A Brand New Me

by Shari Low

  She spilled the whole story. Millie De Prix, it transpired, came from a long line of psychic De Prixes, but she was the first one to follow this up with a degree in astrology in the hope of using her gift in conjunction with traditional astrology. She’d erased the degree from her CV so that she wouldn’t seem over-qualified to be a receptionist at Zara’s office, a job she’d hoped would give her valuable experience and insight into the industry. After a year, she’d been about to resign and develop her own career when I’d joined and embarked on the dating experiments, a project that she thought would be a great test of her skills. It was. If what I’d read on Friday was anything to go by, she’d proven that she was truly gifted.

  Zara, on the other hand…

  ‘She’s a fake, Leni. She researches everyone she gives a reading to prior to meeting them, does her homework, uses subjective language…She’s all smoke and mirrors. Even the date book, I’m sure that was all a big scam: advertise for dates because that generates public interest, gets masses of free publicity, and also gives you an opportunity to rake in the advance orders. Then she would have turned out a book that looked great but had no substance whatsoever, and people would buy it anyway because it had Zara Delta on the front or because they were desperate to find love. She was just playing on people’s vulnerability and taking advantage of their emotions. I honestly don’t feel that she has any kind of talent at all–except for making money, of course.’

  It was all clearer than the glass on Mrs Naismith’s lava lamp. Millie was absolutely right about everything: to Zara this was nothing but a cash exercise, and I’d just been a tool in her methods to generate publicity. Even my reports had been used almost verbatim to fill a few more pages in the book. If it wasn’t so depressing it would be quite brilliant.

  ‘So what happened when she fired you?’

  Millie shrugged. ‘She just turned up at my door last night, ranting, raving, going crazy, waving my stuff in front of me, accusing me of sabotaging her career and trying to undermine her by stealing her ideas and then writing my own stuff.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Millie, this was entirely my fault. I saw the envelope in your back office on Friday and I read it and thought it was part of the mail delivery, and that’s why I put it on her desk. But then this morning…’

  I filled her in on my discovery of the other manuscript. This was all starting to make very horrible sense now. The disparity between the standard of the stuff I’d stumbled across on Friday and the manuscript I’d opened in the mail this morning wasn’t because one had been mocked up by a publisher; it was because one had been cocked up by Zara.

  There was a loud knock at the door. That’d be Mrs Naismith using the tea tray as a battering ram. Distracted by the ongoing discussion with Millie, I pulled it wide open, but instead of a pensioner with a tray of PG Tips and packet of chocolate digestives, Zara and Conn stomped in. Or, rather, Conn stomped and Zara glided, her gold kaftan so long that it completely covered her feet, giving the impression that she was travelling on a skateboard.

  ‘Leni, thank God you’re okay,’ Conn blurted, putting on what I had to admit was a pretty convincing act. ‘We just got your letter and we came straight over. Why would you resign?’

  ‘You resigned?’ Millie gasped.

  ‘I resigned,’ I confirmed to no one in particular.

  ‘But why?’ Millie asked, a question I suspected preempted Conn and Zara’s next words.

  ‘Because these two are completely without scruples or morals.’

  ‘Leni!’ Conn feigned incredulity well.

  ‘Oh, don’t give me that crap. I heard you talking to Jackie bloody Onassis over there…’At which point Zara snapped off her huge black sunglasses, revealing two red, swollen eyes. Good.

  ‘…about “keeping me sweet,” and let me tell you, sunshine, I’m worth far bloody more than a weekend in Marbella!’

  He didn’t even have the decency to look shame-faced.

  ‘He was taking you to Marbella?’ Millie asked, perplexed.

  Aaaaaaaaaargh! ‘No. They realised they were on shaky ground after the drug-dealing thing, and Zara sent rent-acock round to make sure I didn’t sue them.’

  ‘You devious bitch,’ Millie spat at Zara.

  ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that,’ Zara fought back. ‘You try to muscle in on my operation, and then when I fire you, you get straight on to the press and sell stories on me! How did you do it? How did you get the photos? Did you plan all along to damage my reputation so that you could make a name for yourself?’

  ‘Actually, that was me.’

  The world stopped and all three sets of eyes spun to me.

  ‘And I didn’t sell the stories–one of the dates was a press plant. They’d been trying to get you for years.’ I decided to omit the small matter of my unwitting compliance. ‘But then, if you’d checked the guys out before you sent a vulnerable young woman out onto the streets with them, you’d have known that, so actually, you set yourselves up. Hope that feels great. Now get out of my house. I’m not coming back to work because you two are lying, cheating scum. Millie isn’t coming back to work because someone with her talent doesn’t care to be in the same building as two con-merchants, and we’ll both be expecting full salary and references or the press will be hearing about his drugs, your mistreatment of staff, and whatever other things Millie and I can think up or make up.’

  Yes! Anxious, nervous, people-pleasing Leni had now well and truly cracked, and oh, it felt so, so good (and only a little terrifying) to finally speak my mind.

  ‘Don’t you dare think that you’ve got one over on me, missy,’ Zara hissed, speaking up for the first time. ‘I don’t think they’d be interested in a story from someone who was caught misappropriating company funds.’

  The tension in the air could have powered the National Grid as Millie gasped, her eyes darting from Zara to me and back again.

  ‘What funds?’

  Zara pulled a few sheets of paper from her Gucci Positano bag and threw them at me. ‘No address, fake phone numbers–we know that this was the fabricated date that the press story talked about, and we suspect there were more, yet the one-hundred-pound fee for each date was still withdrawn. So what did you do, Leni? Get your pals to say they’d go out with you and then keep the money for another pair of cheap shoes?’

  I was outraged! The accusations of theft I could just about deal with, but my shoes were not cheap! These were genuine Uggs, and I had the eBay receipt to prove it.

  Stomping over to the door to retrieve the bag I’d dropped there on the way in, I tried not to look at Ben’s photo at the top of the document Zara had just thrown at me. Bloody typical–he was making a habit of cropping up when I didn’t want him to. The banging on the door started just as I reached it, so I pulled it open, allowing Mrs Naismith and her assortment of confectionery delights to step forward. She stopped dead when she spotted Zara and Conn.

  ‘What’s that cow doing here?’ she growled.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs N, I’m on it.’

  As I pulled the file I’d brought from the office out of my bag, I felt empowered, I felt strong, and for once I felt absolutely confident. It was all I could do not to put one hand on my hip, jut my chin out and cockily shake my head from side to side in the manner of Mary J. Blige.

  It was my turn for document-brandishing: three emails, all from different charities, all confirming the receipt of one hundred pounds in the name of Zara Delta. I might be clumsy, I might not have the strongest judgement skills, I might make terrible choices–but I, Leni Lomond, was an admin whiz. I’d realised when I first fabricated the report on Nurse Dave that if the money didn’t come out of the account then Zara, with her finance obsession, would notice, so after the fake dates with Dave and Ben, and before my date with Stu, I’d sent the money off to a good cause instead. Strangely, the National Association for Shit Psychics wasn’t one of them. These receipts were ones I’d printed off in the office that morning as a little insura
nce policy against exactly this kind of scenario. Was it wrong that holding my own in all this duplicity was giving me a minor thrill?

  ‘Accuse me of anything and I’ll just say that those dates were planned with your knowledge, and you, out of the goodness of your fucked-up heart, sent the money off to charity. You cannot prove I did a single thing wrong here.’

  I honestly thought she was going to explode. The gold kaftan appeared to be inflating as rage made her even more animated and volcanic than usual.

  ‘You devious little fucker,’ she shrieked.

  ‘DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK TO HER LIKE THAT!’ came a voice from Betty Naismith, 74, resident of the Slough/Windsor border, former yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do, who strutted straight over to the nation’s most famous paranormal expert, intent on committing assault with a lethal packet of digestive biscuits.

  Conn stepped between them, hands out, trying to calm everyone down with a ‘Hey, hey, hey, let’s all just take a deep breath here. Mother, just keep it zipped for a minute and let’s see if we can all sort this out amicably.

  ‘Leni, we’re prepared to overlook the discrepancies, and we’ll agree to your notice pay and references for both of you, just as long as you agree to walk away, no fault on either side.’

  A bizarre sound, like that of a cat being strangled, came from Zara’s direction, and was rewarded with a warning glare from Conn.

  It should have felt like a victory. It was a victory. But the new me, the one that had been recently possessed by Mary J. Blige, suddenly wanted more.

  ‘Are you still going to publish the book?’

  He spluttered incredulously. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then no. I’m going to the press.’

  ‘You can’t! You signed a confidentiality agreement!’

  Millie joined Mary J. in the fray. ‘My boyfriend is a lawyer and he says that’s not worth the paper it’s written on: not witnessed, not official, and we could allege that our signatures are forged. Oh, and good luck going up against him–he’s one of the top lawyers in London.’

  My, my, my, she was a dark horse–this was the first I’d heard of a boyfriend.

  Bitch Delta and her Satan spawn were temporarily stunned, giving me the opportunity to exercise my newfound skills in negotiation and underhand tactics.

  ‘So here’s where we’re at–our requests have changed. We want six months’ salary, excellent references, and the book never sees the light of day. Now get out of my house and don’t ever, ever contact anyone here again.’

  ‘Don’t you…!’ Zara still had a fight left in her, but fortunately a new opponent was standing in the open doorway. Bloody hell, the population of Little Sweden was rising by the minute.

  ‘I think that she asked you to leave,’ Trish said, her voice like ice. ‘And if I were you I’d do that immediately…or I swear on Lorraine Kelly’s life that I’ll have Goldie give an interview reliving the horrific moment that she caught Stephen Knight sniffing coke out of your muff behind the Great Morning TV! sofa.’

  They didn’t even bang the door on the way out.

  37

  It’s in the Stars

  It was 3.30 p.m. Trish had gone to Heathrow to collect Verity, who’d abandoned the shoot as soon as she’d heard about Stu and caught the next flight home. I’d been waiting in the hospital reception for thirty minutes now and no one was telling me anything. I was shaking like Zara on her cosmic vibrating ball, and despite an adequate personal hygiene regime, very unattractive sweat patches were forming under my arms while I rocked back and forward repeating an internal prayer of, ‘Please God, make him be okay, please God, make him be okay, please God, make…’

  ‘Leni, isn’t it?’ It was teen-doctor, who’d probably given up cheerleading practice to keep our meeting. She took me through the double doors and then stopped outside a door at the end of the corridor. Why was she stopping here? Was this where they delivered bad news? Had they moved him to a ward? To another hospital? Or to the…Nope, couldn’t even think that. He wasn’t dead. He was fine. He was fine. He was…

  ‘Stuart is going to be fine. We’ve run comprehensive checks and we are fairly sure it was just a very severe panic attack, one that was exacerbated by an influenza virus. The likely scenario is that the virus caused the tightening of the chest wall, this triggered the panic attack, and the combination of the two symptoms mimicked that of a heart attack.’

  Mimicked? She made it sound like an act at a comedy club. Hi, I’m your aortic valve and I’ll be your compere for the evening.

  Elation soared from the pit of my stomach, destroying the knot in the back of my throat on the way up. Stu wasn’t dead; he was just having a little bout of ‘mimicking’.

  ‘Thank you, doctor, thank you so much, and I’m sorry if we’ve wasted your time, but I just panicked.’

  ‘No, not at all. Given his history, you were absolutely right to come straight here. We’re just preparing the discharge paperwork and then you can take him home. He’s already dressed and waiting.’

  She opened the door to a little private room, motioned me to go through and then went off in the other direction.

  Stu lay on a bed in the middle of the room, his hair wild and unkempt, his face pale and gaunt, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy, yet I didn’t think he’d ever looked more gorgeous.

  ‘Hi,’ he croaked. ‘Sorry we missed the show.’

  ‘S’okay, I know how it ends. But I can’t promise I won’t jump off the sideboard and make you catch me later.’

  His laugh degenerated into a full-scale coughing fit.

  ‘You’re absolutely fine,’ I told him, great big dollops of tears falling again and landing on his five-hundred-pound shirt.

  ‘I know. Sorry if I scared you.’

  ‘You did,’ I whispered. ‘But I’m just so relieved you’re okay, Stu. I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ he replied, smiling for the first time.

  ‘You do?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Good. Then you can tell me what that twelve-year-old doctor was talking about when she referred to “your history”!’

  ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.’ Never before had I seen the devastated expression on Stu’s face, or heard the raw, searing pain in his voice.

  It was early evening now and we were back in his flat. Trish and Verity had arrived minutes after we had, and now all of us sat utterly still as we listened, only slightly distracted by the fact that Verity was wearing the standard uniform for most people on a lazy Sunday afternoon: a pink sequinned boob tube, white leather skinny trousers and platforms the size of my car.

  ‘My dad died of it when I was ten.’

  Trish’s eyes widened, mirroring mine. We knew that Stu had been raised by his mum but I couldn’t remember him ever mentioning his dad, other than saying that he had ‘never been in the picture’.

  ‘Him and Mum had separated, but I was still gutted when he died, and I suppose it freaked me out that no one could ever tell me why. Doesn’t take a genius to work out that’s where the hypochondria started, although I wasn’t really aware of it at first. Michael Jackson wore a facemask and slept in an oxygen bubble, so I didn’t think compulsive germ avoidance was such a bizarre concept.’

  My heart was breaking for him. All this time we’d laughed and joked about his bizarre idiosyncrasies and it transpired that they were rooted in tragedy.

  ‘Remember I took some time out when we were in college?’

  Trish and I nodded as he sighed. ‘History repeated itself. My dad’s brother died too, and again there were no symptoms, no explanations–just Sudden Adult Death Syndrome recorded on the certificate. I was away for a few weeks because my doctor had me admitted so they could run tests to check for anything hereditary.’

  ‘I thought you’d won a few quid, discovered dope and sex and gone on a month-long shagathon with your childhood sweetheart?’ Trish exclaimed.

  ‘I think I might have told you that at the time,’ Stu said with an apologetic grin
that turned to mischief. ‘Did it make me seem more interesting and wild?’

  ‘Not enough to make me want to have sex with you,’ Trish retorted.

  ‘Then out of tragedy came a blessing.’

  Thankfully, the health scare hadn’t diminished his ducking reflex, which came in handy in avoiding the cushion that Trish launched across the room.

  ‘That’s where I got the money I used to buy the salon. My dad’s brother was a scrap merchant, one with no kids and a stockmarket hobby. He left me five hundred grand.’

  ‘Fuck, now I want to sleep with you,’ Trish moaned.

  I stopped myself from gasping out loud. So that’s where the money had come from! And so much!

  ‘He also left me with an inherent fear that I’d be next. The doctors say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, they’ve done every test possible and I’m healthy, but I suppose that it just all sits in the subconscious.’

  ‘That’s completely understandable, Stu,’ I piped up, desperately sad that I hadn’t known, and hadn’t been able to help him through what must have been a terrifying time.

  ‘Would you have slept with him if you’d known about the dosh?’ Trish asked glibly, causing us all to crease into laughter.

  ‘Erm, excuse me, can I just point out that you are in fact talking about my boyfriend and I’d thank you to keep your manipulative sexual longings towards him to yourself.’

  Verity was laughing, but, well, she had a point. Stu was her boyfriend. And girlfriend/boyfriend gazumped best friends every time. Much as all I wanted to do was cuddle up on the sofa with him and hold him tight for the rest of the night (an act completely unmotivated by the extent of his recently revealed windfall), Trish and I should leave and let them have some time together.

  As we left, I kissed him lightly on the forehead.

  ‘Dirty Dancing next week instead?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re on.’

  ‘Good–it’s a date.’