Читать книгу The Motherhood Walk of Fame - Shari Low - Страница 9

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.