'I'd love to see those doctors'

Mandy Masters takes one look at the sculpture of pregnant artist Alison Lapper soon to appear on a plinth in Trafalgar Square and shakes her wispy, highlighted ponytail. "It's not very feminine. I wouldn't be seen like that," says the 42-year-old grandmother. "I always wanted to be treated as a normal mother."

Artist Marc Quinn made the portrait when Lapper was eight months pregnant. Like Mandy Masters, Lapper was damaged by Thalidomide and was born in 1965 with no arms and very short legs - one of 458 babies damaged by the drug in Britain. Mandy was born with no arms in 1961, the year the drug her mother took for morning sickness was banned. But there the similarities between the two women end.

While Alison Lapper has gone public with her disability, Mandy Masters, who lives in Grays in Essex, has made a point of downplaying her own. "My parents worked hard to treat me as a normal - and I hate that word - child in a normal home. I wasn't wrapped up in cotton wool. I was never made a fuss of," says Mandy, who is wearing a leopardprint top, black trousers and designer flipflops that show off her funky black and gold toe nails, a silver ring glistening on her left foot. She has a tiny gold stud in her nose.

"There was no favouritism; I had to fight my own battles. I was very bossy and a bully at school. Once, I was having a fight with one of the neighbours and my dad said to my mum, let's bring her in. No, leave her, said my mum. I fought with my legs!" she says, grinning. "I could do more or less anything with my feet." Later, she swings one leg up on to the kitchen counter to get a mug, and I see what she means.

Her mother brought her up to be selfsufficient. "I remember once calling out and asking Mum to help me pull my knickers up. 'If you don't pull them up yourself, you stay there,' she shouted. I thought that was so cruel." So, as usual, she yanked them up with her teeth.

"But if she'd been at my beck and call I wouldn't be where I am today."

When Mandy was born, the doctors wrote her off. "'She'll be a cabbage,' that's what they told my mum. 'She won't marry, she won't have kids.' They gave me such a bleak future.'"

Her parents, June and Len Hornsby, were not to be defeated. While some Thalidomide children were put in homes, Mandy was thrown in with her four brothers and sisters. But it wasn't until she was six months old that Mandy's mother spotted what was to become her daughter's survival tool.

"She heard a rustling in my pram," recalls Mandy as we sit in the conservatory of her pristine semi-detached home. "There was some newspaper in there for some reason. She had a look and saw my toes playing with it. So she got some of those plastic curlers and put them on my feet. I started wiggling my toes. Pens and crayons followed. There's a baby picture of me holding a pen," she says proudly.

June fought hard to get her child admitted to a "normal" school in Chadwell in Essex, where the family grew up. "The teachers adapted around me. I wrote with my feet. My sister or a friend would carry my tray for me at lunchtime. I was just accepted. You speak to other Thalidomides and they were terribly bullied. One asked me if I'd ever had my sleeves tied around a pole in the playground. Never, I said. And I've never had anyone feeling sorry for me."

Secondary school was a disaster. "I just hated it," says Mandy. "There was more work, lots of stairs and I did feel quite tired." Two years later, aged 13, she went to a specialist school called Bramwood, for children with all kinds of disabilities. She discovered she loved riding, and her parents bought her a horse, which she loved. "I would tie the reins to the stirrups and ride barefoot."

Despite her feistiness, Mandy internalised her battle, and at the age of 14 became very depressed. The next thing she knew, she and one of her sisters went off to Lourdes in search of a cure. She found that, and more. Her depression lifted, the seeds of interest in the spirit world and clairvoyance were sewn, and she had her first kiss, a holiday romance with the 18-year-old son of the owner of the châšteau in which she was staying. Three years later, aged 17, Mandy had left school, taught herself to type with her toes and got a job as a secretary in her father's building company.

She had always wanted to get married and have children, to lead a " normal" life, "but I also thought it would give me freedom from my mum and dad telling me what to do".

The rebel in her led her to her husband, Wayne, a builder. "I met him through my brothers, and we started chatting. He didn't realise I didn't have any arms when he first met me - I was wearing a denim jacket and jeans. But when he found out, it didn't bother him."

A year later, aged 18, she was pregnant-with her first daughter, Nicola. Five months later, they were married.

"Wayne's family found it hard to accept me at first," she says. "Some people only gave us two years, but we proved them all wrong." When it came to giving birth, she defied the doctors once again.

"They wanted me to have a Caesarean, which was very upsetting. I had two natural births in the end. Then they couldn't believe I was going to breastfeed. 'How are you going to hold the baby?' they said. I just put the baby's head on my knee," she says. "To burp her I used to put her over one foot and pat her on the back with the other."

The nurses couldn't believe it when she managed to dress her babies, change the nappies and give them a bath. She shows me all the movements. Her legs simply double as her arms and hands. "My toes are like fingers," she says. "My kids just adapted. At seven months, Nicola learned to put her arms around my neck for a piggy-back when I wanted to carry her downstairs. I couldn't say anything was really difficult but I did miss pushing a pram."

When the girls were older, she worried about whether they were being bullied for having a disabled mother. "I was giving Nicola a bath once and I asked her, do your friends know your mum hasn't got any arms? And she said, I won't tell you in case you cry. So I went along to the school and gave a talk about coping with disability."

Becoming a grandmother is Mandy's greatest triumph. "Motherhood-was good," she says. "But this, it's the most wonderful thing," she beams, though she found both her daughters' pregnancies traumatic. Nicola, 22, has Callum, six, and Dylan, one. Marie, 18, has Taylor, two months. They both live in nearby Tilbury.

"When Nicola was pregnant with Callum there was a scare that Thalidomide would come out in our grandchildren. I said to Nicola, you've got to make sure this baby has arms. And she said: 'Why, Mum? You're no different.' I went with her for the scan and all I wanted to see was the baby's arms. And suddenly they shot up at me and waved, as if to say, 'Here they are, Nan'."

Dylan hasn't worked out why his gran doesn't cuddle him. "He puts his arms out for me to hug him and when I don't take him he frowns, but Callum just wraps his arms around me like Nicola used to. Once, I was out with Callum and he said, 'Nana, foot, foot.' He wanted to hold my foot. I said no, Callum, I've got to walk."

Nicola is getting married in August. "That wedding means so much to me," says Mandy as she shows me around her garden with the swimming pool and workshop where she has practised as a clairvoyant for the past 12 years. "You know, I'd love to meet those doctors now. I'd like them to see what the cabbage has done. I'm quite a thriving cabbage," she says, throwing her head back and laughing.

The Thalidomide Society, 020 8868 5309, www.thalidomidesociety.co.uk