude and angst was detrimental to one’s mental health and I already had the proof that it had fairly detrimental physical effects–all the pondering inevitably caused boredom-fuelled comfort eating which, unchecked, could lead to a mightily fat arse.

I squirmed as I registered that my waistband was just a tad tighter than comfort demanded. Perhaps I’d skip the chocolate éclair.

I watched Kate finally getting up from the floor. Thank God that was over. Then, like Jean Claude Van Damme in the presence of really bad men, she suddenly kicked her leg up, twisted it around onto the kitchen worktop and did a ballet/stretchy thingy.

That’s it, my appetite was completely gone now. Mainly because I knew that if I so much as attempted that manoeuvre my kidneys would fall out, my skin would burst like an overripe marrow and I’d need stitches in my secret garden.

‘Right, it’s been a wee slice of heaven, but I need to go. Benson & Hedges, the ironing and children are calling.’

‘Where is my gorgeous little Benny the Ball today?’ asked Carol. I know, how rude! He might have a slight weakness for extra puddings, but a space-hopper he was not.

‘He started nursery yesterday. I’ve to collect him at three.’

‘Oh no,’ said Kate, in a doom-laden voice. My head spun around to face her as inwardly I groaned. Dear God, don’t let one of her muscles have snapped or her back have frozen in that position. Her legs were still at a ninety-degree angle to each other, and if we had to take her to hospital in that position then one limb was going to have to go out through the sunroof.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked fearfully.

‘You’re not getting wild jungle sex,’ she stated.

I appreciated the recap on my love life but was pretty sure we’d already moved on from that subject.

‘And nothing is going on work-wise to make you remotely inspired or enthusiastic.’

Correct. Did she want to see me cry?

‘And Benny has just started nursery.’

Look, didn’t I just say that?

‘Carly, you know what’s going on, don’t you? You, my darling, are suffering from acute non-stimulation of the neural passageways and cranial cavity.’

‘What?’

She laughed. ‘You’re bored! Out of your head. Off your tits. Restless. Fed-up. Your va-va-voom has vucked off.’

I processed this for a minute. How could I be bored? I had a house to run, a book to write, a husband to manipulate into giving up sexual favours, two demanding children to be fed, watered and diverted from a life of crime, friends that did bloody yoga…Oh, shite, she was right. I was bored rigid.

Where was the excitement? Where was the adrenalin rush? Where was that little flutter of anticipation when I woke up each morning wondering what the day would bring? Bored. Rigid. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d been this bored.

‘I remember the last time you were this bored,’ piped up psychic Carol, scaring the crap out of me. The day that Carol got in touch with the thoughts and feelings of another woman was the day that the skies would be awash with large pink animals that snorted and whiffed of bacon.

‘It was right before you left,’ she continued. ‘You know, before you did the whole mid-life crisis, desperate cow, psycho stalker, any port in a shower thing.’

Well put, I thought. She was right. Much as I cringed with embarrassment at the thought.

Okay, so here it is–the thing I alluded to earlier that should really only be mentioned after I’m dead, when my body has been handed over for medical research and the scientists are dissecting my brain in a bid to understand the primitive behaviour of deluded, hormone-fuelled, biological-clock-powered women.

You see, I once made a huge cock-up. Massive. Mortifying. Actually there were several. About a year before I met Mark at the wedding, I had what can only be called a mental aberration. At that time I was single, in a job I hated (selling toilet rolls–you couldn’t make it up), living in a grotty rented flat and generally discontented with where my life had gone. Especially when it had at one time shown so much promise. In the preceding ten years, I’d worked in London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, and Shanghai. I’d visited New York and Ireland. I’d had wild, crazy jobs managing nightclubs in some of the most exotic places on earth. I’d met some amazing people, I’d been engaged six times, I’d bought gorgeous clothes, and I’d earned and spent a fortune…

Nope, even when I hide it in the middle there it still sticks out like a nun in an S&M basement. I got engaged six times. Two informal promises and four full-blown sparkly-rings-phone-the-vicar ones.

Yet there I was, at the end of it all, living on my lonesome and existing on ready meals for one. And if Ashif had known me then, his family would be going to Barbados twice a year.

So I did the sane, rational thing–I made a plan. Sadly, that’s where the ‘sane and rational’ bit ended. I quit my job, relinquished the lease on my flat, grabbed my credit cards and went off round the world to find all the guys I’d been engaged to just in case any of them really had been Mr Right and I’d been too busy signing up as a certified commitment-phobic to notice. It was insane, deranged, desperate and a bigger disaster than George Bush’s contribution to world peace. The ignominy of the memories is too hard to bear, so I’ll give you the pamphlet edition as opposed to War and Peace. Or should I say the Nipple Alert version, as the following story provided shame, embarrassment, disaster, and the plot for my first novel.

First there was Nick, the man who’d taken my virginity on a hot night in Benidorm. Actually, ‘taken’ isn’t strictly true. I’d lobbed it at him at the approximate speed of an Olympic javelin. But when I rediscovered him in a restaurant in St Andrews, we discovered we had all the sexual tension of custard. Luckily, Sarah was with me, and they fell in love, married and when we’re all together now I manage to blank out the fact that I know what his penis looks like.

Then there was Joe, a nightclub owner in Amsterdam. By the time I tracked him down he was a millionaire entrepreneur and paragon of chic–and so camp he made Elton John look like Vinnie Jones’s harder brother.

Next was Doug, who, ironically, dumped me first time around because he caught me shagging Mark–in the days when Mark didn’t think a libido was one of those inflatable things you lie on in the pool on holiday. Anyway, second time around Doug proved that he had the thirst for vengeance of a Sicilian mob boss and totally humiliated me, so I was forced to move on to…

Tom. Bless him. An Irish farmer with the body of a Greek God. By the time I found him again he was happily married and had the body of a Greek taxi driver called Stavros who existed on ten thousand calories a day.

Then there was Phil. A complete honey, who was my Shanghai Surprise–never more so than when I discovered that he’d become a big name on the American comedy circuit and had married Lily, the beautiful flower who’d worked with me in a nightclub in deepest darkest Shanghai.

So that left all my hopes pinned on Sam. Sam Morton. The martial arts expert who I fell madly in love with when I lived in Hong Kong. The one that I knew, just knew, was right for me when I set eyes on him again all those years later. The one who adored me, who said he’d prayed every moment for me to return to him–that is, when he wasn’t really busy doing other things, like shagging half the wealthy female population of South East Asia. Oh, yes, Sam had become a gigolo. A hooker. A man who could fucky-fucky-long-time for mucho dinaro. And thereafter I couldn’t look at him without thinking ‘wire brush and disinfectant’. And believe me, I tried. I even agreed to a holiday on a paradise island to heal our tortured relationship. Result? Loads of sun, sea, sand…and a clitoris that spent the whole time on its own little vacation. Yep, the passion was officially gone, replaced by friendship. Platonic friendship.

So my great international manhunt fell spectacularly on its buttocks–as did I when the entire congregation at Carol and Cal’s wedding (except my dad, who was deep in an alcoholic slumber) found out that the man who had accompanied me to the wedding–and whom I’d begged to masquerade as my boyfriend for the day to save my embarrassment about the whole round the world/still single debacle–was actually South East Asia’s most prolific rent-a-dick.

My mother claims she is still taking the anti-anxiety pills.

But strangely, it didn’t faze Mark, my first love, my childhood sweetheart. He stepped in when my life was falling apart and (literally) picked me up and rescued me. That’s when I realised that throughout my whole life, through every crazy scheme, drama and disaster, Mark Barwick had always been there at the right time, said the right things and saved the day. Yep, his Y-fronts should be worn on top of his trousers at all times. He’s my soul mate and I thank God every day for sending him to me. Well, except when I’ve got PMT and could happily keep the local hitman in business.

I wouldn’t change a thing and I’ve never doubted for one moment that we were meant to be together. Mark is my penguin. Or my swan. Or whatever bloody bird it is that only has one love and mates for life. And the thing that I love most about him? It could be that he accepts me for what I am–warts, cellulite, irrational obsession with reality TV and all. It could be that he’s a genuinely decent bloke who couldn’t shaft someone if his life depended on it. It could be that he has the best buttocks I’ve ever seen. God bless all those teenage games of footie down the park. It could be that there’s no one on earth whom I’d rather was the father of my children.

But honestly? I love him because it just feels right. Oh, okay, the buttocks help.

And luckily he’s the most non-jealous easy-going man in the universe, because some of my exes have become really good friends. Nick, obviously, on the grounds that he’s married to one of my best pals. Joe and his partner Claus now own nightclubs all over the world, including one in London, so they pop in regularly for dinner. Phil and Lily still live in New York and we do the whole ‘Christmas card, drunken phone call every three months’ thing.

And Sam…Bugger, my mobile phone was ringing. ‘Don’t move,’ I screamed at Kate, still conscious of the fact that if she pulled a muscle while in that position she was going to have to have a very open-minded physiotherapist.

I snatched it from beside the coffee machine, burning my hand in the process.

‘Hello,’ I wailed.

‘Is that Carly Cooper, literary genius and all-round sex-goddess?’ drawled those familiar transatlantic vowels.

‘Nope, it’s Carly Cooper, crap columnist, bored off her tits and wouldn’t know a good shag if I won it in a tombola.’ I was trying to be casual, but I have to admit, I was more than a bit freaked out. It was the second time that some kind of weird psychic synergy had cropped up that morning. And I MUST remember to stop divulging intimate details about my sex life to my pals.

‘Ah, well, that may be about to change, my darling.’

‘Which bit?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘All of it, my love.’ His English accent was back. The one that teenage girls lusted over, middle-aged women fantasised about, and men (except those in Joe and Claus’s very-camp camp) despised. You see, on the other end of the line was Sam Morton, male hooker turned international A-list movie star, by way of a screenplay he wrote about his life that went on to become a movie with him in the leading role. Obviously the world was ready for a male take on Pretty Woman (with the most amazing abs on God’s earth thrown in for good measure) because it grossed over $100 million. Sam had made the Big Time.

‘Oh yeah, and how’s that, Mr Big Shot Movie Star?’

Kate and Carol realised who I was talking to and shouted a simultaneous ‘Hi Sam!’ in the background.

He laughed. ‘Tell the girls I said hi. Oh, I suddenly got a twinge of homesickness then.’

‘Yeah, cos it’s really tough spending all day shopping on Rodeo Drive and having your ego stroked by young, pneumatic starlets,’ I retorted. ‘Anyway, enough about you, tell me why my life’s about to change?’

‘That’s what I’ve always loved about you–your depth, humility and your interest in the lives of your friends,’ he said.

‘Sam, I’m sitting in a semi in London on a cold, rainy day having a mid-life crisis about the pitiful state of my existence. You, on the other hand, have probably just disembarked from your chauffeur-driven limo after spending the night in the VIP lounge of an exclusive club, having free Cristal champagne chugged down your neck while your adoring masses worship at your Pradaclad tootsies. Forgive me if I don’t feel your pain. Now, I have to go and collect Benny from nursery, so much as I love you madly and would adore to extend this cosy chat I must leave. Go call up Julia Roberts for a blether.’

‘Nah, I’d hate to wake her–her twins have been giving her sleepless nights over the last couple of weeks so she’s exhausted. Anyway, I haven’t told you how your life’s about to change yet.’

‘Oh, I thought you were just being your usual optimistic, dramatic self.’

‘No, it was a statement of fact. Remember I told you that I gave a copy of Nipple Alert to my agent? Well, he loves it, he thinks he can sell it and he reckons it’ll be huge. He wants you in Hollywood, Carly Cooper.’

I was stunned. My chin was down somewhere around my knees.

‘Wha—Whe—’

He was still laughing on the other end of the line.

‘No rush, honey. Any time later this week would be just fine.’

Oh. My. God. I was going. To Hollywood. To fame. To stardom. To success. To Jackie and Sidney, my biological parents.

After all these years, the mother-ship was finally calling me home.

Step Two

There are two things in life that I know inside out: one is the local kiddies’ indoor play area and the other is my husband. He doesn’t like change. He doesn’t do spontaneity. He definitely doesn’t do plain fecking crazy. So I did have the wherewithal to recognise that if I ambushed him with the grand announcement that we were all off to Hollywood the very minute he walked in the door he’d be about as thrilled as J.Lo in anything polyester.

So I waited until he’d dumped his briefcase at the door, hung up his jacket and kicked off his shoes before me and the kids did a conga past him singing, ‘We’re all off to LA, we’re all off to LA, da da da da da, HO, da da, da, da, da.’

He laughed, that gorgeous face crinkling up into a grin that gave me goose bumps. Mac threw himself into his daddy’s arms. ‘Daddy, daddy, we’re going to Hollywood and, and…’ he was in a frenzy by this time, ‘Mickey Mouse is there, and, and Pluto and, and Spiderman and, and, and…’ He didn’t get a chance to finish. Wisely, Mark recognised that such an extreme level of excitement could mean only one thing: incontinence. He whisked Mac into the downstairs loo before he peed his pants.

‘Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can…’ sang wee Benny in something approaching the cartoon’s theme tune. What did that say about me as a mother? Could they rhyme off the birds in the skies? No. Could they spot a petunia at a hundred paces? No. Could they tell you the name of the Prime Minister? No. But they could win Junior Pop Idol by chanting the theme tunes to every cartoon that was ever made.

We definitely had to get out more. Oh well, in LA we’d be far too busy surfing and going to Tom Hanks’s house for tea to spend any time in front of the box.

‘So, do you want to tell me what’s going on?’ said Mark when he emerged from the downstairs loo. He didn’t look too pleased and I guessed that it probably had something to do with the damp patch on the front of his Hugo Boss suit. Damn.

‘Sam called today–his agent has read Nipple Alert and feels sufficiently excited by it to request that I come over to LA while he promotes it to the world’s biggest movie studios. I’ve done a cost-versus-risk analysis and while it is, of course, a speculative journey, I feel that it has sufficient merit to warrant extracting funds from our account and making the trip. I’ve cleared it with our accountant who has confirmed that a large portion of the outlay will indeed be tax deductible. I recommend that we start scouring the internet immediately in order to minimise our outlay by booking the most economical flights available and use the air miles that we’ve accumulated over the years to further reduce costs. I would anticipate leaving in approximately three weeks, giving you plenty of time to clear your current caseload.’

You just know I’m lying, don’t you? Was it the ‘cost-versus-risk analysis’ bit that gave it away?

What I actually said, in a babbling rushed voice that was donated especially for the occasion by the Gods of Helium, was, ‘Sam called, we’re going to LA, they want my book, Mark, they want my book! Oh my God, I can’t breathe! Anyway, so we have to go to LA and we have to go this week, so I looked on the internet and all the flights are fully booked, so fuck it, I used my credit card and got us all on a flight on Friday, business class, British Airways. You get those lie-down seats and free pyjamas. And your own telly screen. And, oh my God, Mark, I’m so excited. I haven’t found us anywhere to live yet, but Sam says we can stay with him till we find somewhere. Can you believe it, Mark, can you believe it?’ At which point I spun round, reached behind me for his hands, slapped them on my arse, grabbed wee Benny and started another conga, singing, ‘We’re all going to LA, we’re all going to LA, da da da da da, HO, da da da da da…’

I was halfway into the kitchen before I realised that Mark wasn’t behind me.

I stopped, turned around and saw that he was still standing at the end of the hall, and the whole ‘crinkled-up cute grin’ thing he had going was definitely gone.

‘Pardon?’ he said.

I knew I was clutching at straws, but for a few seconds I hoped that it wasn’t a pardon in the ‘for fuck’s sake, have you lost your mind’ sense and more one in the ‘sorry darling, in all the excitement I missed some of that last statement–free pyjamas, did you say?’.

‘What bit did you miss?’ I asked hopefully.

‘The bit where my wife lost the plot altogether and, if I understand correctly, booked flights we can’t afford, for a trip we can’t take, on the premise that some agent thinks that her book might, perhaps, maybe appeal to someone in the movies.’ Then his tone changed altogether. ‘Incidentally, congratulations on that part, honey, you deserve it.’

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled.

‘Carly, I’m sorry but I can’t take any time off right now. You might not have noticed, since the last time you asked me about my work was about three years ago…’

Ouch. Bulls-eye in the dartboard of brutal honesty for Mr Barwick.

‘…but I actually have a lot on my plate just now and there’s no way that I can…’

‘We’re all going to LA, we’re all going to LA, da da da da da, HO, da da da da da, HO.’

It was Mac, on the way through the hall, having divested himself of his wet undergarments and replaced them with a Batman suit.

Benny spotted him. And, naturally, burst into song.

‘Da na na na Da na na na Da na na na Da na na na BATMAN!’

Woah. My husband and I were in crisis talks, having one of the most important discussions we’d had in years and I couldn’t hear a word he was saying because I was stuck in the family home equivalent of Nickelodeon Channel hell.

And said husband was looking at me like he was trying to decide whether to have me certified or shot.

How to play this? I could shout, I could holler, I could blackmail. I was sure I had some dodgy photos of him somewhere. In the end, I decided to let one of my other personalities take over. If anyone could swing this, it was Saint Carly of the Blessed Martyrdom.

‘But Mark, we have to go. Come on, please. Mark, look at my life. I cook, I clean, I organise your life and I spend most of my day dealing with the aftermath of other people’s body fluids.’

Mac and Benny had the decency to hang their heads at this point.

‘This could be great! This could be our big chance for financial reward, for a life of fame and stardom, for glitz and glamour…’

I could see I wasn’t winning, so I pulled out my trump card.

‘…for a NANNY!’

He still didn’t blink. God, he was good. Saint Carly gave it one last shot.

‘Come on, babe. In five years I’ve never asked you to do anything for me. Do this for me, please.’

His face softened. I could taste victory. We were going! Now where was my passport, my travel adaptor and the list I got off the internet of all the stars’ Hollywood addresses?

Or maybe not.

‘Carly, I’m sorry. I’m really pleased that they’re interested in your book, but we can’t go just now. Mac has school. I have work. I can’t just take time off on a whim. And most of all, we can’t afford it. Can’t you tell them we’ll come over in a few months’ time when we’re a bit more organised and on our feet?’

Over my dead Tinseltown-bound body!

‘But we can’t. Mark, Hollywood doesn’t work that way!’ said I, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I’d seen Fresh Prince of Bel-Air twice, I watched Beverly Hills 90210 for years and I never missed an episode of Baywatch; I was a seasoned LA veteran.

I took a huge breath then went on the offensive.

‘Mark, they’re interested in me this week, but it’ll be someone else next week if I don’t get over there and make the most of it. And Sam says we should plan to stay for a month–four weeks without preschool for Mac is hardly going to scar him for life. He’s four–they’re still painting with their fingers and singing songs about blind mice for God’s sake. As for your work, Mark, you need a holiday. The whole legal backbone of this country is not going to crumble if Mark Barwick takes a month off. And don’t even get me started on money. If lack of money were a barrier to everything I wanted to do in life then I’d have done nothing. To hell with it, that’s what credit cards are for, I say!’ I finished with a dramatic flourish and accompanying triumphant hand gesture.

I peeked at the boys. Mac’s expression showed he was definitely on my side–I think it was the whole school-avoidance thing that swung it. Benny, however, just looked puzzled. Then, a split second later, his face lit up and he blurted out, ‘Three Blind Mice, Three Blind Mice…’

That boy was a walking request show.

Mark didn’t notice–he was far too busy getting pissed off. Or as close to pissed off as Mister S. T. Able ever got.

‘Carly, we know that’s your attitude to money and that’s probably why you had more debt than Peru when we met.’

He must have spotted the blaze of anger that went across my eyes because he switched to a more conciliatory tone. ‘Honey, it’s just too tenuous for us to risk blowing a fortune, not to mention my job. If Warner Brothers were on the phone right now with their chequebook at the ready, I’d say go for it. But how many people are in Hollywood right now trying to sell a script? Hell, the whole city is made up of wannabes who are convinced they’re the next big thing. Tell Sam thanks, but we’ll pass. We’ll maybe go over for a fortnight later in the year. The kids can do Disney and you can perhaps set up some meetings then.’

I was furious. What do you call a Taurean with the hump? Raging bull. Or ‘me’. But I was suddenly aware that the kids were watching the whole exchange, their heads swivelling from side to side like something out of The Exorcist.

I morphed into Mary Poppins. ‘Right, guys, come on then, bath time,’ I said in a singsong voice.

‘Don’t want a bath,’ Mac replied petulantly. ‘Want to go to see Spiderman.’

‘ Spiderman, Spiderman…’ Oh, Christ. I scooped Benny up, and invoked Method Number One in the Parental Code of Discipline and Behavioural Adjustment–blatant bribery.

‘Mac, fifty pence for sweets if you’re in that bath in five minutes.’

He shot up the stairs. That boy will do anything for cash to finance his E-number habit.

I crossed the hall to follow him with Benny wrapped around my neck, drooling milk down the back of my shoulder.

Mark was standing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’m going,’ I said deadpan, when we were face to face. ‘This means a lot to me, Mark, and I’m going.’

I carried on up the stairs, furious that he’d so ruthlessly burst my little happy bubble of optimism and excitement. How often is the repetitiveness of everyday life interrupted with such an exciting prospect? One of my biggest ambitions in life had always been to sell one of my books to someone in the movie industry. Anyone. I didn’t care if it was the bloke who drove the tour bus in Universal Studios and he bought it for a tenner. But all my beloved husband could think about was the cost, and the fact that it wouldn’t allow him the statutory two-week lead time to fill out his company’s administration form, number 2334: Holiday Request Form for the Anal Retentive.

In fact, Sam wasn’t the only major A-list movie star who knew how serious I was about my dream. Kate Winslet knew too. Oh yes, we were close personal friends once. For about five minutes.

A few months before, the boys and I had been having a picnic in Richmond Park. It all sounds very Enid Blyton, but in truth it involved two Happy Meals from the nearest McDonald’s and a rug I got free with an order from a catalogue. We were lounging in the sun, when another family plonked down not far from us. I nodded a friendly hello, a gesture that was reciprocated by the blonde woman who was unpacking a picnic from a real hamper. Flash cow. I was furtively shoving my Happy Meal boxes under the rug, when I realised that I’d seen her before somewhere. It came to me in a flash. Checkout number six at Waitrose. She was the girl from Newcastle who was trying to break into glamour modelling. Suddenly the blonde with the picnic shouted to a little girl who was with her. Nope, no Geordie accent. But…oh, good grief, Kate Winslet! I was sure of it. I considered bursting into the theme tune from Titanic just to check.

‘Mac,’ I hissed, ‘go and play with that little girl.’

‘Can’t,’ he replied, completely matter-of-fact.

‘Why not?’

‘She’s a girl. Don’t play with girls.’

‘Mac, please. Just this once.’

‘Nope.’

I was getting desperate. I needed an ‘in’ and I wasn’t above resorting to desperate tactics to get it. Ever since Nipple Alert had been published I’d carried a copy around in my bag, just waiting for the day that I would bump into Steven Spielberg in Woolworths and present him with the material for his new blockbuster.

Time to call out the big guns.

‘Mac, a Spiderman magazine, a pound for sweets and you can watch The Simpsons every night this week if you go and play with her.’

He knew when he was beaten. But five Curly Wurlies would cushion the blow. Off he wandered with his football, and soon he had a game going with the little girl–two-touch soccer with Benny as a goalpost.

I wandered over as casually as I could. ‘Ah, kids–they just make friends so quickly, don’t they?’

Ms Winslet smiled, a grin that was no longer on her face ten excruciating minutes later after I’d feigned surprise at recognising her, told her how great she was, thrust my book into her hand and given her my phone number. I’m sure she was surreptitiously pressing a panic button on her hi-tech, A-list mobile phone to summon her security by the time I collected up the kids and left. I walked quickly just in case the police had already been tipped off about a demented stalker who was casing Richmond Park giving out free novels. Oh the shame.

Mark had laughed when I told him the story–then reminded me to carry his mobile number at all times so that I could get hold of him to post bail. That was in the days when he still had a sense of humour, before it went the way of Miss Winslet’s maiden voyage on that big cruise ship.

The splashes as I bathed the boys snapped me back to the present. I watched as Underwater Action Man whupped Scuba Spiderman in a fight for supremacy of the octopus squirty sponge and then we sang four choruses of ‘Row, Row, Row the Boat’.

‘Look at me, Mummy, look,’ shrieked Mac as he made a bubble Mohican on his head. I know I’m biased but my boys are extraordinarily gorgeous. Sometimes I wonder if I had sex with Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

The strange thing is, neither of my boys look particularly like Mark or me. Mac has jet-black hair, almond-shaped blue eyes and the most gorgeous smattering of freckles across his nose. Benny, on the other hand, is blond with the hugest green eyes, long black eyelashes, a little upturned nose and perfect little lips. At that time both the boys had spiky inch-long crew cuts–I’d love to say it was fashion but it had more to do with an outbreak of nits that had reached our house about four weeks earlier.

‘Fart! Fart!’ screamed Benny, momentarily turning the bath into a Jacuzzi. He then laughed so hard that it set off a choking fit and I had to whip him out, calm him down and make him sip water.

When was the last time I’d done that? Laughed uncontrollably, I mean, not farted in the bath–I gave that up when I got married.

God, I couldn’t remember. I now spent my life cooking, cleaning, working, smoking, sleeping and trying in vain to resuscitate a sex life that was in second-stage rigor mortis. Where was the fun? This wasn’t life, it was monotony.

And of all places, LA would be such an adrenalin rush. Running in slow motion across Baywatch beach. Skipping down Hollywood Boulevard. Going around on the big wheel on Santa Monica pier. Stalking Liam Neeson. Catching up with my best pal Kate Winslet.

How amazing would all of that be?

As for the boys, let’s see: they could spend a whole month freezing their bums off here, staying indoors because the rain was pelting down, painting with potato shapes for the four hundred and tenth time already this year, or they could have a blast surfing in the sun, playing baseball in the park and going to Disneyland.

And I hadn’t started on the fundamental reason for going. What if…Oh, I could hardly even think about it without wanting to shriek and dream about what I’d do with my first million. (Botox, incidentally, followed by lots of Prada, first-class flights and generally swanning around acting starry.) But what if some big-time, legendary, iconic studio actually bought the film rights to one of my books? That’s like winning the lottery. It’s like discovering an elderly relative you never knew has died and left you a fortune. It’s like robbing a bank. It could be the start of a brand-new life, not just for me, but for all of us.

I read the boys their stories, tucked them in and kissed them goodnight. No sign of husband. He’d obviously done what he always does when there’s a conflict in sight–decided to avoid it altogether. If Mark Barwick were alive in Wild West times he’d have chosen the day of the Alamo to nip to the nearest IKEA and stock up on soft furnishings for his cabin.

Mac yawned as I ruffled his hair. ‘Love you, Mummy.’

I kissed his cheeks, then his forehead, then his chin, then blew a raspberry on his chest. ‘I love you too, gorgeous.’

‘Mummy…’

‘Yes?’

I stood by and mentally prepared myself for one or more of his standard 443 stalling gestures. Can I have an apple? I want another story. Sing me a song. There’s a ghost under my bed. Is it Christmas tomorrow? I need a pee. Can I have a drink? What age am I? How many sleeps until I’m ten? Why is there no ice in ice cream? When I grow up can I be the Pink Panther? Where did I come from? So how did they get me out of there? Yuk, I’m never doing that. What goes faster, Batman or a jumbo jet? Why is Shrek green?

‘Mummy,’ he murmured again, his eyes already closing. ‘Are we really going to Disneyland?’

I kissed his forehead. ‘Yes, we are, baby. We definitely are.’

‘And Mummy…’

‘Yes, babe…?’

‘Why is Shrek green?’

I lay in bed that night with Mark lying next to me, pretending he was asleep. Or actually, maybe he was. It was amazing how many things I could think of that irritated me about my husband when I really tried, and the fact that he didn’t in any way hold with the old saying that you should never go to sleep angry was one of them. He could. Easily. We could have an argument that was verging on volcanic and he would still have no problem whatsoever rolling over and grabbing forty winks right in the middle of it.

My brain, however, was racing.

Whichever way I analysed it, there was no justifiable reason not to go to LA. Mark would come round. I had four days until the flight and if those days went the way of our normal major disputes (of which, I had to admit, there had only ever been five or six in the twenty-odd years we’d known each other), then he’d avoid me for about a day, spend the next day acting as if nothing had happened, finally get around to looking at things from my point of view on day three, and on day four either compromise or capitulate. Capitulation would be good, but I figured I could handle compromise. We could cancel the business-class flights and go standby. Or perhaps wait until the following week at the very latest. Or change airlines and save money by flying via Bangladesh.

One way or another, we’d get there.

There was no way that Mark would make me pass up this chance when he realised how much it meant to me. It might be a gamble, it might be reckless, it might be completely misguided–but it just might be fabulous. And there was only one way to find out. I knew Mark would come round. There was absolutely, definitely no way he’d make me do this on my own.

‘I can’t believe you’re doing this on your own,’ said Kate as she steered her perfectly clean, perfectly green, hybrid car around the big Concorde statue at Heathrow airport.

‘Me neither,’ concurred Carol.

I sighed. ‘Don’t get me started.’

I couldn’t quite believe it myself. The usual post-meltdown reaction had gone right to schedule. For a whole day.

On Tuesday evening (Day One: Avoidance) Mark had come home from work around eight. The boys were already down for the night and I was at the kitchen table pretending to create a literary work of genius on my laptop. He said hi in a flat, dismissive tone. I didn’t respond. He looked in the oven for his supper. I let him discover for himself that the oven was bare. He flicked on the kettle and pulled one cordon bleu, exquisitely prepared Pot Noodle from the cupboard. I continued to type. By this time my fingers were rattling across the keyboard, forming perpetual repetitions of Mark is a Tosser, Mark is a Tosser, Mark is a Tosser. He made his Pot Noodle, grabbed the paper and went into the living room. About an hour later I heard him moving around upstairs, going in and out of the boys’ room. He always kissed them goodnight before he went to…bed! He couldn’t be going to bed! Didn’t he want to talk about this at all? Aaargh! Well, bugger him.

And anyway, we were still on Aftermath, Day One of Operation Big Sulk. He was bound to have changed his tune by Wednesday.

He had, but only in a musical way.

Come Wednesday (Day Two: Pretend nothing has happened) he was whistling ‘Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love’ as he came in the door. Bloody whistling! My life was in turmoil, my heart was breaking, my soul was scarred…Okay, so I’m exaggerating a wee bit, but I was mightily pissed off. And he was whistling.

Tap, tap, oven bare, another Pot Noodle, bed.

Finally, Day Three, he spoke.

‘Carly, we have to talk about this.’

Ah, I knew he’d come around and I was delighted that he was actually doing it a day ahead of my estimation.

‘You’re right,’ I said softly, putting on my very best humble face and trying my hardest not to gloat.

‘Did the airline give you a refund or do we need to ask them in writing and provide some kind of official explanation as to why we cancelled the trip?’

I was astonished. This was when he should be packing his suitcase, ordering his dollars and launching a search party for his Speedos–last seen in 1989.

‘Mark, we’re going. I won’t miss this. I’d regret it forever.’

He looked more irritated than angry. ‘Come on, Carly, be reasonable. It’s crazy.’

‘I know! That’s one of the main reasons I want to do it. When was the last time you did something really, really crazy, Mark? So crazy that you wanted to scream with the sheer giddiness of it.’

‘The day I married you,’ he said calmly.

Oh. Sails now wind-free. And his facial expression hadn’t changed so I couldn’t tell if that had been a good comment, as in crazy-great, or a bad comment, as in crazy-should’ve-been-locked-up, so I just ignored it.

‘Please, Mark, this really means a lot to me.’

‘Carly, my job means a lot to me–mainly that it keeps a roof over our heads. I’m in the middle of a major deal. If I pull out now I could lose the client and a shit load of commission–commission that we could really do with.’

‘Fuck it, there’ll be other deals, other commissions.’

‘Jesus, are you never going to grow up, Carly?’

I don’t think the first response that came into my head–‘Definitely not, and where did you put my pogo stick?’–was the answer he was looking for, so I didn’t say it out loud. Once upon a time that would have made him crease with laughter. Where had that guy gone?

‘Yes! I will, I promise. I mean, I have. Look at me: I iron, for Christ’s sake. I now know that Dyson isn’t the name of a rock group. I pay tax. I make the boys wash their hands after they pee. I say things like, “If you don’t behave then Santa won’t bring you any toys.” I’m a fully fledged bloody adult.’ I was tempted to add, na na na na boo boo, but thought it might blow my well-made point.

‘Then use some sense and don’t go.’

‘I’m going.’

‘I’m not.’

And he didn’t. Day Four (Capitulation and compromise) and here we were, charging up to the departure terminal at Heathrow, one woman, two pals, two children and six suitcases. And no Mark.

He had tried again to change my mind the night before, but it was futile, despite tugging my heartstrings so hard that they almost snapped.

‘Carly, you can’t do this. How can I be apart from the boys for a month?’

I knew it would devastate him, but on the other hand there was a simple solution–he could find a way to come. He’d been with his company for twenty years–twenty years of slog and success. I was positive that if he asked them for a month off they would agree. But I was also convinced that the problem wasn’t with bureaucracy, it was with Mark’s refusal to do anything that hadn’t been analysed, prepared and planned to the degree of a military operation.

For once I was awake that morning when he left. As I lay in the dark, I heard him go into the boys’ room, kiss them and murmur something. A few minutes later, thud (trip over briefcase), rip (banana off bunch), door open, door shut, car engine on, car engine fades as he drives off down the street.

I wrote him a letter, giving him the flight details, Sam’s address and telephone numbers, and got the boys to draw kisses across it before leaving it propped against the cornflakes. I still didn’t think that he’d let us go alone. Come on, we were a team. Soul mates. Best mates. Okay, so perhaps we’d let things slide lately and hadn’t been paying each other enough attention, but we were definitely in this for the long haul, weren’t we? Definitely. So he’d made his point. Let’s move on. Santa Monica Boulevard, here we come.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Carol. ‘Any minute now security will arrest you because you look like you’re casing the place.’

My eyes flicked manically from one door to another. We were standing in the middle of a packed terminal, at the entrance to the security area that leads to the departure lounge, and I was rooted to the spot.

‘I’m waiting for the snot bit,’ I replied, still searching the crowd.

‘What?’ said Kate.

‘You know, the snot bit. Officer and a Gentleman, he carries her out of the factory. Top Gun, he goes back to the café and puts their song on the jukebox. Dirty Dancing, he pulls Baby out of the corner. Friends, Rachel gets off the plane. Pretty Woman, he decides to overlook the fact that she’s a slapper and climbs up a ladder. The romantic ending. The bit where the hero comes rushing in and you go all warm and bubbly, despite dripping with snot.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, would all passengers on Flight BA0283 to Los Angeles please proceed directly to your departure gate, as this flight is preparing to board.’

‘That’s you, honey,’ prompted Kate, her eyes misty. Oh crap, we were having a snot moment without the big hunk charging to the rescue. Could we do nothing right?

That’s when I saw him. It wasn’t hard. At over six foot Mark was usually one of the tallest in the room. Over a sea of heads, I could see an inch of that familiar dark hair coming towards us. I swear it was like a slow-motion B-movie ending, only without the crap music that sounded like it was composed by someone’s auntie on her organ after a dozen gins. He was fifty feet away: my heart started to race. Forty feet: a huge grin crept across my face. Thirty feet: I went up on my tiptoes, wanting to see the expression on his face as he rushed towards me. Twenty feet: I started to wave. Ten feet: I stopped breathing. Nine, eight, seven, six…A shriek was starting in my stomach and working its way north. Five, four, three. Aaaaaaargh! There it was–one shriek, at a tone so high-pitched that every dog within a tenmile radius just had a heart attack. Two, one…That’s how long it took me to realise that the shriek wasn’t mine. It belonged to what looked like a Swedish au pair called Inga, and she was now sucking the tonsils out of a bloke who was the spitting image of my husband from the forehead up.

It wasn’t Mark. He hadn’t come. He really hadn’t come.

I swallowed.

‘That’s us, Mum, that’s us. Come on!’ yelled Mac excitedly. Shallower than a foot spa, that boy. He was leaving his father for a month, his mother was devastated, we were going to the unknown, facing an uncertain future, and don’t even get me started on the fact that I’d be in debt until I was sixty after this trip.

‘Come on, Mum, our plane’s ready. D’you think I can wear the pilot’s hat, Mum? Do you, do you, do you?’ He was going hyper again.

I raised my eyes to heaven. Dear God, if I promise never to ask you for anything else again, please hear me now. Please, please, please make this trip worthwhile. Please make Mark come charging in that door right now. And please do not let Mac pee his pants in the middle of a security check at Heathrow. They’ll think it’s fear and have us strip-searched before you can say ‘And what exactly is that white powder up your jacksy, madam?’

‘You have to go now, Carly If you’re going…’ Kate said tentatively.

I swallowed again, and then scoured the room one last time. Bastard.

I took a deep breath, threw my handbag over my shoulder, my carry-on bag over the other one, grabbed both my boys’ free hands (their other hands were pulling Postman Pat trolley bags) and leaned over to kiss Kate and Carol.

‘We’re going,’ I said with a rueful smile. ‘We’re definitely going.’

We were going to LA, we were going to have a ball, and, most importantly, I was going to show Mark stubborn-arsed Barwick that it wasn’t just some crazy flight of fancy. I was going to make a success of this trip. I was going to sell the film rights for one of my books to a movie studio and get a cheque with more zeros than Stephen Hawking’s IQ. I was going to make this pay off big-time and show Mark that all he needed in life was a little more faith in his wife.

That’s if I ever forgave him. And I wasn’t sure that I would.

Family Values Magazine

PUTTING THE YUMMY IN MUMMY THIS WEEK… TRAVELLING WITH THE FAMILY

Gstaad, Aspen, St Moritz, Monte Carlo, Bermuda, Antigua…It’s vital for the all-round development of children that they experience other countries and cultures. Of course, getting them there can be a minefield of pressure points and explosive incidents; however, a little planning can make the journey seamless, crisis-free and perhaps even add to the excitement of the adventure.

First of all, ladies, take your nanny. Yes, it may add to the expense, but it’s your holiday too and you deserve the rest, so look on it as an investment in the quality of your life.

Secondly, prepare, prepare, prepare. Take snacks for the children–organic rice cakes never go wrong. Pack an assortment of toys and puzzles to keep those enquiring minds busy. And don’t forget to request that the airline block the row behind or in front to give you plenty of space to spread out and relax.

As soon as you board, change the de rigueur Chanel travel suit, remove all make-up and slather on the moisturiser. La Prairie is le essential! During the flight, keep the Evian flowing, the Clinique spritzer nearby and a short nap will re-energise those batteries.

Then, shortly before landing, leave your nanny in charge of changing the children into fresh clothes, while you reapply your make-up, restyle your hair and don your Dior. You’ll sashay down those aeroplane steps feeling a million dollars…and looking like it too!

Step Three

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to thank you again for travelling with us today, and remind you to take special care when opening the overhead lockers as items stored there may have moved during the flight. When those of you travelling with young children have retrieved your belongings, please make your way to the nearest exit, where a member of the cabin crew will aid your disembarkation and reunite you with your will to live.’

It had been the longest two hours of my life. Actually, it was a ten-hour flight, but Los Angeles is eight hours behind us so the net effect is that you travel halfway across the globe in the time it takes to watch the EastEnders omnibus.

It was lunchtime when we touched down and already I looked like a bag lady. My short blonde spiky hair (think the secret love child of Billy Idol and Annie Lennox–but tone deaf) was standing even more vertically than normal. My jeans (size 12 but very stretchy) were stained with the orange juice that Mac managed to tip over me before we’d even reached international airspace. My white T-shirt could have doubled as an in-flight menu. On the top right-hand corner was the chicken in a tomato sauce that we’d had for our main meal–unfortunately Benny had eaten his with his fingers and was then overtaken with an irresistible urge to cuddle his mother. In the middle was the dressing from the side salad, flicked there by Mac with an accompanying ‘I hate tomatoes.’ Somewhere in the middle was the raspberry cheesecake–delivered there by a wandering spoon. And finally, there was the coffee splatter. That one was all my own work. I’d just got the coffee to my mouth when, completely out of the blue, Benny asked me if I had a baby in my tummy. Splurt. Oh, the indignity. Had he never heard of air-travel bloat? Perhaps I’d better give the after-dinner choccies a miss anyway.

I just hadn’t anticipated the impossible logistics of travelling alone with two small children. You cannot go to the toilet to fix your face, freshen up or pee unless you take them with you, because the minute you are out of sight they are likely to either a) try to open a door causing depressurisation of cabin and mass death, b) hide and give you chronic heart failure when you come out to discover an empty seat, or c) start wailing at the top of their voices–at which point a social services employee on their way to an Eradication of Child Neglect Conference in Nebraska will pop her head up from the row in front, take down your details and give you a lecture on child separation anxiety.

The alternatives, however, are limited and decidedly uncomfortable: you can either cross your legs or take the two of them with you. Try getting one adult and two children in an aeroplane toilet–it’s like getting the entire cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in a dodgem.

I’d had such high expectations of our first business-class flight. I thought Mark and I would kick it off with a glass of champagne, while the boys busied themselves with educational games and witty banter. Then we’d all change into our free pyjamas and snuggle down for a snooze, before being awakened by the aroma of our cordon bleu meal being brought to us perhaps with a fine wine (that would be one that didn’t come with a screw top and cost less than £2.99 for a two-litre bottle in our local Spar) and one of those square chocolate mint things to accompany it.

Er, no. Cue sound of needle being scratched across vinyl. Or that sound they make when someone gets a wrong answer on Family Fortunes.

In reality, I skipped the pyjamas because getting two children undressed and dressed again is far too much hassle to be undertaken unless there is a proper bed, sports or muck involved. In the midst of all the drama, I had of course forgotten to pack games, books and jigsaws to pass the time, so the boys watched cartoons for a whole ten minutes before the first fight erupted over custody of the one and only Game Boy. Now, here’s a point of law that is unique when it comes to the under sixes. The Game Boy belongs to Mac. However, his brother wanted to play with it, even though at two and three-quarters the only thing he can do with it is switch it on and off, press random buttons and chew it. It seems fairly logical then, that since oldest child is the legal owner of the item he should be allowed to dictate who plays with it and when. Wrong. The laws for the under sixes state quite clearly that whoever screams loud enough in a public place wins the toy. Nobody ever said life was fair.

They battled it out over the bloody computer game for about four thousand miles, with me maniacally making shushing noises, threatening them with prison and, finally, removing the game altogether. At which point they both started wailing and two dodgy-looking businessmen in the next row looked up from their laptops for long enough to give us the filthiest looks.

I leaned over to the boys and did my very best evil, venom-filled whisper. ‘Right you two! See those two men over there?’ I gesticulated to the hard-faced suits.

The boys nodded, wary expressions creeping across their faces.

‘Batman and Robin in disguise,’ I whispered.

‘Da na na na…’ Benny started.

‘Sshhhhhhhhh!’ I clapped a hand over his mouth, and then leaned over, collected Mac’s chin from his knees and returned it to its normal position.

‘They’re in disguise, Benny. That means it’s a secret that they’re here. They’re on the lookout for baddies. Now, do you think they’d approve of this behaviour?’

They both shook their heads.

‘Correct. Now, before Batman comes over here and gives you both a piece of his mind I think you’d better stop fighting and act like model citizens that Gotham would be proud of. Do you understand?’

They nodded, still transfixed that their superheroes were sitting only yards away.

Just at that moment, the air hostess walked past the end of our row. ‘Batgirl,’ I whispered to the boys out of the side of my mouth.

They gasped. ‘I knew it,’ said Mac.

‘Oh, really?’ I asked. ‘How did you know?’

‘Because she’s a rubbish air lady–she’s spilled my juice twice.’

The superhero presence worked–not another argument for the rest of the flight.

There was, however, 4,356 repetitions of ‘Are we there yet?’, 3,245 repetitions of ‘I need to go to the toilet’, and three repetitions of ‘I’ll have a gin and tonic please.’

I drew with them. I made jigsaws. I played ‘I Spy’ for an hour until I was bored to the back molars with ‘W’ (wing, window), ‘S’ (seat, shoes, socks) and ‘T’ (television, T-shirt, trousers). The choice of objects on a plane is not exactly vast. Not that it mattered to Benny because he’s yet to master the alphabet, so he just answered ‘banana’ to everything.

By the time we touched down, I was frazzled, exhausted and considering putting my offspring up for adoption.

‘We’re here, Mummy, we’re here. We’re at Spiderman’s house!’ screamed Mac as the wheels hit the tarmac. At which point, his wee joyful face and sheer excitement made me fall madly in love with him again and I would gladly have given him my kidney should he require it.

‘ Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can…’ sang Benny, to the amusement of the cabin crew who wanted to keep him as an airline mascot.

We grabbed our bags, clamoured down the aisle and hiked the half-marathon to the immigration hall, at which point I almost fainted when I saw the queue. I’m British, so I should love queuing, but unless there’s a new pair of shoes or a pizza at the end of it then I’m not interested. Especially with two children in tow.

We’d been standing in line for about ten minutes when my pants started to vibrate. Not my actual pants–I mean my trousers, but I’m just getting into the LA lingo.

I pulled out my mobile phone. ‘You have one new message,’ the screen informed me, but there was no sender telephone number. I figured it would be Sam letting me know where he was going to pick us up. I pressed ‘read’.

‘Sorry we didn’t work this out. Hope u arrive safe. Tell boys I love them. And I love you. Call me.’

I swallowed hard as tears stung at the back of my eyes. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. The immigration officers would already be within their rights to knock me back on account of the fact that I looked like a dosser, so pitching up at their desk and snotting over their computer would give us a good chance of getting a one-way ticket back home.

Suddenly the queue moved. I stepped forward three centimetres to keep up. At this rate the kids would be old enough to shave by the time we got to the baggage hall.

‘Mummy, in America will we get motorbikes like the Power Rangers?’ asked Mac.

I hadn’t quite picked up what he said over the noise of three thousand people tutting and moaning about the wait.

‘I SAID WILL WE GET MOTORBIKES LIKE THE POWER RANGERS?’ Mac bellowed.

Three thousand people turned to stare at us. Benny took the opportunity to give them a tune.

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, The little Lord Jesus lay down a sheep’s head…

I closed my eyes. Dear God. Anyone. Please rescue me. Sam, where are you?

Sam. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t given a single thought to the fact that I was going to see Sam again. I’d been so caught up in the whole going/not going thing that I hadn’t given a second thought to Sam.

The queue moved again so I stepped forward another three centimetres.

Sam Morton. The love of my life. Well, one of them, and since it ran to double digits it wasn’t such an exclusive club.

I’d first met Sam in my early twenties, when I’d been transferred from my job managing a nightclub in a hotel in Shanghai to a club in a sister hotel in Hong Kong. On the night I arrived I decided to do an incognito reconnaissance of my new place of employment. Unfortunately, I’d been in deepest darkest Shanghai for so long that I was a year or two out of touch with the fashion trends. The look I was going for was Madonna in her rebel years, but instead I looked like I’d love you long time for a tenner. My dress could have doubled as an inner tube: black leather mini with a zip going from breast to thigh. That was in my pre-gravity days when there was still a bit of space between those parts of my anatomy–two kids later I could have covered the same area with a thick belt. I wore killer stilettos (so called then because they were wickedly gorgeous–so called now because attempting to walk in anything that high would be considered suicidal) and my hair was trussed up on top of my head like an exploding pineapple. Think Pebbles from the Flintstones after she’d grown up and decided to support her prehistoric crack habit by going on the game.

I’d made my way down to the club, only to be faced with an Adonis at the door. Six foot two inches tall. Brown hair. Twenty-seven. Londoner. Ex-army Crew cut. Eyelashes that Naomi Campbell would have killed for. Square jaw-line. Suntanned. White teeth. Broad shoulders. Defined pecs. Washboard abs. Slim hips. Bum that looked like two melons on a tray. Nipples alert. Ovaries putting out a ‘first ride free’ banner.

Obviously those last two physical conditions were mine, not his.

He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. I wanted to push him into the janitor’s cupboard and do filthy things to him. I wanted to talk dirty. I wanted to…

Oops, the line moved again. Another three centimetres forward. And was it just me, or was it getting really hot in here now? Still, at least the kids were quiet. Mac was engrossed in wiping out another galaxy on his Game Boy and Benny was now curled around my neck snoozing.

Anyway, so I wanted to…Everything. Just everything. There wasn’t a lewd act that I didn’t want to commit with Sam Morton, but unfortunately our hotel chain’s code of conduct had a very strict DEFTS rule: Don’t Ever Fuck the Staff.

And of course, never one to break the rules (and much to my excruciating agony), I remained chaste. For about a whole fortnight. Then Sam turned up at my hotel room in the middle of the night, revealed that he had the biggest penis I’d ever seen in my life (and, I must admit, has yet to be surpassed), took my breath away and ravished me in ways that I couldn’t even think of repeating without pulling a muscle. About six times, if I remember correctly. The earth didn’t so much move as crumble. The man was amazing. Stunning. And so sweet. He even spent some of his wages every week taking care of three old homeless Chinese guys who lived outside his apartment block.

I adored him. I completely and utterly adored him. Although I did get a bit of a shock when, much to my initial mortification and bashfulness, he asked me to marry him in front of hundreds of drunken revellers on New Year’s Eve.

Of course, I said yes. Well, you don’t like to say no, do you?

That sentiment might go a long way to explaining how I managed to get engaged six times before I was thirty.

Life was just great. Sam had a day job teaching martial arts and he planned to eventually set up his own coaching academy, but he continued to work in the nightclub to get some funds together. Meanwhile, I loved every minute of being in Hong Kong, and for the first time in my life I felt settled. Like I belonged.

Naturally, then, it was time for fate to intervene and turn my whole life into the emotional equivalent of a ten-car pile-up. When my contract at the hotel ended, my bosses announced that I was being transferred to either London or Dubai. I refused, but it was pointless.

Dubai. London. Dole. Those were the options.

I begged Sam to come with me; he begged me to stay. In the end, I went, promising him that I’d come back when the next contract was over. I’m not sure he ever really believed me, which was just as well, because it was more than five years later when I finally tracked him down. The minute I saw him again…ah, I knew. I knew that we could definitely be great together and I promise it was based on our love, our inherent connection and our mutual feeling of shared destiny. Okay, so the fact that he had a penis the size of a marrow was a contributory factor, but I’d like to think I was deeper than that. Slightly.

However, it wasn’t to be. I discovered that after I’d deserted him, Sam had undergone a career change and transformed himself into the most popular (and expensive) high-class male escort in South East Asia–not exactly what I’d anticipated as a career for a potential husband.

‘Do you, Sam Morton, promise to love, honour and cherish Carly Cooper? Do you promise to keep her in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, and by the way would you also stop shagging anyone who throws their credit card in your direction?’

Much as Sam tried to persuade me otherwise, I knew it would never work. Shortly afterwards, he gave up hooking and wrote the screenplay of his life, which landed on the right desk at the right time. I’ve no idea if it was a female’s desk and if Sam’s privates also landed on it, but I prefer to think he got it on merit.

The movie was huge. Massive. And, surprisingly, Sam was great in the lead role. Who knew he could act? Apart from the one very strange woman who booked him for Wednesday afternoons to pretend he was her husband and answer to the name of Harold.

It was the first of many roles for Mr Stud. And great ones too. He became Richard Gere when the real Richard Gere was getting on a bit and too busy pissing off the Chinese government to strut his stuff in romantic dramas.

We stayed friends. Whenever he was in London for a premiere or to shoot something at Pinewood he’d stay with us and allow us to bask in his reflected glory. To the world he was Sam Morton, A-list superstar and all-round sex god. To us, he was just Sam. Friend. Ex-boyfriend. All-round good guy. With the biggest donger in the northern hemisphere. I chose not to share that not-so-insignificant tidbit of information with Mark. He might have been born without a single jealousy gene in his body, but there was nothing like penis envy to upset a bloke’s equilibrium.

Mark actually really liked Sam. But then, liking Sam was easy. He was sweet, great company, utterly without ego and he brought lavishly expensive pressies when he came to stay. He and Mark got on well and had loads in common (apart from a familiarity with my reproductive organs). A mutual love of football and beer and man-to-man avoidance of any conversational topics that included emotions, feelings or gossip seemed to have developed into a mutual respect for each other. It was all very modern and adult. Mark had even demonstrated his admirable lack of jealousy once again by suggesting that we ask Sam to be Benny’s godfather. Sam was thrilled–and I’m sure one day Benny will echo that sentiment when he realises that his godfather has direct access to hordes of hot chicks.

‘Ma’am, can you step forward please.’ Hallelujah! My back was breaking with the strain of carrying three stones of little boy and what seemed like the entire aircraft’s carry-on luggage. The rather formidable gentleman checked our passports, scanned things, tapped his computer, took some kind of weird photo and fingerprinted me. I refrained from pointing out that I was coming to crack Hollywood, not the bullion safe at Fort Knox.

We trundled through to baggage reclaim, grabbed a trolley, dashed to the carousel and dragged off our cases. By the time I’d loaded everything up, I couldn’t see where I was going and, bloody, bloody arse, my trolley had a wonky wheel and kept veering to the left.

I dragged it through customs, Benny awake and on my back now, Mac sitting precariously on one of the bags. I’m sure the customs officers would have stopped me if I hadn’t looked like I was three seconds away from demented hysteria.

I got another five yards up the steep walkway. What sick bastard designed a corridor so that people had to push luggage-laden trolleys UP a hill? Just when I thought I’d got the hang of it, Mac swayed to the side causing a full-scale dissolution of the suitcase mountain.

Bollocks. I pulled and heaved everything on again, then started back up the hill. Around the corner…Crash. Everything back off. My hands started to shake. Benny started to moan. Mac…well, Mac didn’t give a toss but that’s only because he has the thirst for adventure of an adrenalin junkie on speed and this whole new experience was whipping him into a frenzy.

A frenzy…Oh no.

‘Do you need to go to the toilet, Mac?’

‘Nope.’

Fingers crossed that he wasn’t lying or being overly optimistic. But I speeded up just in case.

I loaded everything back on and pushed upwards. Round another corner, one last burst of energy and…

Sam. He was standing against a railing looking like he’d just stepped out of Man at Armani. He smiled and opened his arms. Mac ran into them.

‘Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam!’ he screamed, delighted.

I reached two things at exactly the same time. Sam and the end of my tether. As he reached over to envelop me in a hug, I burst into tears. And not pretty Demi Moore/Ghost-type tears. Not even mildly sweet Kate Hudson tears. I’m talking full-scale Gwyneth Paltrow, nasal fluids, racking sobs, off-the-scale-in-humiliation-and-embarrassment tears. Sam looked horrified, but that might have been because my make-up-smeared, tear-drowning face was in contact with his two-thousand-dollar jacket.

‘Hey, hey, what is it? What’s wrong, honey?’

‘Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam, we’re going to see Spiderman!’ screamed Mac. ‘Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a Spider can…’ wailed Benny.

There wasn’t a single person in the building who wasn’t looking at us. I pulled my head off his clothing.

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