The Motherhood Walk of Fame

by Shari Low

  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.