Shari Low - The Motherhood Walk of Fame

SHARI LOW

The Motherhood Walk of Fame

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2007

Copyright © Shari Low 2007

Shari Low asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Spiderman Words and Music by Stephen Lemberg © Kama Sutra Music Inc, USA EMI United Partnership Ltd, London WC2H 0QY (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co, USA (Print) Administered in Europe by Faber Music Ltd Reproduced by permission All rights reserved. Batman Theme Words by Neal Hefti © 1966 EMI Catalogue Partnership and EMI Miller Catalog Inc, USA EMI United Partnership Ltd, London WC2H 0QY (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co, USA (Print) Administered in Europe by Faber Music Ltd Reproduced by permission All rights reserved. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847560032

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334919

Version: 2018-06-18

With huge gratitude to the two fabulous women who

guided this book to print: Sheila Crowley at AP Watt

and Maxine Hitchcock at Avon. Ladies, thank you–

working with you has been an absolute joy.

To the rest of the wonderful team at Avon–

I love my new home!

And to the others who give their unfailing support:

Linda Shaughnessy, Rob Kraitt, Teresa Nicholls and

the rest of the team at AP Watt. I’m counting my

blessings…Sxx

To Betty Murphy–we’ll never stop missing you.

And to my big guy and two little ones…

Everything, always…

Now can one of you go put the tea on.

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1 Step One

Chapter 2 Step Two

Chapter 3 Step Three

Carly Calling …

Chapter 4 Step Four

Chapter 5 Step Five

Carly Calling …

Chapter 6 Step Six

Carly Calling …

Chapter 7 Step Seven

Chapter 8 Step Eight

Carly Calling …

Chapter 9 Step Nine

Chapter 10 Step Ten

Carly Calling …

Chapter 11 Step Eleven

Chapter 12 Step Twelve

Carly Calling …

Chapter 13 Step Thirteen

Chapter 14 Step Fourteen

Carly Calling …

Chapter 15 Step Fifteen

Chapter 16 Step Sixteen

Carly Calling …

Chapter 17 Step Seventeen

Chapter 18 Step Eighteen

Chapter 19 Step Nineteen

About the Author

About the Publisher

I knew something was wrong. As I bit down on an apple Danish, one of my five daily fruit and vegetable portions as recommended by Government health guidelines, I had that vaguely edgy feeling of unease–the one I normally get when PMT is raging and I want to commit acts that’ll guarantee me a starring role on Crimewatch.

Actually, I never watch that programme. The minute the theme music starts I have to switch over, because a feeling of crushing guilt comes over me even though I know that I don’t own a balaclava and I was nowhere near the Kensington Post Office three weeks ago last Thursday at 10.24 a.m.

Still, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was bugging me. It was just another normal Monday morning. And up until that point, everything had been pretty much uneventful. My husband, Mark, had risen at some ungodly hour, staggered to the bathroom, peed with his eyes still shut, shaved with one eye open, returned to our bedroom and dressed in the dark. Due to this well-practised regime, all his business clothes were of the same colour to avoid ritual humiliation and ridicule.

He tripped over his briefcase at the bottom of the stairs, before picking himself back up, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl and checking his reflection in the hall mirror. At that point, by some power of cosmic wonderment, his transformation was complete. Gone was the zombied, scruff-ball dosser who couldn’t even manage to pee in a stationary receptacle without leaving splash marks on the surrounding area; and in his place was Mark Barwick, corporate lawyer and all-round babe-magnet.

He then got into his flash sports car, flicked on the flash radio and set off on his mind-numbing commute from our Richmond semi to his flash office in a flash tower block in a flash area of London.

Of course, I’m assuming all of the above because it would take medical intervention and explosives to wake me at that time in the morning. But his routine hadn’t varied in the seven years we’d been together so I doubt that he somersaulted out of bed, had a quick espresso and a chocolate croissant then spent twenty minutes deciding which tie suitably expressed his mood that day.

And anyway, Mark only has one mood–stable. No ecstatic ups. No wrist-slitting lows. Just…stable. Which is a good thing. Great. Fantastic. How I love having a stable, dependable guy who is the perfect balance for my rather more changeable disposition. I do. And never, ever have I been tempted to call him a boring, predictable git. At least not out loud. Oh, okay, but only to my pals.

I took another bite of the Danish and realised that gnawing, restless feeling was still there. That ruled out hunger then. I ran through the other possibilities.

Kids. One deposited at preschool, and the other one had just started nursery that very week. Mac, the oldest at four, was in his third month of preschool and he loved it. Touch wood, I hadn’t yet been called up to the headmistress for a dressing-down, primarily, I suspected, because I’d endeavoured to keep him on the non-violent side of Power Rangers by telling him that cameras in the lampposts around the school allowed me to watch his every move via the internet. I’m sure the teachers must wonder why he keeps looking heavenwards and shouting, ‘I didn’t mean it, Mum, honest!’

Mac definitely has his mother’s genes. His vocabulary is starting to broaden now but they’ll be ice-skating in hell before it includes the word ‘stable’.

Mac’s little brother, however, is a whole different splash in the gene pool. When I was pregnant for the second time I told Mark that I wanted to name the new baby Big. I figured we were a shoo-in for a McDonald’s sponsorship deal. But in the end we settled for Benny, and he’s the cutest, most adorable little thing on earth. Not that I’m biased. But honestly, he should be doing the conga in a cowboy suit in a nappy advert.