Page 47 of Stella is Starting Over

‘What?’ She looks shocked.

Oh. I said that bit out loud. The wrong bit. Shit.

She laughs.

I laugh. ‘I’m pissed,’ I say. ‘I’m going to go home. Sorry. Jesus.’ Was that sexual harassment? ‘Bye.’

I get into my Uber. The driver is on the phone to someone else, but tactfully rolls down the windows and I breathe the cool, sweet summer air in, focusing on a fixed point on the headrest in front of me so that I’m not sick in the back of this bloke’s car. Then I get home, eventually get the key into the lock and collapse into bed.

Around 3 a.m. I get a message from Florrie.

Hey angel, she writes. What are you up to?

I want to tell her that it’s 3 a.m. so obviously I’m asleep, only I’m not asleep so I can’t. So instead, I do something that I haven’t done since I was a teenager: I try to make her jealous. Just got home, I say.

Oh, fun, she replies. Would you like to share more?

How is she so sanguine? Are people born like that, or has she trained herself into it? It’s driven me mad all night to think of Bash licking her neck and talking about his start-up or theatre troupe or whatever bullshit he does with his life, and she’s apparently totally insouciant at the idea that I could have been anywhere with anyone.

Just back from Stella’s place, I say. Which is completely true. Just not in the sense that she thinks it is.

The phone rings – she’s calling me now. ‘Oh, cute,’ says Florrie, in a voice that suggests she doesn’t find it cute.

‘Did you have fun with Bash?’ I ask, trying to sound sober.

‘It was nice.’ She sighs. ‘Though he couldn’t come because he feels guilty about how he’s treated me in the past, which is always sad, but otherwise nice. How was Stella?’

‘Good,’ I say, trying to process the fact that the girl I’m seeing is casually telling me about having sex with another man. Worryingly, I’m not sure I’m very upset about it. I can hear Florrie breathing and I realise that she wants more information from me, but that she doesn’t feel she can ask what Stella and I have been doing. And I figure that it’s probably easier for everyone if I don’t say anything. I don’t want to lie – that would violate the strange sort of moral code that I’ve invented for myself where I let her think that I’m seeing Stella, and then keep seeing Stella but don’t start shagging Stella, even though obviously I’d really like to be shagging Stella, because if I do that I’ll fuck it up with her like I have with everyone else I’ve ever tried to make it work with.

‘I’m really tired,’ I say in earnest. ‘Is it okay if I call you tomorrow?’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Goodnight.’

Stella

I’ve never been a cheat. Literally never. I’d slept with two people before I met Gav and I was painfully aware when we moved in together, and again when we got engaged, that if I stuck with him then I’d never see that number increase, and I thought it was a perfectly sensible compromise to make. And yeah, occasionally I thought about what it would be like to get railed on a one-night stand, or snog the yoga instructor on a hen weekend away with my mates, but for the most part, monogamy always made sense to me. There was no one I’d ever met who was appealing enough that they’d be worth swapping my home, my future and the fact that I shared my bed with the guy who’d seen me in every season of my life, met all my grandparents before they died, spent the night in my childhood bedroom before my mum sold the house, all the stupid, banal, essential stuff that ties you together into one unit instead of two people. So monogamy it was. And it wasn’t even especially difficult, honestly.

Probably stupidly, I’d always assumed Gavin was the same. It had never occurred to me to track his phone or wait until he was asleep to go through his messages. I reasoned that if I woke up and found him reading my messages to my university friends, where they detailed their break-ups and work dramas and fertility woes, I’d have considered him an absolute psycho. So why would I have done it to him? It wasn’t like I thought he was hiding anything and I was too scared to know, I just blithely assumed that he probably felt the same as I did. That screwing someone else was an intermittently appealing idea but ultimately not worth it, in case it ended our marriage. And I suppose I was half right. It wasn’t another woman, it was the prospect that he was secretly brilliant at something that he’d never had a chance to pursue. Or maybe it was the idea of a totally different life that didn’t have me in it, that barely had Rose in it. Or maybe he had a sort of anaphylaxis at the way that having a child changed our life. I don’t know. I guess all of those are a kind of cheating, a choice of something else over me. Over us.

I take a left turn to do another circuit of the park, pushing the pram slowly to keep Rose asleep.

There probably will be another woman, I realise. I’m already seeing someone else. So he will be too. Probably someone younger than him, possibly someone younger than me. And maybe I’ll feel differently when it happens, but right now I just feel sad for the fictional other woman, that she’s going to have to follow him around telling him how brilliant he is, like I once did.

I’ve tried to put the almost kiss with Dom out of mind. It’s been almost two weeks and I’ve kept communication with him as light and non-committal as I can. When the washing machine broke, I paid a man £350 to come and fix it for me, rather than summoning Dom. When I see an amusing meme or read an interesting article, I send it to Richard, not Dom. Because for all the guilt I feel about the nearly cheating on Richard a mere four hours after we’d become exclusive, there’s nothing I can do to change any of it, and realistically the only sensible thing that I can do is focus my efforts on Richard. Richard sends flowers every Friday, following our Thursday nights together. He still insists on a car to pick me up, though these days we sometimes also have dinner at the French place down the road from my house while I get a babysitter for Rose. It’s nice. Sufficiently nice that I try not to let myself acknowledge that we’re approaching our tenth date and we still haven’t done much more than snog.

Dom noticed my coolness and, characteristically blunt, called me out on it, over a WhatsApp. I fobbed him off with some excuse about Rose going through a tricky stage and needing some time to focus on her. I felt bad for lying. But he’s got Florrie, the new girlfriend, so we’re both doing what we should be doing.

Whether he believed it or not, he left me to my own devices until a couple of days ago, when the sun was out and the local park was heaving with pale, semi-naked people.

‘I miss you,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s bunk off and go to the pub. Bring Rose, we can give her a vape and a pint of Guinness.’ And my god, was I tempted. Not the vape, but the idea of having a friend to sit with and yap at, outside a pub on a warm early evening, the thought of finding somewhere with a grassy bit at the back so Rose could crawl and maybe toddle about and pull daisies out of the ground while we talked about the mindless murder show we’ve been watching or my impending return to work, it all just seemed so normal and lovely and right.

But I promised myself and everyone else that I was going to give Richard a proper chance and sneaking off to the pub with someone who I nearly snogged while white-girl wasted a few weeks ago is not that. So I said no. And then I walked Rose home past a pub and, to my shock, felt tears pricking behind my eyes when I looked at groups of people having fun together. Stupid. Completely stupid, to be having FOMO at my age is genuinely tragic. But there you have it.

Tonight, I’ve caved to Louella’s pressure and agreed that she can meet Richard. We’re having dinner – at my house. He’s barely ever been there, just to pick me up if we’re doing something in this direction. I don’t – if I’m totally honest – relish the idea of him being here. But that’s stupid, and probably just because the time I had Dom over for a date was such a complete and utter disaster. This evening is going to be different.

I decide against another loop of the park. If I have to see the same ducks again, I think I might scream. Instead I take the risk and push the pram into the supermarket, wandering the aisles and trying to decide what to cook while I watch Richard be dissected by my sister. Roast chicken?

Stella