A Brand New Me Read online

  SHARI LOW

  A Brand New Me

  To Danny Murphy, our incredibly handsome new

  nephew, who won’t be allowed to read this until he’s

  at least thirty!

  To John, who knows he is everything, always…

  And to my boys Callan & Brad, for being hilarious,

  outrageous and endlessly cuddly.

  Now can one of you please learn to make tea.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue ‘Three … two … one … Happy New Year!’

  Chapter 1 - Wired to the Moon

  Chapter 2 - Aligning the Planets

  Great Morning TV!

  Chapter 3 - Star Gazing

  Chapter 4 - The Leo Date

  Chapter 5 - Shooting Stars

  Chapter 6 - Earth Calling Zara

  Great Morning TV!

  Chapter 7 - The Scorpio Date

  Chapter 8 - Stars in Their Eyes

  The Daily Globe, Female Section, 20 February

  Chapter 9 - The Aries Date

  Chapter 10 - A Cold Moon Rising

  Chapter 11 - Star-Crossed

  Chapter 12 - The Capricorn Date

  Chapter 13 - The Outer Cosmos

  Chapter 14 - Sunburn

  Great Morning TV!

  Chapter 15 - The Gemini Date

  Chapter 16 - Starry Starry Night …

  Chapter 17 - Space Oddity

  Chapter 18 - The Milky Way

  Chapter 19 - Total Eclipse of the Heart

  Kiss FM Commercial Break. 6.45 a.m.

  Chapter 20 - Lunar Landing

  Chapter 21 - Jupiter’s Moons

  Chapter 22 - The Aquarius Date

  Chapter 23 - Twinkle Twinkle …

  Chapter 24 - The Cancer Date

  Chapter 25 - Women Are from Venus

  Chapter 26 - Libra

  Chapter 27 - Superstar

  Chapter 28 - Starman

  Chapter 29 - The Virgo Date

  Chapter 30 - The Sagittarius Date

  Chapter 31 - Star Maker

  Great Morning TV!

  Chapter 32 - The Powers of Uranus

  Chapter 33 - Mercury Rising

  Chapter 34 - The Big Bang

  Chapter 35 - Star Central

  Chapter 36 - Cosmic Explosion

  Chapter 37 - It’s in the Stars

  Great Morning TV! – New Year’s Day

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise for Shari Low

  By the Same Author:

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  ‘Three…two…one…Happy New Year!’

  The champagne corks popped, streamers fell, the music blared, lovers embraced, their hearts overflowing with joy as they welcomed in another year…

  But unfortunately all that happened on the TV.

  In my living room, three twenty-something friends sat shrouded in dejection, watching the celebrations on the box, each clutching a sparkler in one hand and a drink in the other.

  ‘We are officially the saddest people on the planet,’ I muttered.

  ‘No, we are not!’ argued Stuart.

  Over on the other couch, Trish burst into a faux-tragic rendition of ‘My Heart Must Go On’.

  ‘Okay, now we are,’ said Stu. ‘Right, Trish, one verse and a chorus and that’s it. My ears will start to bleed any minute.’

  His voice got louder with every word as he endeavoured to be heard over the noise of poppers and whistles coming from next door. Even my neighbour Mrs Naismith was having a much wilder time than us, which, given that she was in her seventies, was taking the night to a whole new level of depression.

  A wave of something suddenly consumed me. In hindsight it was probably several large glasses of Rosé Cava, but at that moment it absolutely felt like it was something real–something important. ‘I’m making a resolution,’ I announced.

  ‘Here we go…’ grinned Stuart, consulting his watch. ‘Two minutes, three seconds–that’s a record.’

  I ignored him and spoke up so that I could be heard over the noise of Trish going down with the Titanic.

  ‘My dear saddo friends, this is it–this is the year I stop being unfulfilled, skint and single. I’m going to find the perfect job, the perfect man, the perfect life. Oh, and sex–I’m going to have bloody great sex!’

  I stood up with a flourish and dramatically raised my glass to propose a toast…

  ‘Wow!’ spluttered Stu and Trish in perfect synchronisation.

  I was gratified by the enthusiastic reactions from my audience.

  ‘I know,’ I continued, in the solemn, dignified manner of a politician announcing that he was running for prime minister, ‘it’s a huge challenge, but I’m determined.’

  ‘Leni, get out of the way of the telly! We weren’t wowing you, you daft cow–you’ve made that same speech every year since 1998. We were wowing at the poor bloke playing the bagpipes. A gust of wind just flicked up his kilt and he flashed the entire watching world.’

  Trish had now ceased channelling Celine Dion and dissolved into a puddle of giggles. ‘And I don’t rate his chances of getting a date tonight.’

  Stu automatically leapt to the defence of his fellow man. ‘Look, it’s cold out there–give the guy a break.’

  I thumped back down on the couch just as Stu and Trish’s laughter escalated due to the antics of the demented presenter, who was now making the whole situation even more hilarious by trying to hold down the front of the undeniably cute piper’s kilt with a large microphone.

  Fabulous–the announcement of my life-changing mission had been gazumped by an event that would feature on those TV’s Naughtiest Blunders until the end of time. Although…I suppose they did have a point. Yes, I had made similar resolutions before, but this time I absolutely, definitely meant it. I did. This was going to be the year that I changed my destiny, and the only way to do that would be to take chances, be bold, be fearless, and relentlessly look for opportunities everywhere. Starting right now.

  I wondered if there was any chance of getting that piper’s number?

  1

  Wired to the Moon

  Four weeks later…

  ‘Leni, do you truly believe that the stars control your fate?’ asked the woman in front of me. The same woman that had positioned her desk according to the laws of feng shui, studied my feet, cleansed my chakras, and taken a snapshot of my aura. And that was just at our first meeting.

  This was the second and final interview and she’d upped the stakes by comparing our Chinese horoscopes, reading my retinas, analysing my star sign (Libra), and asking me to join in a meditation session to connect with our higher selves. To be honest, my higher self just wanted to know if I had the job and whether or not it came with private healthcare, because if I sat with my legs in the crossed position for much longer I’d have a groin strain that would require urgent medical attention.

  In the meantime, I nodded in what I hoped was a Zenlike fashion at Zara Delta, spiritual guru, author, television celebrity and founder of the web’s most popular astrology site: www.itsinthestars.net.

  Other than the cosmos, Uranus, Neptune and whatever other paranormal forces that may or may not have been involved, I had Trish to thank for getting me in front of Ms Delta. After four years in catering college, Trish had abandoned her idea of becoming a chef in her final year, when a particularly challenging work placement made her realise that putting her own rather volatile personality in close proximity to notoriously temperamental creatures in a confined space stacked with lethal weapons could one day lead to the need for a defence lawyer. Instead, she’d taken the admin route and worked her way up to Food & Beverage Manager of a very swanky London hotel
, before buckling to her love of all things shallow and showbiz by accepting a job as Hospitality & Catering Manager at Great Morning TV!, a role that involved meeting, greeting and catering to every whim, request and rumbling stomach of the show’s stars and guests. Want all the blue M&Ms out of the bowl? Trish would get it done (although she might offer several suggestions as to where the offending sweets could be stored, all of which would require surgery to remove). If a Hollywood A-lister required her macrobiotic bran to be served by Buddhist monks on skateboards, Trish was the one who nipped down to the temple to deliver a crash course in street sports. A soap star showed up drunk, in the night-before’s party clothes, having somehow lost her knickers along the way? Trish’s trusty supply of coffee, aspirins and granny pants came to the rescue. It was rumoured that she even supplied a notorious movie-star bad boy with the medication to cure his crabs after a traumatising incident involving a pre-show shower, suspect residue on a towel and several minutes of stomach-churning screams (all his). She had so far refused to confirm or deny, but since the day of the alleged incident there had been a pair of Marigolds in her desk drawer.

  In short, there was nothing she couldn’t arrange for the pampered prima donnas who beamed into the televisions of the British public every morning, the biggest prima donna of them all (according to Trish) being Zara Delta, the show’s resident astrologer, who popped in at the end of every week to deliver her starry predictions.

  Thankfully for me, though (depending on how you felt about working for a temperamental astrologer who believed her menstrual cycle was controlled by galactic forces), Trish had put her personal feelings to one side when, on the first Friday back at work after our New Year’s knees-up, Zara had stormed into the green room late, screeching that her PA had ‘buggered off to the Turks & Caicos’ with a boy-band member over the New Year break and failed to return. Like a true friend, Trish had bolted right over to her, armed with a tray of Danish pastries, and told her she knew of the perfect replacement for her erstwhile assistant. That would, apparently, be me. Although, I’m not sure how my five years of experience in the marketing department of City Plumbing Supplies (although I solemnly swear I didn’t come up with the slogan ‘Our Toilet Fittings Won’t Drive U Round the Bend’) qualified me for a job as a celebrity PA.

  True to form, when she’d called to give me the news, Trish’s honesty had been about as subtle as a nuclear missile with PMT.

  ‘Look, it’s not like you’ve got any other options on the table. And she’s desperate–she’ll take anyone. She’s really been left in the lurch.’

  ‘Trish, I hate to point out the obvious–but if Zara was any good at her job, wouldn’t she have seen it coming?’

  ‘Leni, do you want the job or not?’

  I’d hesitated. The truth was that I probably didn’t. You see, much as my vino-fuelled rant at New Year had been made with wholehearted conviction, as Stu had sweetly pointed out, I did make that announcement on an annual basis. However, courtesy of a lifelong aversion to taking risks of any kind, my resolution for change never lasted longer than the New Year hangover.

  I’d love to be adventurous and relish the thrill of spontaneous acts, but I’ve enough self-awareness to realise that I’m, well, a bit of a plodder. I’m comfortable with familiarity. I’m consistent. Predictable. I even occasionally relish boredom. And on the rare occasions that I do make a concerted effort to be more daring and open to life’s experiences, my ‘New Challenges’ gene gives up after five minutes and goes back to lying on a couch munching crisps and watching reality TV.

  ‘Leni? LENI?!’ Trish’s voice had boomed from the handset.

  As her agitation had emanated up the phone line, my eyes had flicked to the book sticking out of my handbag: Ten Steps to a Whole New You. Waste of a tree and £6.99, because I’d finished it on the tube that morning and had realised that the old me was still rooted to the spot. My anxiety levels had slid upwards as I mentally prepared myself to utter the ‘thanks, but no thanks, you’re a great pal, good of you to think of me’ platitudes.

  ‘Trish, thanks…’

  I’d lost track of the conversation, because right at that moment the head of design, Archie Botham, arrived, beaming in such a proud manner you’d swear he’d either won the lottery or given birth to the second coming. As he’d slapped a mangle of plastic down on my desk, I’d realised it was neither.

  ‘This ballcock will revolutionise toilets,’ he’d declared, with all the excitement of someone who realised he was a shoo-in for a Nobel Prize for Sanitary Ware Design. ‘Draw us up a provisional press release, Leni,’ he’d demanded in his thick Lancastrian accent. ‘Aye, girl, this is really going to put us on the map. I’m calling it The Botham Ballcock.’

  They say that when your life is about to end you get flashbacks of the highlights. I suddenly realised that if I, Eleanor Olive Lomond, aged 27, got killed by a dose of salmonella in my chicken mayo baguette one lunchtime in the foreseeable future, the last thing I’d see was my name at the bottom of a press release announcing superior flushing technology.

  ‘I’ll take it!’ I’d blurted.

  ‘The ballcock?’ asked Archie, with more than a hint of puzzlement.

  ‘What?’ bellowed Trish.

  I’d gesticulated to the phone sandwiched between my neck and shoulder and motioned to Archie to give me a minute. He’d backed off, clutching his revolutionary invention to his chest.

  ‘I said I’ll take it–the job,’ I’d whispered, anxious not to burst Archie’s euphoria by alerting him to my potential desertion.

  ‘Wise decision. She’ll have to interview you first, though.’

  ‘Just tell me when and where.’ I could do this. I could. I’d just taken one giant step (albeit with Trish pushing from behind), and all I needed to complete the rest of the ten steps to a brand new me were courage, determination…

  ‘And you might have to tell her you’re a firm believer in the paranormal–you’ve seen her on telly, she’s on a oneway ticket to Loon Central.’

  …and bold-faced lies.

  Thus I came to be sitting in front of Zara Delta, nursing a debilitating groin strain while channelling Zen. I felt it wasn’t an opportune time to tell her that the only Zen I knew owned our local kebab shop and was under investigation by Environmental Health.

  In the manner befitting a wonderfully efficient PA (and to take my mind off the fact that this was only the second interview of my adult life), I’d meticulously researched the do’s and don’ts of successful interviews. Embarrassing revelation, number one: Ten Steps to a Whole New You wasn’t a one-off random purchase. In fact, there was a good chance that I was single-handedly responsible for keeping the entire self-help industry afloat. Other people read gossip mags. Some collect stamps. I’ve got a high-grade habit that involves lots of books with the words ‘Steps’ and ‘Dummies’ in the title. By rights, I should be able to manage any situation in one minute, unleash the giant within me, and be capable of doing a PowerPoint presentation while winning friends, influencing people, thinking positively and re-bonding with my granny.

  The emphasis on that last bit being ‘should’. Somehow those affirming bibles of improvement seemed to have an expiry date approximately eight hours after I’d turned the last page, when my inherent personality traits kicked back in and shifted my paradigms right back to the ones I was born with. Yet I couldn’t stop reading them. I was like the shoe-holic who bought four-inch platforms in fourteen different colours even though she’d never wear them. To be honest, I thought I’d only be cured when I found a self-help guide to cure me of my dependence on self-help guides.

  Unsurprisingly, none of the techniques or questions recommended in the self-help section came up during the first interview–well, I say interview, but the reality was that every time I spoke she shushed me and told me it was interfering with her attempts to connect our spiritual forces. That was a week ago, and now, to my frankly gobsmacked surprise, she’d called me back again. My spiritual f
orces must have been acting particularly slutty and welcoming all advances.

  In the seven-day interval, my natural tendencies (the ones that were begging me to forget any crazy notions of new jobs and mad astrologers) were kicked to the kerb by intrigue, and the reminder that if I didn’t make the change now I’d be contemplating Botham’s Ballcocks right up to my pension years.

  I’d read in Prepare Yourself, the Job Is Yours (£9.99 from all good bookshops) that employers form impressions within seconds of clapping eyes on you, so for our first meeting I’d gone a bit formal and pulled my eternally uncontrollable red, shoulder-blade-length hair back into a (only slightly messy) chignon, donned my one skirt suit (black, polyester, Primark, £19.99), a white top, and shoved my protesting feet into black court shoes with three-inch heels. Afterwards, I realised that the outfit probably gave the impression that I was about to serve her a chicken cacciatore at an Italian bistro. And since the heels made me about five foot eleven and a good nine inches taller than my potential employer, I decided to re-evaluate for our second meeting. This time I’d gone casual: black skinny jeans, ballet pumps, white T-shirt, soft grey merino wool wrap with my hair middle-parted, loose and wavy, completely undisciplined by straighteners. On Nicole Kidman, that hair is sexy, casual and straight out the pages of Vogue. On me it’s a bird’s nest straight out of National Geographic.

  Suddenly Zara flicked her eyes open and inhaled dramatically. Was this it? Was this when she delivered her decision? Or decided that my higher self wasn’t qualified for the post? Nope, eyes shut again, back in weird trance. Zara Delta: founder member of Wackos ‘R’ Us.

  Or maybe that should be Hippy Throwbacks ‘R’ Us, given that Zara’s wardrobe seemed to consist entirely of tie-dyed kaftans, straw flip-flops and headbands from which protruded a menagerie of flowers. Today there was a sunflower sticking out of one side, and three large daisies had wilted on the other side, drooping towards her shoulder. Her thick mahogany hair flowed down to her waist and she wore enough blue eye-shadow to kit out an entire Abba tribute band. According to the press she was forty-five, but she looked younger–obviously all that serenity and inner peace was allowing her to circumvent frown lines and wrinkles.