Page 40 of Stella is Starting Over

He follows up with a string of aubergine emojis.

I ignore that, too.

An hour later, while Rose is having her mashed banana and wholemeal toast, I call Gavin. He is very clearly asleep when the phone starts ringing and only half awake when he answers.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Do you have a minute?’

‘Sure,’ he says. I can hear the bedsheets moving.

‘Are you still in bed?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he lies. ‘I’m on a run.’

‘Must be nice to be having a lie-in,’ I snark, despite the fact that I should be keeping him on my good side.

‘I worked until 3 a.m. in the morning last night, Stella, I needed to restore my reserves.’

‘“a.m.” means morning.’

‘What?’ I can hear him getting up, which means I can picture him in his pants, readjusting himself, getting ready to go inside for his mum to probably make him a full English. It’s amazing how quickly you can go from loving someone so much that you don’t even really mind if they sneeze on you to finding the concept of them repulsive.

‘Look, I’m just ringing to say that I don’t think you should take Rose this evening,’ I say, ripping the plaster off.

‘Why not?’ He changes our call to a video call.

‘She was really unwell last night. And my mum was watching her and it looked like she might have drunk some Calpol. They took her to hospital, to be cautious.’

He looks horrified. ‘What the fuck?’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘It was awful.’

‘Why didn’t you call me?’

I’m taken aback by the question. ‘Why would I have called you?’

‘Because I’m her fucking father, Stella.’ I can count on one hand the number of times he’s raised his voice at me, and most them were when I was about to hit something in the car. I’m genuinely aghast. And angry. Angry that he thinks he’s got a leg to stand on here.

‘Yeah, for eighteen hours, once a week, with your mum heavily supervising,’ I snap. His face contorts with hurt. Real, proper hurt. In turn, I flood with guilt. ‘Look, it just didn’t occur to me to tell you. You don’t message me all week, you don’t ask about her—’

‘If something happens to her, you need to tell me.’

Miserably, I concede that he is right. ‘Okay,’ I say.

‘No, I mean legally. You have to tell me, legally.’

My mouth opens but I’m not sure what to say to that. We don’t have a legal agreement. There’s never been any suggestion of courts or custody, or any of that. Is he threatening me? The idea that he might suddenly decide that he wants fifty-fifty smacks me in the chest with horror.

‘Okay.’ Then I force out the words that are appropriate but almost choke me on their way out of my mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’

We stand in complete silence for what feels like an age.

‘She’s eating her breakfast, happy as Larry,’ I say, eventually.

‘Right.’

There’s another long pause. ‘So, yeah, just do next week instead?’ I ask.

‘Uh. No, I think maybe that’s not. . . look, I think we should stick to the plan.’