Master Me (36 page)

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The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Marlot: Charles C. Smith

Phish Food: Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc.

Starbucks: Starbucks Corporation

iPlayer: Philips Solutions, Inc.

Whittard: Whittard Trading Limited

Sainsburys: J Sainsburys Corporation

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My life back then was full of someones and somethings—non-specific people and objects who needed my attention in various ways. The trouble was that the
someones
and
somethings
appeared to outnumber the units of my attention by a factor of about ten to one. To be frank, things were getting out of hand.

I had let my gym membership slide, my wardrobe was like a rummage sale and any poor dogs needing bones would have been better off canvassing
Old Mother Hubbard
. My kitchen table was piled high with parking tickets, overdue bill reminders and dog-eared takeaway menus with the phone numbers circled in black marker.

Life was getting away from me, and I didn’t like it.

A typical dinner of the period—pasta a la microwave. In other words, some hardened curly things in a blisteringly hot, tasteless sauce. It hardly embodied temptation. Neither did the pile of unironed clothes, the half-finished tax return or the dishes in the kitchen sink. That bottle of Merlot and family-sized tub of Phish Food on the other hand…

No, Lara, no. I would sometimes catch myself off guard in the mirror—pale, pasty, carrying several more pounds than my clothes could handle. My skin was dull and my eyes looked tired. I needed a haircut, but the last time I’d managed to get one I liked was in 2005. The messages on my phone told me that I’d missed a dental check-up and my brother’s birthday. The shit was in close proximity to the fan. I was out of control. I had to do something about it. Quickly.

I opened my handbag and almost shut it again on being confronted with a hundred balled tissues, some capless lipsticks and three metric tonnes of loose change. But I had to brave the shoulder-borne rubbish dump if I was to make any progress, so I let my fingers pluck at the detritus until I unearthed the treasure I sought. The newspaper clipping Shona had given me when we’d met in Starbucks a few days earlier, still intact, not ripped or shredded yet. I’d been ten minutes late for our meeting and she’d been angry—actually really angry, not the kind of eye rolling ‘it wouldn’t be Lara if she wasn’t a bit late’ indulgent exasperation. I was hot at the memory of it, and so ashamed of myself.

“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, Lara, that constant lateness is incredibly disrespectful? It says, ‘My time is worth more than yours.’ Well, guess what? Your time is
not
worth more than mine. You need to sort yourself out.”

“I’ve tried, Shona, I really have…” I wailed, teary-eyed.

“I know you have.” But her face was still grim. Forgiveness was a long way off yet. “You’ve tried. But your willpower alone isn’t enough, is it? Look.”

She handed me the clipping.

Special Introductory Offer. Fifty-Percent Off All New-U Life Coaches This Month.

“New-U?” I said, squinting at the advert, which was phrased in that evangelically positive and uplifting type of language I found really irritating.

“Yeah, I know how it looks. I wouldn’t have answered that ad either. But I’ve had an excellent personal recommendation from a friend. She was on the verge of a stress-related illness before she hired one of these people—the change in her is incredible. It’s taken ten years off her. And she’s given up smoking, too.”

“That’s…very interesting. I don’t smoke, though.”

“No, but you
are
so disorganised it’s a wonder you manage to get dressed in the morning.”

“Sometimes I don’t,” I confessed ruefully. “And do you remember that time I forgot to do up the zipper on my—”

“Yes. I remember. And so does every man in that pub.”

“I don’t
mean
to be so hopeless…”

“I know. So get help.” She softened then, pushing over the rapidly cooling Americano she’d bought in advance of my arrival. “Will you promise me, Lara?”

I mumbled some words that might or might not have been a promise. And, three days down the line, there I was, staring at the clipping, mobile in hand, ready to commit myself to…self-improvement. Ugh. It sounded so goody-goody and smug. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling and noticed that mouldy patch I’d been meaning to get checked out.
Right. That’s it
. I punched in the number, intending to leave a message on their answerphone, but to my consternated surprise, somebody answered the call. Why were they still in the office at seven?

I coughed a little, over their words of introduction, and remembered what Shona had said.
Ask for Dexter
. Dexter was the alleged miracle worker who’d rescued Shona’s friend from the brink of gibbering lunacy.

“Yes, I was wondering if I could book somebody…was looking at your special offer in the paper…do you know if Dexter is available?”

“Dexter? Oh, he’s very busy just now—”

“That’s okay. Forget it.” I said the words in a grateful rush, feeling that I’d been let off the hook, or stepped back from the precipice. “I’ll…leave it for now.”

“No, no, just a second. He has a cancellation. He could see you tomorrow afternoon. Of course, daytimes don’t suit everyone…”

I could have just said I was working…but the lie wouldn’t come. Not that it was a lie—I work from home, so in theory, I might have been working…but it was more likely that I’d be watching soap operas on iPlayer.

“No, no, tomorrow afternoon is fine.”

Am I mad? Tomorrow afternoon is not fine at all! I have three deadlines to meet before Friday.

“Great. Our coaches usually like to meet with you in your home, so if you want to call a friend or family member to be with you for your first appointment—”

“Wait! You said…in my home?”

“That’s right. It’s much easier for them to get a picture of your needs and challenges if they see you in your home setting.”

I looked around at my needs and challenges. The room was busting at the seams with them. This organiser man was going to back out of the house screaming. And I couldn’t possibly get everything tidy by tomorrow afternoon.

“I’m not sure…I don’t think…could we not meet at your office?”

“Dexter is very clear on the way he likes to operate. He will want to meet with you in your home. As I said before, he’s quite happy for you to have a friend or neighbour with you…”

“Oh. I don’t know. Oh. Let me think about this…” I thought I might hyperventilate. Nobody ever came into my flat. It wasn’t as if it was
that
bad—it just didn’t project the image I wanted people to have of me. I wanted them to see Lara, the charming, slightly distrait, friendly, but busy, city girl. I didn’t want them to see a mess. I wasn’t a mess! I really…okay. I was.

“Dexter will be booked up to the end of the month…”

“Oh. okay.” I was a mess. I knew it, deep down. I needed to be cleaned up. Put away. Tied with a neat ribbon. “You’ll want my address then.”

It was only later, in bed, that the enormity of what I’d signed up for hit me. I had agreed to pay a man to tell me what to do. Paying to be scolded and pushed around by some man! Was I mad? I didn’t know. But I was certainly just a little bit excited…

With five minutes to go until zero hour, I decided that I’d done what I could. The unironed clothes were in a basket under the bed. The bills and tickets and whatnot were in a perilous stack on one corner of the kitchen table. All pizza boxes, empty wine bottles and ice cream tubs had been consigned to the recycling. I’d found a duster under the sink and had trailed it across a few surfaces, marvelling at the cloud of dust particles I’d disturbed in the process. Dust is so
interesting
to watch, isn’t it?

Dishes washed, clutter hidden. Somehow everything still looked wrong, and I wondered if Dexter would eventually come to the same conclusion I had—that my problem was congenital and, as such, untreatable. List making simply wasn’t in my DNA.

The buzzer jolted me out of reverie. It was two o’clock
exactly
—had he stood by the door waiting for the second hand to hit the twelve?

“Hello,” I spoke cautiously into the intercom.

“Miss Fisher? Dexter from ‘New-U’ here.”

“I’ll buzz you in.”

Was that a normal voice? It didn’t seem unusual in any way. Not too high, not too deep, no accent, no speech impediment. Why was I so nervous? I tried to shake the foreboding out of me and remember that I was paying for a service! That put me in the driver’s seat, didn’t it? If he didn’t suit me, I could fire him.

All the same, my skin prickled at the sound of his knock, and I stood a little farther back than I normally would when I opened the door and let him in.

“Hello, hello,” I chirped, talking too fast and too much, as I always did when I was anxious. “Sorry about the state of the place, do take a seat if you can find one, can I get you a drink, tea, coffee, something colder, or I’ve got hot chocolate, or even wine, though I don’t suppose you drink on duty, do you, like policemen, I suppose…”

“No, thank you,” he said, placing a laptop bag on the cleanest rectangle of the kitchen table.

“Really? The cups are clean, I can vouch for it, I washed them up just now…”

“I’m fine. Really.”

It wasn’t quite a smile, more a tightening of the facial muscles. He sat on a kitchen chair and unzipped his bag. He hadn’t shaken my hand or introduced himself, yet. I felt his manners left something to be desired, and I couldn’t help but say so.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Dexter,” I said, holding out a hand. “I’m Lara Fisher. This is my home.”

He looked up, slightly impatiently, and nodded. “Yes. Can we move on from formalities? We have a lot to get through in a short space of time. Please take a seat.”

He was asking me to take a seat in my own kitchen! Who was this man? Was he some kind of automaton? He was certainly coming across as such. And the way he dressed made him look like a priest—that high-necked black shirt and trousers, hair swept ruthlessly back, silver-rimmed spectacles. He dressed older than he was, because if you looked a bit closer, he was probably no more than forty tops. If you really looked, really, really closely, you might notice that he was pretty good looking, behind the icy veneer. Full lips, high cheekbones, intense golden-brown eyes. If he ruffled up his hair and wore something less austere, I realised with a guilty start that I would fancy him. Possibly. Probably.

“Yes?” he said.

Oh, I was staring. I coughed, blushed a little and gestured behind me, to the barely contained chaos of my kitchen. “Sorry. Yes. Well, you can probably see why I’ve hired you.”

“Yes, I can,” he said without smiling or giving me any kind of clue that I could breathe out. “I’ll want to have a quick look around later, just to get the full measure. But first, I need you to tell me exactly what you want help with.”

He pressed some keys on his laptop and it began to bleep and whir.

“Everything,” I said with a pained laugh. I wished he’d smile, or give some indication that he was human. I was about to start looking for an off switch.

“Let me talk you through a few categories,” he said. “Financial. Professional. Social. Domestic. Health and well-being.”

“All of those.”

“All? Fine. And a few sub-headings. Timekeeping. Paperwork. Household maintenance. Bill paying.”

“Stop, you’re killing me!” I put up my hands. “I surrender. I’m a failure as a human being. Now fix me.”

He took off his glasses and frowned at me for a moment. “Nobody’s calling you a failure,” he said, though it sounded like a telling-off to me. Replacing the glasses, he said, “You’re not unusual, Lara. This is a common syndrome of twenty-first-century life. It can be fixed. I can fix it.”

“Do you really think you can? I’m not beyond hope?”

“Not at all.” Ohmigosh, he was smiling! A little bit. “But you must be prepared for some hard work, honesty and—the most difficult thing of all to achieve—self-discipline.”

Ugh. It sounded like medicine. Couldn’t he have just waved a wand?

“Oh. Okay.”

He made a spreadsheet, which I looked at through trembling eyelashes, because spreadsheets terrified me. Then he made some lists and timetables. Then he made some rules. Then he gave the rules sub-headings and footnotes. Then I begged for mercy by offering him a drink again.

“Do you have green tea?” he asked.

“Oh…I think I might.” I opened my overhead cupboard, in which ancient caddies full of variegated teabags resided. A huge pile of them fell on my head and all over the floor.

He joined me, scrabbling at the lino to get them all up again. Down on his knees, scooping Precambrian tea leaves from the floor, he seemed just a tad more human. He had lovely hands with long, strong fingers, and he smelt nice, kind of fresh and citrusy. He raised an eyebrow at me in a way that was just a little bit sexy as well as stern.
You should be ashamed of yourself, you minx!
rather than plain,
You should be ashamed of yourself.
I felt a tiny tug of something in my stomach and my breath went a bit wobbly.

“We really do need to sort you out, don’t we, Lara?” he said.

Ooh, yes, Mister Dexter. Sort me out.

So I had a plan. I had a number of plans, in fact—short-term, long-term, repayment, career, fitness, all courtesy of Dexter. He truly was the master planner. This was good, because plans were what I wanted and needed. But I also had something else, something a little less welcome. I had a crush.