The Motherhood Walk of Fame

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.’