Page 29

Chapter Fifteen

The beep, beep, beeps are blaring in my head, am I back in the voting booth in the North Stars house? “Samantha I’m ready to paaaaartttty,” I say, but I don’t know who I am speaking to. The words float out of my mouth and into the air. I feel drugged.

I’m interrupted by the sound of my mam’s voice. Why is she in the house? Or, I think as I stare at all the blinking lights, am I at a rave? A very bright rave that smells of disinfectant?

“I think you’re high enough, sweetheart, you just rest,” she says, and I feel her hand land from somewhere, out of the sky, and stroke me gently on my head.

It’s like I’ve been switched off and switched back on again.

I was lying in bed, chatting away to the nice man in the fetching blue cap, telling him all about how he was eating his kebabs all wrong, you have to separate the meat from the bread to stop going soggy and…

then, gone, I was out like a light. Now, I don’t know what time it is, or day it is for that matter, or why Mam’s at a rave with me.

I move my head, from left to right, and slowly, my confused brain must begin to reboot again, as I realise I’m in hospital.

I’m also here willingly, I remember, as I decided, after getting sick of people online pointing out that my nose was offensive, that I would get a nose job.

Because, guess what? I’m actually rich now.

I’ve sorted Mam and Dad’s situation out, I’m even in negotiations to buy a house of my own.

Turns out I’m not a bad business woman. The night of the auction, I’d told Morgan McHugh that if he wanted to launch his NuYu shakes over here, then all that Silicon Valley technobabble wouldn’t sell it to a normal lass or lad in the UK who just wanted to get healthy and not buy another Meal Deal sad sandwich at lunchtime.

I’d offered to be his brand ambassador and things have flown.

The first exclusive drop sold out almost instantly online and I knew it was going to go big.

I signed off on all the ads, drank gallons of the stuff and signed a contract that mean I got a cut of the very juicy deal when the NuYu range hit supermarkets.

The only flaw? It still tasted like fruity mushroom soup, no matter what flavour we launched.

I’d filmed endless videos about how plant protein was the future, and I’d never admit to Morgan that his beloved shakes tasted like cardboard and air freshener in a blender, but I was beginning to wonder whether half the secret to their magic weight loss powers was making them taste that weird so no one wanted to drink more than half a serving.

But it hadn’t held the brand back. The sleek, minimal packaging was the must-have accessory and I’d even see people pouring other things into their empty NuYu bottles just to be seen carrying our products. And now it’s given me enough cash to do this.

I ask Mam to hand me a mirror, I’m desperate to see what my new nose looks like.

I didn’t really think about it that much before going on the show but it’s become a fixation and I want this operation to shut down all the nonsense.

Imagine what I can get done if I’m not google searching ‘Angelica Clarke + nose’ ten times a day.

But then again, imagine if it’s been botched.

If this surgeon has fucked it up, there’s really going to be no hiding from it.

At least you can hide a dodgy boob job with baggy jumpers, I can’t install a set of curtains on my face.

Or, maybe I could, and I could rebrand myself as a performance art style pop star, like Gaga with her meat dress.

I begin to tell Mam this and she just nods at me, like she’s talking to the highest person alive, which, maybe, right at this very moment, I am.

She holds the mirror up and…I can see nothing at all.

I’m all wrapped up in dressings. I remind myself of one Halloween where I dressed up like a mummy, buying loads of cheap bandages and just wrapping them all around my naked body.

I thought my knot skills were up to scratch, but throughout the night, I came undone, piece by piece, until I was basically completely naked apart from a few loyal bandages that looked more like loo paper than medical equipment.

“Oh, but I can’t see what it looks like,” I say, stating the obvious.

“It’ll be a few days before they take the splints and things off your face,” Mam says. “Then, you’ll have to be in hiding because of all the bruises. Fliss says the papers have got wind of you being here and they’re dying for a shot of you in bandages, or with a swollen, purple face.”

“They can’t have that! The whole point is I’m going to emerge looking so drop-dead gorgeous that Damon sees me in the papers and regrets ever messing me about.”

“No,” Mam says sternly. “The whole point is to feel happy and confident in yourself, not for some dickhead who isn’t worth your time.”

Mam and Dad, for obvious reasons, loathe Damon.

They could cope with me getting drunk and being ridiculous on TV, they know what I’m like.

But they hated seeing me cry over Damon in the house and, even more so, when they had to see me in real life, sobbing over him.

Dad says Damon owes him the money for at least five of his best jumpers, as I’ve stained them with mascara from all the times I cried on his chest.

I quickly backtrack. “Of course, must be the drugs talking. I’m leaving Damon well in the past.” Which is true, the NuYu success has really helped me with my confidence and seeing how much better off I am without him in my life.

I always thought when celebs did health deals that they didn’t actually use the products, and it involved camera trickery and maybe a dodgy crash diet?

But I was shocked when Morgan told me that no, he had no plans to pay for liposuction or that cryo thing where they just deep-freeze all your wobbly bits, and that, instead, I’d have to first go on a fasting retreat for six weeks then work out with a personal trainer for an intense three months while I lived off the shakes with no sugar, no alcohol and no kebabs.

When Morgan had told me he was paying me to go and stay at an exclusive Alpine clinic for six weeks to ‘eat’ only NuYu, do some yoga and take a few treatments, I had pictured a spa hotel, relaxing around a pool and sipping on a shake.

Instead, I’d found myself sweating out of places where I’d never sweated before doing hot yoga, drinking NuYu sludge four times a day and then, to top it all off, I had weekly colonic irrigation to ‘help kickstart my cleanse’.

Nothing I did on North Stars compared to the indignity of that, let me tell you.

But I had to admit, when I got back to the UK to start the exercise regime and posting my #NuYuNuMe content, I was looking banging.

I had this great idea of getting Anika to train me – maybe even get her famous at the same time.

But when I finally got through to her, the ship had just docked in Aruba and she was about to go and lead a circuits class for passengers on the white tropical sand, so I understood why she couldn’t quit her job to come and train me in a wet warehouse off the M6.

Instead I got given some tall, muscly gay guy called Marshall who worked me to the bone, but made me laugh so much that I’ve forgiven him.

But writing the text to Anika made me realise I do love exercise now.

Even burpees, which is quite sad, but I found a way to make them fun: for every ten burpees I would do a silly, loud, fake burp impression, making them more and more ridiculous each time.

In the end I was doing 100 burpees a time and it’s actually quite hard to think of ten different inventive burps.

But, just because I’m feeling so much happier with my looks, and that the endorphins have flooded my brain with kind thoughts about myself, and now my new nose is the cherry on this (sugar-free) cake, that doesn’t mean I can’t also want revenge on Damon.

I want him to want me, but I’m not sure I actually want him any more.

Maybe I’ll find some hot male tanner to shag while he’s in the room, and see how he likes it.

I fall back asleep picturing Damon on his knees, with a patchy tan, begging me to give him a second chance (or is it a third or fourth chance now? I’ve lost count.)

Someone has taken two very sharp sticks and stuck them up my nostrils.

Whoever it is has now taken to playing the drums, with said sticks, but using my nose as their instrument.

I am in so much pain! And I still can’t even see what my new nose looks like.

First, the surgeons have to take out the two plugs that are shoved, like tampons, up each nostril.

I know it’s going to be worth it, once I can parade my new nose all around town, along with my new, hard-earned body.

But at the moment, with the drugs all worn off, the pain stabbing at me now and then, I question, was this worth it?

In those moments, I have to look at myself in the mirror and chant – I am sexy, I am smart, I am a piece of art!

It’s something Marshall taught me: positive affirmations.

I felt stupid doing them at first and had to come up with a little dance to accompany them, as though trying to make myself feel even more stupid chanting, but it actually made it easier.

Now, they’re second nature, and it’s become this song that I like to sing to myself.

Sometimes it gets stuck in my head so badly I have to listen to some Beyonce just to change the track.

That way I’m still listening to someone powerful, I’m just not bugging myself with my own self-inflicted earworm.