The Motherhood Walk of Fame. Shari Low
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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