style="font-size:15px;"> 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
