A Brand New Me

by Shari Low

  I checked out the clock. ‘Okay, we’ve got ten minutes before Trish and Verity are finished in Tae Bo class–fancy a dip in the hot tub?’

  I only asked so that I could have a chuckle at his horrified reaction. Coming to a health club with Stu, even a posh one like this, was an exercise in bacteria avoidance. Apparently the hot tub was just a whole big bucket of lethal germs, the steam room sucked the body fat out of you and deposited it in the open pores of everyone nearby, and you could get verrucas just by looking at the floor without your shoes on. I figured Stu must have really fallen for Verity to have agreed to come with us tonight, or perhaps he just felt sorry for me after I confessed I’d rather have my toenails plucked out than join Trish and Verity in a group exercise session. I’d coerced him into the sauna, but only after he’d washed the benches down with an antibacterial solution.

  Stu lay back down opposite me and put his hands under the back of his head. ‘I’m not rising to the bait, Lomond. You’ve got a sick sense of humour. So anyway, what happened next with John Boy and the rest of the Waltons?’

  ‘Nothing. Actually, lots of things, but none that I can remember too clearly…although I do have a vivid recollection of singing “Islands in the Stream” with Grandpa Jack somewhere between my tenth and eleventh beer. Honestly, it was the best night out I’ve had for ages. I told them I’d be back next week with you and Trish.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’ll have to wait until I check if my inoculations for Third World environments are up-to-date. So are you seeing him again?’

  ‘Noooooo! Because here’s the weirdest thing…’

  And weird it was. The mental video of the night before played back in my head. Gregory’s mother, who’d insisted I called her Glenda now that, according to her, Gregory and I were ‘practically engaged’, had been up on stage doing a duet to “Endless Love,” featuring scarily impressive impersonations of both Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie’s voices. Gregory was swaying gently on his stool, I’m not sure if it was in keeping with the music or in keeping with the dozen beers he’d consumed, when he tilted over in my direction. I’d had one of those horrible moments of dread. Was I going to have to let him down gently? Was this that horrible point in the night when I would reject his advances and he’d descend into a mire of spite and petulance?

  ‘Lied to you earlier,’ he confessed with just a slight slur.

  Considering he’d muttered no more than two dozen words to me all night, I was at a loss to work out which monosyllabic rant had been a lie.

  ‘Not single,’ he added.

  The spattering of people still in the pub descended into laughter as Glenda turned her musical promises of everlasting devotion on two ancient little men who were sitting in the corner playing dominoes. If she didn’t get off that old bloke soon we’d have to take him straight to A&E for a hip replacement.

  ‘But that’s great,’ I enthused. Even through the fog of my tipsy state, I realised that this was welcome news that would delight his mother, who’d already told me at least twenty times that she was ‘thrilled that you and our Gregory are hitting it off–and just think it was me who brought you both together’. Then she’d tilt her head to one side in a manner that suggested she was planning the colour scheme for the bridesmaids and working out how many sausage rolls she’d need for the buffet.

  It was quite clear that it was Glenda’s life’s mission to marry off her shy, reserved son and live happily ever after trailing eight grandkids to every Chelsea home game. She’d dedicate her life to their education and development, welling with pride when they sat in that stadium singing ‘Ferdinand, ya muppet’ by their third birthday.

  ‘So who’s the lucky girl, and why haven’t you told your mum, Gregory? She’s obviously desperate for you to meet someone. She’ll be thrilled.’

  ‘Won’t.’

  ‘Will.’

  ‘Won’t.’

  ‘Okay, this could go on all night. Why won’t your mother be pleased–is there something wrong with…what’s her name?’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Cool name. So, back to my question–is there something wrong with her?’

  ‘Him.’

  It took me a moment to process the information.

  ‘What?’

  Gregory didn’t even reply. Instead he nodded his head in the direction of the youngest bloke left in the pub, a near carbon copy of Gregory himself, but with shaggy auburn hair and a vintage Stone Roses T-shirt.

  Come to think about it, I had noticed the guy staring over earlier, but I’d just thought…well, one ego requiring emergency first aid yet again.

  ‘Oh, Gregory, you’re gay?’

  ‘Ssssssshhhh,’ he’d chastised me, his eyes darting to locate his mother in the desperate hope that she hadn’t overheard. He needn’t have worried. She was too busy asking the man behind the bar if he had a paracetamol for the old bloke she’d practically paralysed.

  ‘But Gregory, she’s a nice woman. And she obviously loves you so she’ll understand.’

  ‘Won’t.’

  ‘Will.’

  ‘Won’t.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Gregory, she will. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being gay.’

  ‘I know that…’

  I didn’t get it.

  ‘So what are you worried about then?’

  He nodded in the direction of his special friend again. ‘He’s an Arsenal supporter.’

  Stu’s ornately carved torso was literally doubled up with laughter when the door opened and Verity and Trish came in. Trish had gone down the route of efficient practicality and was wearing a Speedo all-in-one swimsuit; while Verity, on the other hand, was covering her modesty with a large bath towel…which she then dropped to reveal a tiny leopard-print thong. It was resoundingly obvious why thousands of males (and a fair few females) across the nation were more than happy to hand over some of their hard-earned cash for the privilege of having a Verity Fox calendar. She was a goddess. Her buttocks were made of solid steel, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her perfect contours, a droplet of four diamonds dangled on her perfectly flat stomach below her belly button, and her bare, gravity-defying nipples still pointed, unsupported, in the direction of the ceiling. If those boobs could shoot nuclear warheads, Verity could eradicate an enemy air force in minutes.

  Trish groaned, ‘Verity, put those away before you take someone’s eye out,’ but her objection raised only a giggle from the unembarrassed model.

  I raised my eyes to heaven. Dear God, in my next life can I put in an advance order to come back looking like that?

  Verity climbed up to sit next to Stu, giving Trish and me a full view of her centrefold.

  ‘Eeeeewww, put that away too,’ wailed Trish.

  Stu casually draped an arm around her and kissed her swan-like neck, turning a sauna with a chum into a Calvin Klein ad.

  ‘Gossip time,’ Trish announced, bringing all eyes to her. ‘But it’s highly classified, so I need to confirm that none of you are in possession of a recording device.’

  All eyes now simultaneously swung to Verity’s tiny slither of a thong. ‘If you’ve got an eight-millimetre reel-to-reel in there, I’m fucked,’ Trish deadpanned. ‘You know that Goldie Gilmartin is living with her toy-boy male stripper?’

  We all nodded expectantly.

  ‘Well, that’s now expanded to a threesome situation with the inclusion of a rather gorgeous, decidedly female Amazonian lawyer.’

  ‘Nooooooooo!’ I gasped.

  It would have been fine if I’d left it at that, but no, in my astonishment and sweaty, slippery, shocked state, I leaned forward, became unbalanced and slid off the bench, landing with an excruciating thud only centimetres from the hot coals. It took a few stunned seconds to realise why my pain sensors were screaming, until the water bucket that was upturned and covering my left foot gave me a clue. Oh, the pain! Three fractured toes! Okay, three stubbed and bruised toes, but in that moment it felt like amputation was the only viable option.


  Further up, the news wasn’t much better. There was a sickly metallic taste in my mouth that could only come from blood, and after an investigative prod I could categorically confirm that I’d bitten my bottom lip during the slide.

  The only consolation was that my friends were a picture of concern and care–right up until they realised that I wasn’t seriously injured or dead, when they gave in to their trite, slapstick mentalities and laughed like drains.

  It was difficult to tell what was more disturbing: their reactions, the pain, or that Verity was now rushing to my aid, running the very real risk of incurring two breast-inflicted black eyes. It was like a scene from Attack of the Killer Bosoms.

  An hour later, the stairs to my flat had never seemed so steep or so exhausting. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. I stopped to catch my breath.

  I was dehydrated from the sauna, had a huge bandage on my foot, and I was sure I must have lost at least eighty per cent of my blood through the hole in my bottom lip. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine…I averted my eyes from the mirror on the facing wall of my landing. In my acute misery and pain, I’d boycotted the shower and come straight home for a long, soothing bath, so my lank hair was scraped back off my red, swollen, shiny face.

  Thank God I hadn’t met anyone I knew.

  ‘Hello, love, what are you doing out here? Oh, good grief, what happened to you? Was it that bloody pothole outside the front door? That’s it, I’m suing the council.’

  ‘Shno, schno, ish washn’t,’ I replied through the pork sausage that was masquerading as my bottom lip. Mrs Naismith. I swear that at some point in the years we’d known each other she must have implanted a satellite navigation chip on my person, one that alerted her to my impending arrival and allowed her to burst out of the door for a wee chat every time I came home.

  ‘Ish wash…’

  The sentence hung in the air, cut off by a loud and definite noise from inside my apartment.

  It took a few seconds for us to register the implications, and then Mrs Naismith’s eyes widened, she disappeared into her flat and returned in a flash, clutching a video camera and an Aboriginal stick her daughter had brought back from her last diving expedition to the Great Barrier Reef. Her eyes were wide, her demeanour oozing ecstatic giddiness that the Crimewatch reconstruction was finally within her grasp.

  Bugger. Bloody, bloody bugger. I was a physical wreck, I’d had a shit day, and all I wanted was a bloody bath, yet now I was about to confront potentially armed criminals with an Australian artefact, a video camera and an OAP who had brushed her hair and slapped on a bit of lippy for the occasion.

  Using military hand signals that I’m sure she’d picked up from watching Rambo, she motioned for me to put my key in the lock. Slowly, gently, it went in, any friction sounds drowned out by the noise of someone moving around inside, walking down the hall now, their footsteps getting closer to the other side of the door, closer, closer, until…Okay, I admit it, I panicked. I shoved the key right as far as it would go, twisted it sharply with one hand, and with the other hand squeezed the tiny personal alarm that was around my neck, which emitted a deafening, piercing screech that drowned out our roars as we burst in ready to take on the burglars. Or at least capture them on film before they tied us up, ransacked the house and made off with all my worldly tat. It was definitely a plan, a really bad one that went horribly wrong when my marrow-shaped bandage caught on the door runner and I went crashing down, swiftly followed by Mrs Naismith, who landed with a thud on top of me but mercifully, by virtue of luck rather than design, somehow managed to avoid impaling me with a three-foot-long pointy stick.

  I was stuck, trapped under a senior citizen, eardrums bursting with the screams from the alarm, but my wits hadn’t deserted me. This was a survival situation! I opened my eyes, determined to re-evaluate the options and deploy the necessary manoeuvres to get me and my cohort out with minimal collateral damage–I think I watched the Rambo movie too–and that’s when I saw it: the big black boot. It was coming closer, closer, its leather bending, the laces straining, the thick soles leaving indentations in the carpet. Oh no. Dear God, no. Anything but this.

  Closer, closer, until it stopped only inches from my head. I didn’t, couldn’t look. I’d seen this before, and last time the trauma had almost derailed me for life.

  The boot pulled back as the occupier bent down on one knee. Before I could stop it, his hand was on my face and his breath was hot against my cheek.

  ‘Leni! Leni! Are you okay? Shit, talk to me, Leni, are you okay?’

  I swatted the hand away, desperate to escape but knowing it was hopeless–with Mrs Naismith’s arthritis it would take about a week to get her off me.

  I sighed and closed my eyes again, resigned to my fate.

  ‘I’m fine. Absolutely smashing. So…what are you doing here, Ben?’

  26

  Libra

  All was back to how it should be: the personal alarm had finally been switched off, Mrs Naismith was back in her home, the Aboriginal artefact was back up on the wall, and I was lying on my couch with a cup of tea. A completely normal situation…if I didn’t look like I’d been run over by a bus, and if I wasn’t drinking my tea through a straw, and if my ex-very-married-lying-boyfriend wasn’t sitting on the floor in front of me.

  ‘Can I say sorry now?’ he asked mournfully.

  ‘Fer whatch spit?’

  It took him a moment. ‘All of it.’

  We were having serious communication problems. He was struggling to understand me because of my facial injuries, and I was struggling to hear him over the racket of my thundering heart, my shaking legs, and the roar of the blood rushing through my head.

  Ben. Two years on from his betrayal and I had been so, so sure that I was over him. I was. I’d moved on. Let go of the grief. Banished the bitterness.

  ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Leni.’

  ‘Try,’ I spat back venomously. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t quite ready to put him on my ‘Favourite Chums’ list.

  My emotions were in a maelstrom of confusion. On one level I was furious and wanted him out of my house, while on another I wanted answers. There was a part of me that wondered how long I’d get for assault with a household implement, while there was another part that…Okay, I admit it–his sheer physical, gorgeous bloody presence was so intoxicatingly overwhelming that it seemed to have rendered me incapable of rational thought. His skin, battered by the sun, was the colour of Galaxy chocolate, his scrub of hair cropped close against his scalp, shoulders the width of my coffee table and straining against the ultra-tight khaki T-shirt, thighs clearly visible and defined under his combats. He was the incredibly handsome, perfectly formed prototype for Cheating Bastard Action Man. To my intense irritation, his voice, his smile, still had an almost hypnotic effect on me. Every movement, every gesture dragged the past into the present and caused more physical aches than a swift departure from a sauna bench.

  Once he’d been everything. Trish and Stu aside, there had never been anyone that I’d connected with so completely, who accepted me for everything that I was: faults, mishaps, insecurities, clumsiness and all.

  We used to talk for hours about everything, anything. Now? Silence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered eventually.

  ‘Good effort. I can see why it took you two years to develop your defence.’

  He had the decency to look shamefaced during the next 3.5 minutes of silence, the stillness broken only by my fidgeting with the toggle on my sweat-top. If we kept up these pauses Mrs Naismith would be sending her listening device back to the factory with a claim that it was defective.

  ‘I didn’t plan to do it. When I first met you, you were just so sweet and so vulnerable and funny that I was blown away. I wanted to tell you the first time we were together, but even then I knew what you would do and I just…didn’t…want to lose you.’

  ‘I can see how that could happen,’ I conceded.

  ‘You
can?’ he answered, a glint of optimistic surprise in his eyes.

  ‘Absolutely…if you were a low-life cheating arse.’

  Two years of hurt and loss were pouring out in the form of snide vitriol.

  ‘I was an arse, but you have to know that I loved you. I still love you.’

  A voice in my head screamed nooooooo, don’t say that! DO NOT SAY THAT! Do not come along when I’m at an all-time physical and emotional low and say beautiful things to me. Despite fierce resistance from the sections of my brain marked ‘pride and dignity’, I could feel my ice-maiden act begin to melt, because there was I, sitting there looking like roadkill, yet he could still look me in the eye and tell me he loved me.

  To my utter horror, in amongst all the negative feelings and reactions, ‘attraction and lust’ began to surface in the emotional melting pot. I suddenly had a new understanding of the meaning of the phrase, ‘Everything happens for a reason’ because it had just become clear that the reason that God had inflicted on me a mouth like a lilo was so that I wouldn’t give in to the inexplicable, utterly ridiculous primal urge to kiss Ben from the top of his crew-cut to his army supply boots.

  I attempted to re-ignite ‘blind bloody fury’. ‘And your wife?’

  He sighed as his eyes fell to the floor.

  ‘Over. She left. Army life is tough for families and she decided she didn’t want it any more.’

  To my complete disgust, one of my heart valves burst into the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.

  ‘She still lives near the base so I see my daughter when I’m home. She’s seven now. Gorgeous. Funny. Amazing.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ No idea why I needed to know that.

  ‘Christy.’ He smiled when he said it.

  I exhaled wearily, and then winced as the cool air rushed past my lip wound.

  There was another long pause. I had a vision of Mrs Naismith on the other side of the wall, panicking because she couldn’t see what was going on. I decided it was time to cut to the important stuff and get it out of the way so she could get back to the Coronation Street omnibus.