term for which I believe the exact translation is ‘great arse and a fine set of lungs’.
I poured a coffee (decaf), sat down at the kitchen table and put my feet on another chair. Kate didn’t bat an eyelid but I knew the minute I left she’d sponge down both table and chair with Flash antibacterial. Her whole house was spotless. Not in a freaky ‘I’ll stab you to death if you drop crumbs on my angora shag pile’ kind of way. Just in a super-organised, highly efficient, natural earth mother kind of way.
Kate had been mothering all of us since we were kids. When I was six, she refused to play in the snow with me unless I put gloves on. When we were teenagers she used to put condoms in my bag on the way to the pub. When my boys were babies she insisted on disinfecting my kitchen on a weekly basis because she said that I was–and I quote–‘obviously brought up in a lighthouse because I didn’t seem to be capable of getting into corners’.
Her kitchen was a gleaming showroom of wood units, marble worktops, plants, copper pans, pottery things that served no obvious purpose, kids’ paintings and collages made from leaves and wool. In my house the kids’ stuff made the kitchen look cluttered and messy. In this house it looked charming.
Like I said, the laws of womanhood would normally decree that I would have to hate such perfection, but with Kate it was impossible because she was so goddamn humble and lovely. She was gentle. She was beautiful. If your granny knitted the perfect woman it would look like Kate. Even her children liked her. All three of them–Cameron, Zoe and Tallulah. What were the chances of having three children and all of them thinking that you’re great? My earliest memory is of my mother irritating me incessantly by trying to put ribbons in my hair to make me look like a girl when it was plainly obvious to everyone else that I was a boy. Looking back now I can only assume that my willy fell off somewhere during the long journey with Jackie from Beverly Hills.
Kate disentangled her limbs then folded them into a different position as effortlessly as a bit actor from Wallace & Gromit.
‘Are you sure you’ve still got a skeletal system or have you done a Cher and had bits of it removed?’ I asked. I could honestly say that in my whole life, despite numerous experiences involving alcohol and imaginative sex, the back of my head had never come into contact with my ankle.
She laughed. ‘This one is great for the pelvis and the sex life,’ she said. ‘Do you know that scientists reckon that a woman has seven G-spots?’
‘Yeah, well you’d better call out some Sherpas and a tracker dog cos six of mine are missing.’
The front door slammed and Carol breezed in, all copper tendrils, size-eight hipsters and shopping bags.
‘Jesus, it’d freeze the balls off a brass gorilla out there,’ she said, shivering for effect. She’d never been very good with metaphors. She gave me a hug, then looked at Kate.
‘I know I’ll regret asking, but what are you doing?’
‘Counting her G-spots,’ I interjected.
Carol looked puzzled. ‘Why the plural? I thought we only had one?’
Thank you!
‘Nope, according to some anthropologist expert we’ve got seven,’ said Kate. Although how she could talk when she was staring her privates in the face was beyond me.
Carol giggled. ‘Oh, well there’s something for Cal to look for later then,’ she announced.
I made a very immature teenager, grossed-out face à la Hollyoaks, circa 2001.
‘Carol, we have laws! I’ve told you before–do not talk to me about your sex life with your husband. Due to the fact that he’s also my brother, it gives me mental images that will eventually lead to a psychiatrist’s couch or an appearance on a daytime talk show. Anyway, let’s not talk about sex because my memory is in no mood to be tested this morning.’
Sad, but true. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had one of those ‘alcohol and imaginative sex’ encounters. Don’t get me wrong, Mark and I could do that whole jungle hot and heavy thing. Once upon a time.
The first time I had sex with him I was still a teenager and the earth moved. And not just because we were in a standing position and I was wearing platforms the size of Mini Metros. We had an on-off thing all through the hormonal teenage years, and then lost touch until years later, when we bumped into each other at Cal and Carol’s wedding. Actually, that’s a lie. We didn’t exactly bump into each other. For reasons that I’ll summon up the courage and the accompanying mortification to reveal later, I had stormed off in a flurry of embarrassment, tears and snot, only for Mark to appear out of the blue and rescue me.
Within months we were married and it would have been impossible for me to be happier. Life was bliss. On weekends we’d climb into bed on Friday nights and stay there until Sunday, getting up only to shower, answer the door to the pizza delivery guy and change the batteries on the TV remote control. I couldn’t believe my luck–Mark Barwick, the gorgeous, smart, funny, laidback sweetheart of a guy, who had been bailing me out of trouble since before puberty, had actually taken me on. I should probably add ‘brave’ to that list. And not only that but he shagged me silly from dawn till dusk and seemed to enjoy it. Who needed yoga?
My wedding present to Mark had been to throw out every method of contraceptive I possessed. Foolishly, I flushed ten packets of pills, fourteen condoms and a diaphragm down the toilet. It kept a plumber in business for weeks.
But we were soon to hit a blockage of a different kind.
Six months of lost weekends later we were surprised that I wasn’t pregnant. A year passed and we were verging on astonished. Another eighteen months on and we were seriously worried. And two years after that we discovered that I had polycystic ovaries. And that was before they were trendy. Now everyone’s got them. They’ve become one of the barometers of modern-day chic. Everyone who’s anyone has had a boob job, Botox, goes to Barbados in the winter, South of France in the summer, is on the waiting list for the new Chloe bag, shops in Harvey Nicks and has polycystic ovaries. Even Victoria bloody Beckham has them. Oh, the irony. I had to have one thing in common with that incredibly thin, jet-setting, millionaire, diamond-laden, David-Beckham-shagging woman, and it’s the fact that our ovaries don’t work properly. And to add insult to injury, despite the dodgy ovaries she’s still managed to shoot out three kids. Although calling them after a bridge, a missile and a bloke with a fondness for balconies was a bit harsh.
However, in my case, the whole reproductive thing seemed to be on strike.
For Mark and I that meant sex became a battle to conceive rather than an enjoyable pastime to while away the hours between a Friday and a Monday. All of a sudden it was ovulation tests, fertility drugs, thermometers, laparoscopies and endless gynaecologists sending their Marigolds up to places that no one except your partner should ever visit.
It was horrible. Bollocks. Unfair. And really, really crap.
It was all those clichés that you read about in the Daily Mail when Felicity from Chelsea decides to share her infertility experiences with the world. Yes, I called my husband to come home from work because I was ovulating and wanted the eggs fertilised. Yes, I did the legs up against a wall after sex. Yes, every month on the day before my period was due I would get all desperately optimistic and do a pregnancy test. And then another sixteen just in case it was a faulty batch.
And somewhere in the middle of all that the romance kind of slid away. Actually, that sounds
