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