Ten years, ten months and two days. No, that’s not how long I’ve been trying to shift the baby weight. Actually it is, but that’s not the point. This month, after more than a decade, I finally reached another one of life’s milestones – the husband and I went off for a forty-eight-hour mini-break without the kids.
So much for the recent vow to avoid trips for the foreseeable future, but in my defence dear bank manager, it was an impulse buy on a discount website. Also – yes, this is the mother’s guilt trying to justify my actions again – the trip was primarily for work purposes. The final scenes of my current novel-in-progress are set in Monaco, and first-hand knowledge is essential when giving a story a dramatic setting. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I dream of setting a book in Ryan Gosling’s shower.
I was, therefore, fully justified in heading off sans-offspring. Nevertheless, a wave of anxiety almost had me tearing back through the departure lounge shouting, ‘but I can’t remember if I put a banana in my boy’s packed lunch!’
Not that this was a Home Alone situation featuring Joe Pesci attempting to burgle a house in a Glasgow suburb while my sons foiled his plan with two tins of spaghetti hoops and a colander. As a neurotic worrier, every detail of their care was pre-planned with military precision. They went to live with my lovely pals, armed with a 128-point checklist, including a full medical history, a note of their blood type, a map to the nearest nuclear bunker and the phone numbers for emergency services, Interpol and NASA.
There were tears. Wobbly lips. Distraught expressions. But they were all in my pessimistic imagination. The junior Lows skipped away, thrilled that they were having a double sleepover.
I’ve been to Monaco twice before. Eleven years ago, husband and I got the bus there from our ramshackle hotel in a nearby town and sat in the Café de Paris, dreaming of riches. I had just landed my first book deal and naively assumed I’d have Jackie Collins’s life before the week was out.
And I did! If Jackie Collins lived in Glasgow and had an overdraft the size of Mull.
Last time I visited the millionaire’s playground was on an organised day trip. I arrived with a busload of very nice American tourists and realised that my blue and white striped T-shirt was a chronic fashion blunder. I was going for nautical. Instead, I looked like a deck chair in distress.
The indignity was compounded when the heavens opened and we all got drenched, and then walking through the uber-glamorous Casino Square I slipped, went down like the Titanic and had to rely on ageing gentlemen with names like Buddy and Al to form a four-man hoist to get me up.
But this time was going to be different. Husband and I had packed our best togs. I’d painted my nails. The blue and white T-shirt had been binned. I’d even shaved my legs. We were child-free, and determined to be so suave and sophisticated that no-one would guess we didn’t belong in such glamorous surroundings.
Oh yes, we were cosmopolitan travellers of the world. Until we got there, ordered two drinks and got a bill for £32. Husband just about fainted, but I didn’t notice because I was too busy trying to Skype the kids. Cue a weekend of jaw-dropping bills, credit card stress and chronic worry that a meteor would hit the west of Scotland, wiping out the family I’d left behind.
We’re obviously just not cut out for jet-setting à deux.
So I’ve decided to leave my next research trip for another ten years, ten months and two days. It’ll take that long to get over the guilt, save up for a round of drinks and track down the location of Ryan Gosling’s shower.