A Brand New Me

by Shari Low

  What??????????? Was he kidding me? Yes, okay, I might have got a tad overwrought. And yes, Ben was probably higher up the ‘wow’ scale than me, but I’d like to think that he loved me for who I was and could overlook the fact that it would have to be a dark, foggy night before I could claim to have more than a very glimmer of a resemblance to Cameron Diaz.

  But self-absorbed? He’d asked me to tell him about Ben! And that was only after three and a half hours of listening to him while he talked about nothing but his inner bloody brilliance. If Trish were sitting in my seat right now she’d deck him. Obviously I was too busy being self-obsessed and co-dependent.

  He reached out and took my hand in a nauseatingly patronising manner, and then started to speak in an even more nauseatingly patronising voice.

  ‘So, Leni, what I’m about to say, I’m saying because I care, and I need you to understand that. Do you understand, Leni?’

  No, no, NOOOOO, you obnoxious, ignorant, big hairy bastard.

  But to avoid the risk of offence, I nodded in what I’m sure, again, was a self-obsessed and co-dependent manner.

  ‘I think you need to work on yourself. I think you need to take time out, identify where your weaknesses lie, and fix them before you enter another relationship.’

  Or I could just revert to plan A and kill you with the pepper shaker.

  ‘And that’s why I can’t see you again, Leni. I can feel that already you’re getting attached to me, even in the short space of time that we’ve been together tonight. And I know that you want more. I know that you see in me the same kind of protective instincts that you saw in Ben.’

  I’m sure my chin was in my coq au vin at that point, given that all I actually saw was a fairly unattractive, pompous prick who was wearing half his dinner in his facial hair and leather elbow patches.

  He kissed my hand with a dramatic flourish. ‘And that’s why I’m going to go now, Leni, because I don’t want to compound the pain by letting you get even more attached. Because, you see, I don’t have enough to give right now. I’m dedicated to my clients and to my growth as a human being, and I just don’t have the emotional space to help someone else work through their issues and problems.’

  Then (and how I wished I had a suitable receptacle for the contents of my stomach) he tried to soften the blow with a nauseating, ‘But if I did have that energy to give, Leni, I’d give it to you. I’m sorry.’

  He released my hand, stood up, retrieved his tatty briefcase, and said, ‘Goodbye, Leni–and good luck.’

  Exit Craig the therapist, leaving half a chicken and mushroom pie, a quarter of a bottle of wine and the most gobsmacked date in the free world.

  After a few minutes of shocked stillness, I pushed my plate away and drained the wine bottle.

  The waiter took the hint and cleared away the plates.

  ‘Can I get you anything else, madam?’

  ‘No thank you,’ I replied. The restaurant was still fairly busy and I didn’t want to take up his time by asking him to call me a cab. I’d just do what I always did and hail one when I got outside. Hardly the actions of a self-indulgent and co-dependent bloody woman!

  A few minutes later the nice waiter returned with my coat and…

  ‘Here’s the bill, madam.’

  ‘Didn’t…didn’t the gentleman I was dining with pay it on his way out?’ I spluttered.

  ‘Erm, no, I’m afraid not. Actually, he did refer to it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  The poor, mortified waiter had the decency to flush bright red and stare at his shoes.

  ‘He said you were to consider it his fee.’

  PROGRESS SUMMARY: IT’S IN THE STARS DATING PROJECT

  CONCLUDED

  LEO Harry Henshall Morbid fascination for simulated violence

  SCORPIO Matt Warden Lead singer, lying arse

  ARIES Daniel Jones Unlikely to forge career as an assertiveness coach

  CAPRICORN Craig Cunningham Relationship therapist, incites violent urges

  EMAIL

  To: Trisha; Stu

  From: Leni Lomond

  Re: If last night’s date had a personal ad, it would

  read like…

  Have you spent your whole life waiting for that exciting, crazy guy who will sweep you off your feet and make you feel like the most special thing on earth? In that case you should know that you are deluded and should seek therapy. If, however, you are looking for a smug, patronising, irritating big bastard with a penchant for psycho babble, then this male Capricorn, chronological age 31, wardrobe age 61, would like to hear from you. I am highly articulate with extreme talents in the area of conversation: i.e. I have a masters degree in talking shite and I have been known to spout such intense drivel that my dates decide that jumping from tall cliffs would be a preferable activity to a night out with me. WLTM a woman who is turned on by the sight of crumb-encrusted facial hair and is driven wild by the sight of ancient academic-style clothing. Yes, come and slide down my elbow patches. Education, intelligence and the power of speech unnecessary, because quite frankly I don’t give a toss what you think about anything anyway.

  Please note that despite uncanny physical similarities, at no time did I participate in the filming of Seventies porn.

  14

  Sunburn

  ‘Look, if it’s any consolation, he’ll probably die young as a result of a fur ball of beard hair accumulating in his oesophagus. Happens all the time.’

  ‘Ah, honey, you really know how to cheer a girl up.’

  I watched in the mirror as Stu took a deep, exaggerated bow. ‘All part of our comprehensive and unique range of services. We can also test you for diabetes, pregnancy or ovulation while you’re getting your blow-dry,’ he added with a grin.

  I’d like to hope he was kidding, but given that he was in personal possession of more medical supplies than the NHS, I decided not to probe any further. He went back to snipping away at my hair instead.

  That was the great thing about having a best friend who was a hairdresser–free highlights, the latest cuts and a bit of pampering whenever you needed it. And in return, you just had to be outrageously…

  ‘So you didn’t shag him then?’

  …indiscreet.

  ‘No!’ I yelped. ‘Not that I would have anyway, but he ran out of the place like his arse was on fire the minute I started wiping snot on my sleeve. Honestly, some guys are just so difficult to please.’

  After my ritual humiliation with Craig the hairy therapist, I might have been £54 lighter (every penny of which I intended to claim back on expenses), but at least my sense of humour had limped back, battered but not yet trampled to death, to rescue me.

  Now, two weeks later, I’d popped in to see Stu for a cut, blow-dry and catch-up. I loved Stu’s salon. He’d spent ages deliberating over names for it, ran a zillion suggestions past focus groups, friends and family, researched competitors’ brands and contemporary themes…and then called it Stuart Degas Hair. Yep, for a bloke called Stuart Degas, that one came right out of left field.

  No pun intended, but it was cutting-edge enough to appeal to minor celebs, yummy mummies and a whole catwalk of fashion types, but unpretentious and friendly enough to appeal to students and staff from nearby offices. And me.

  The salon had two storeys, both with distinct themes, although three things remained constant in both: the shiny silver floor that glistened like cut glass, the huge ornate mirrors surrounded by battered steel frames that punctuated the walls, and the massive black leather chairs complete with reclining action and a vibrating option. Stu maintained they were great for the lymphatic system.

  Upstairs was a monochrome hi-tech emporium–or, as Trish preferred to call it, Testosterone Central: huge plasma screens showing sporting events, with blaring rock music and staff in white T-shirts, scuffed-up biker boots and well-worn jeans.

  Downstairs was a gentler experience, with subtle background music, huge overstuffed zebra-print sofas and a lovely team
of achingly hip twenty-somethings who dressed all in black and brought you tea and coffee at regular intervals.

  I still found it difficult to believe that Stu had achieved all this, although strictly speaking he’d had some help from a windfall that had come his way just as we had got to know him at college. He’d never volunteered information about it and we were too early in our friendship to probe. Trish had, of course, demanded full disclosure several times since then, but Stu remained elusive. It was a bit of a coincidence, though, that an unclaimed lottery ticket that was bought in his home town hit the headlines the weekend before he went home poor and came back rich.

  But the money was only part of his success: his charm and talent brought the rest. And, of course, his unrelenting drive–fuelled, no doubt, by the harsh reality that he was single-handedly responsible for the turn-over and share prices of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies.

  My phone burst into life, and I hit the receive button.

  ‘MC Madge, world-famous rap star/pain in the anus wants her dressing room painted violet; Goldie has somehow managed to burn off her fringe–I’m thinking it was something to do with a mid-life crisis and a pot pipe–and Grey’s threatening to pick up a hooker if I don’t get home by eight. Who the fuck would have my life????’

  ‘Hang on, Trish, I’m just taking you off loudspeaker.’

  Stu was practically on the floor laughing, and every other eye in the place was pointed in the direction of my beaming face.

  ‘Loudspeaker? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Of course I’m kidding,’ I lied, sending Stu off again.

  ‘Thank fuck. Right, are you still with Stu?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you ask him if he can come tomorrow morning at six a.m. to fix pot-girl’s fringe?’

  ‘Can you go tomorrow morning to fix po—Goldie’s fringe?’

  He leaned into the phone. ‘For you, anything!’

  ‘Then throw in some violet fucking paint and a hooker as well. Ciao.’

  The line went dead and we took a few moments to recover before normal conversation resumed.

  ‘So how was the holiday, and how’s the gorgeous Sascha?’ I asked between indulgent gulps of frothy cappuccino.

  Stu had just returned from a fortnight in Marbella with a model-turned-make-up-artist he’d been seeing for the last two months. Even from another woman’s point of view, and factoring in taste and extreme thin-thigh jealousy, there was no denying that Sascha was a goddess. She almost hit the six-foot mark in heels, and combined that boho-chic Sienna Miller vibe with Giselle-esque proportions. They’d got together at a photo shoot just after New Year, when Stu was styling hair and she was styling faces, and by combining their God-given good looks with their respective artistic talents they were permanently gorgeous and groomed to perfection. And it’s not easy to admit that when you’re sitting with no make-up on, scruffy jeans and an old sweatshirt, a cappuccino moustache, and hair that–until half an hour ago–looked like it had been baked in a microwave then styled with pruning shears.

  Anyway, I had a great feeling about them, and if I were a betting woman I’d probably put money on this one going the distance.

  ‘She dumped me.’

  I now understood why God had been merciful and omitted to give me a gambling gene.

  ‘No! What happened?’

  He shrugged. ‘On holiday, nothing in common.’

  ‘You went into hypochondria overdrive, didn’t you?’

  You see, that was the thing about Stu: he managed to pretty much mask his little personality quirk to the outside world, creating this façade of being the hip, cool hairdresser guy who was too busy being Brad Pitt’s younger, better-looking brother to worry about anything so trivial as a minor ailment. It was only in the company of his closest friends, an honour that fell to Trish and me, that he felt free to be a fully fledged, germ-obsessed, Dettol-carrying hunk of neurosis.

  He shrugged again, this time with an extra edge of sheepishness, as he gave a half-hearted, obviously untrue, ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, that’s why I love you–I sleep easy at night knowing that in our little trio of friendship I don’t have the monopoly on neurosis. So what did you do?’ I asked him, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied nonchalantly.

  ‘What did you do, Stu?’ I repeated.

  He stopped cutting, picked up the hairdryer, and started on the blow-dry, leaving me to lip-read his response. I reached over and flicked the dryer off at the plug.

  ‘Pardon?’ I replied archly.

  He sighed indignantly. ‘Okay, okay–I replaced all the cream in her factor two with factor fifty. She spent the whole bloody holiday fretting and obsessing over why she wasn’t getting a tan despite lying in the sun for eight bloody hours a day. I mean, she was a malignant melanoma waiting to happen.’

  I was laughing so hard that the other clients in the salon were turning to stare.

  ‘Noooooooo! So how did she find out?’

  ‘She caught me on the second-last day. Found me in the bathroom with the two bottles, a funnel and a pair of Marigolds. I think she thought I was trying to smuggle drugs in her suntan lotion. Or engaging in some kind of deviant sexual practice. I had to confess all.’

  ‘All?’

  He nodded. ‘The daily disinfection of the bathroom; the insistence that all our food was overcooked; the secret tests on the swimming-pool water; the outright refusal to join the bacteria in the hot-tubs, the avoidance of aeroplane grub, the books on rare indigenous species of potentially dangerous insects, the telephone numbers of the nearest labs carrying antidotes…You know, all the usual holiday stuff.’

  ‘Honey, the “usual holiday stuff” is an iPod, a passport and enough knickers for a fortnight.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we can’t all be as carefree as you, Miss Sob-in-Yer-Prawns,’ he countered, grinning, as he fired up the hairdryer again. Ten minutes later, my mane was thick, shiny, and falling halfway between my chin and my shoulders in a style that was a slightly longer version of Trish’s bob. Even my perpetual knee-trembles in the face of change had been steadied by the glossy, glorious image in front of me. He’d put it into a side parting and was now taking small sections at a time and sliding a set of bright pink GHDs down them.

  Meanwhile I was musing out loud.

  ‘You know, it’s a shame we’re not attracted to each other, Stu. That would just be too easy, wouldn’t it?’

  It was an incomprehensible twist of nature that we’d pondered many times. Stu was everything I could ever want in a guy: funny, kind, caring, house-trained and in possession of the kind of toned physique that I could happily stare at all day. We loved spending time together and I couldn’t think of anyone I laughed with more. But sexual attraction? None. Void. Barren. On either side. If I was being really honest, I think that my subconscious realised that–strange idiosyncrasies aside–he belonged with some willowy model-type, and maybe on his side, his subconscious knew it too. But he’d never, ever say that out loud, and we both just put it down to a clash of opposing pheromones.

  He flashed his row of perfect white pearlies. ‘I know. It’s a sad state of affairs, really. Not to mention totally inconvenient, because I wouldn’t even have to spend a fortune trying to impress you,’ he teased.

  I swatted him with a brush. ‘Yes you would! I’m not just a cheap, easy pick-up, you know!’

  He stopped and stared at me with mock puzzlement. ‘Really? Amazing! All these years we’ve been mates and the whole time I totally misjudged you.’

  With that, he pulled my head back, kissed me on the lips and then thrust me forward, shaking my hair out with his hands as he did it.

  The result was a perfect, casual long bob that I knew I’d never be able to re-create so beautifully.

  I pouted in the mirror. ‘You know I’m only your friend because you’re a blessed genius with hair, don’t you?’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘Yep, that and you like ogling my great arse.’


  I bluffed outrage as my gaze moved down to inspect the merchandise.

  ‘Actually,’ I conceded with a grin, ‘you could be right.’

  I had a sudden thought. ‘Oh, and Stu…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well done, I’m very proud of you–we smooched at least thirty seconds ago and you haven’t run off in search of the antibacterial lip balm yet.’

  He laughed as he delved into his pocket and pulled out a little tube, squeezed a little dollop of goo on his index finger and ran it around his lips.

  I adopted my very best crushed expression.

  ‘Sorry, honey, but you know what they say…’

  ‘What do they say?’ I replied petulantly.

  ‘Pride comes before a cold sore.’

  Great Morning TV!

  Zara rounded off her weekly predictions by advising all Taureans to avoid over-spending that weekend as it could have long-lasting consequences–although she did add a caveat that David Beckham (2 May), Cher (20 May) and Barbra Streisand (24 April) probably didn’t have to worry.

  Goldie was just about to bring the show to a close when Zara smoothly interrupted her, forcing the producer to quickly switch back to Zara’s camera.

  ‘And Goldie, I forgot to mention this morning that we’re still looking for volunteers for our pioneering celestial relationship guide that will be on the bookshelves later this year.’ She smoothly turned to face her camera. ‘We’re on the hunt for young single men between twenty and thirty-five, and all you have to do, gents, is send in some information about yourself and a photograph. I’ll study your profile, apply my pioneering new compatibility techniques, and this will allow me to hand-pick the girl of your dreams and send you off on the perfect date. You never know, gents, we might just change your destiny. Are you a Gemini? Or a Pisces? If so, we especially want to hear from you this week. So what are you waiting for? Full details are on the Great Morning TV! website, or you can also get the information you’ll need by calling my personal horoscope line on 0879 555 555. Calls cost one pound per minute from all landlines, mobile-phone surcharges may apply.’