“Right.” She claps her hands. “We need to clean this place up. I’ve arranged for a char to come in twice a week, but first we have to make things tidy.”

She has brought a bucket with her. It contains two pairs of rubber gloves, bottles of detergents, sponges, scrubbing brushes, and a mop. She plugs her iPod into my speakers and puts on a catchy tune to entertain us while we work. It is “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson. She describes it as an oldie but a goodie. We are wearing yoga pants and strappy tops. As we work, our tops ride up, revealing glimpses of our tanned midriffs.

Every now and then, one of us will pause to blow a sweaty curl of hair off her forehead. The hours seem to pass in a flash, and soon the two of us are sitting coltishly on the floor, our long legs folded under us. We are sharing a deep-dish pizza that we ordered to celebrate the sparkling new cleanliness of my rented house.

There are oversized glasses of red wine on the floorboards next to us. No, white wine. We raise them and clink glasses to toast the success of our hard work.

But Moira isn’t done. She wants to clean me the same way as we have cleaned my house. She turns up at my door at six o’clock the next morning wearing workout gear and looking perky. I am wearing flannel pyjamas, bed-hair, and a grumpy expression.We go for a run around a sparkling lake. The morning mist curls around weeping willow trees as we run past. I spend a lot of time standing bent over with my hands on my knees, gasping for breath. I am wearing baggy tracksuit pants and a too-large top to make me appear slightly overweight.

As the weeks pass, my outfit metamorphosises into something more closely resembling Moira’s. I ditch the baggy outfits for tight, bright Lululemon gym-wear. One morning, I surprise her by flinging open my front door before she even knocks. I am beaming with enthusiasm.

Such glimpses as one is afforded of my house reveal that it is now tastefully decorated with rugs, sofas and scatter cushions. The sun slants in through my clean windowpanes and warms the wooden floorboards.

Moira has me eating magical food and drinking magical water that cleans me from the inside out. I smile as I consume green juices that contain macerated spinach leaves. I laugh with a bowl of salad in my lap and a forkful of radicchio raised to my lips. In the movie reel of my life, you can see the numbers on the scale edging downwards as I move from being merely slim to model skinny.