A Brand New Me: The hilarious romantic comedy about one year of first dates

SHARI LOW

A Brand New Me

Copyright

Published by AVON A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2008

Copyright © Shari Low 2008

Cover design © Head Design 2017

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

Shari Low asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847560179

Ebook Edition © June 2009 ISBN: 9780007335022 Version: 2017-10-19

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

Copyright

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:

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 forces 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.

While she carried on with strange humming thingies, I contemplated my surroundings and realised that, compared to my current place of employment on a dilapidated industrial estate on the outskirts of Slough, working here would be stellar. Literally. The office was in a grand Georgian townhouse in Notting Hill, the kind of building that looked like it housed a stockbroker, his interior-designer wife and three children called Palomina, Pheronoma and Calispera. But any preconceptions had to be dumped at the door, the one that was carved with ancient Mongolian warrior symbols in a bid to ward off evil spirits, negative forces and any local yobs armed with cans of spray paint.

The huge oblong entranceway looked like a mini planetarium. The carpet was black, the walls and ceiling were the colour of the night sky, and fluorescent stars covered every surface. It wasn’t so much a professional office, more the view from the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise. In the corner, a receptionist sat behind a futuristic silver desk, illuminated only by one desk lamp and the flashing red squares on the switchboard. The first thing that had struck me was how miserable she looked–not surprising given that the lack of sunlight probably made her a shoo-in for rickets.

Zara’s office took up the entire first floor and suitably reflected a zany TV New Age guru who looked like a cross between a Woodstock refugee and Cher in her ‘Turn Back Time’ years. The walls and ceiling were draped with rich red silks, giving the whole space the vibe of an elaborate Bedouin tent. Huge plants sat in every crevice and corner, while ornate Persian rugs covered almost every inch of the ebony wood floor. Two trees had given their lives to make her inordinately wide desk, both of them cut vertically in half and then laid side by side–a concept that might have worked a little better if the branches had been removed. Instead, about fifteen feet of shrubbery filled a whole corner of the room. The rest of the floor was covered with the same oversized cushions that Zara sat on now; massive squares of intricately embroidered, rich damask in shades of deep ochre interspersed with small tree stubs that doubled as tables.

Still, at least (unlike the poor, pale, vitamin-deprived receptionist) she had three huge sash windows that filled the room with natural daylight. Or they would have if it wasn’t six o’clock on a January night and pitch dark outside.

Suddenly, Zara jumped up, grabbed a large, gilt-engraved chalice from her desk and headed towards the window I’d been staring at just seconds before. Spooky. Was that a coincidence? Or a bit of psychic prompting? Oh my God–could she read my thoughts? Think nice things, think nice things…

She wrenched up the window and held the chalice outside.

Okaaaaay…So was she:

a) dealing with a cup of tea that was too hot in a sound ecological fashion by using rainwater to cool it down;

b) contravening Health & Safety legislation by passing out a liquid refreshment to a window cleaner who bucked the industry norm by working nights;