Four Christmases and a Secret

‘Now if you don’t wipe that up quickly it’ll be stickier than a flypaper!’

‘Sorry?’ I frown at her.

‘The sauce darling! It will set like toffee, you’ll have to scrape it off the sides, oh my goodness, the gravy!’

The rest of Christmas day passes in a bit of a blur. It’s hard to fully appreciate cracker jokes when your future is held in the balance. Although I have to admit I had totally forgotten how much fun pin the tail on the donkey can be after two brandy and Babychams, and a snowball consisting mainly of Advocaat. Maybe retro really is the way to go.

ACT 2 – NEW YEAR, NEW ME (#ulink_58cbaa47-12e3-56ae-a87a-ab10ac502353)

Chapter 7 (#ulink_bbe875c5-ca90-5e1e-9977-f5eccb735899)

11.57 p.m., 21 March 2018

The last few months have been a bit of a nightmare, I feel like I am dangling in hyperspace. My life has been suspended, while I wait to see what Guardian HQ has in store for me.

In January, we were moved into a much smaller office, just up the road from our old office, with a much bigger temporary boss. She’s enormous, has chin hair, and is very stern and serious. I think she’d rather be in Stavington reporting on speeding offences and petty crime, than here featuring the village fête and looking for lost gerbils.

She also isn’t that keen on my funny small ads (‘Is humour really necessary?’) or enquiries about my future (‘We’ve all been there, just cope. Is that really how you spell Chihuahua?’). In fact, let’s face it. She’s a grumpy cow.

I did in fact mention this to Ollie, who has been sending me the odd email (and some of them are very odd) since Uncle T’s party, asking how things are going. It’s a bit like when we were kids and he’d leave a note in my locker saying ‘I’ll beat you next time’ if I’d got a higher test score than him.

Except now he says things like:

Hi, Daisy,

I hope you told her that humour is always necessary. A Daisy without her cheeky, funny side, is like a cow without an udder – there’s something essential and life-affirming missing.

Oll.

Hi, Ollie,

Did you really just liken me to an udderly useless bovine?

Dais

Daisy,

Ha-ha. I did. Did I ever tell you Uncle T used to have a Jersey cow called Daisy? It was a creature of beauty.

Oll

No, but I’m not sure where this is going. I think you should stop before I get moo-dy. Aren’t there any lives you need to rush off and save right now?

Daisy

Daisy,

You’re no fun. If you’d have known her, you’d have loved her. Your namesake. I think I’ll press the mooote button now though!

Oll

You’ve been looking these jokes up on the internet haven’t you? D x

I’ll have you know they’re all my own work! O x’

Followed up swiftly by:

Unlike the list of one-liners you helped me compile in Year 1 so I could woo Jasmine Smith. You’re the only person I’ve ever known who solved everything with a list and a military precision plan! Sorry, bleepers gone off, need to don my cape and save lives. Good luck with the interview, not that you ever needed luck! O x

I think they might have sent the caretaker boss in so that we all quit our jobs, but I am made of sterner stuff.

Okay, I did think about it briefly. But as I’ve only been here a few months, have zilch experience and might appear to be jumping ship before I’m sacked, I have decided that my immediate future might lie with the newspaper. Although if they refuse to give me a better job, I might need a rethink. But I have been gritting my teeth and waiting to see if my new boss, James Masters is going to give me a job. And not just any job, but a better job than I had before. I am going to demand it, and I am going to get it.

All I have to do is survive the small matter of an interview.

After a bottle or three of wine with Frankie this evening, though, I do now know how to sort my life! It’s simple.

1 I must be more organised; and

2 I must try harder; and

3 I must be more like Frankie – who definitely has her shit together. When Frankie decides to go for something, not even an apocalypse would stand in her way.

4 p.m., 22 March

I look down at what I was sure (last night – after rather large quantities of wine) was the solution.

Books.

I have downloaded lots of books.

Now I am not so sure.

I mean, I’m sure about books in general. I have lots of them, I could start a library. But they are fiction. These are different. These are self-help books. I mean, self-help, that’s exactly what I’ve decided to do, isn’t it? Help myself. But this is going to be like scaling Everest when all I need is a few highlights, a few challenging peaks that I can fit into a mini-break.

Reading this lot will take me hours, and that’s before I even start to implement the suggestions.

I drop my e-reader and flop back on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Why do non-fiction books have so many words in them? There is obviously a gap in the market, people need How to get your shit together in 3 easy steps – with pictures! If I ever do get my shit together and have time, I will write this book. It will be a bestseller and help millions of people.

These bloody books have actually made my situation worse and I have just wasted another two hours of my life flicking through them on my Kindle, when I could have been planning my interview strategy. According to the books, a strategy is important. I need to write it down and then visualise. I totally get the strategy bit, I’m pretty sure the teenage me had a plan and strategy, as Ollie said, for everything. A subconscious one. But the visualisation is a new one on me.

And on top of the books, yesterday’s email from Ollie didn’t help either. It pushed me to the edge and made me think something more drastic was needed. Well, that and knowing that I would soon have to go for my interview, and then face my family and all their expectations. And Ollie. Who wished me luck at my interview. I’m not sure how he even knew, but you know what my mum is like, she tells Vera everything.

Anyway, seeing his perfect life was made ten tons worse at Christmas. And not only has he totally got his shit together, and it’s not parental exaggeration, he is also still quite nice. If he’d been a twat at Uncle T’s party, I could at least have consoled myself with the fact that being perfect comes at a price.

But he isn’t. And it doesn’t.

I can’t carry on letting everybody, and myself, down though. I am going to do whatever it takes to succeed at something truly boast-worthy!