Page 54 of Stella is Starting Over

‘I wanted to meet Stella,’ she says, fiddling with her lighter.

At this point I feel very, very bad. Because I should now tell her that there was a misunderstanding, and Stella and I are just mates who’ve snogged once and nearly snogged a second time.

‘I get that,’ I hear myself say. ‘That makes sense.’

‘Maybe we could all get dinner together sometime,’ she says. ‘Talk about non-kid stuff.’

The idea of telling Stella, even if we were in some mystical polyamorous set-up, that we couldn’t talk about Rose over dinner makes me feel weirdly defensive of her.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘At some point, let’s talk about doing that.’

She looks happier, which makes me feel less guilty, even though it absolutely shouldn’t.

‘Do you want another one?’ She gestures at our almost empty glasses. It’s the first time she’s ever offered to buy me a drink and it feels churlish to refuse.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘That would be lovely.’

Stella

It’s the last week of mat leave, before I head back to work. My boss, Charlotte, has, without exception, been exemplary. After I told her what happened with Gav she sent an email, all lower case, no punctuation: what a shit leave it with me. And a few weeks later I got a bemused email from the HR department who said they were extending the paid portion of my mat leave to the full fifty-two weeks. I’ve never entirely understood how they managed to do it, or why, given that she openly dislikes children and calls marriage ‘modern slavery’, and it’s not like I was some golden-girl wunderkind of the office. For whatever reason, she did, and I was inordinately grateful to her. But even I have to accept that right now, it’s time.

Rose is bored at the baby classes I drag her to, and if I’m totally honest, the idea of buying an overpriced lunch from Pret and then eating in total silence at my desk is starting to feel incredibly appealing. I’ve found a childminder down the road, a blissfully kind but surprisingly firm Spanish woman named Anna. It’s in a big, bright, Victorian house on a quiet street, with a shady garden and five other happy-looking children of various ages. Anna gave me a long list of rules to follow and things to bring, all of which terrified me, and then explained about the settling-in period, which is where I leave Rose with her for increasingly long windows so that she gets used to it. Obviously leaving Rose, who has been attached to me (sometimes literally, by my nipple, though I basically stopped breastfeeding way back in spring) for almost a year, felt like having a limb amputated. But to my relief, she didn’t seem especially bothered by any of it. She waddled towards Anna on day two with a gummy smile and then wrenched a toy out another child’s hand.

After I drop her off each morning, I come home and stand in the house and try to decide what to do. I work through my wardrobe, cobbling together work-appropriate outfits from the things that still just about fit me. I throw away piles of clothes from my pre-pregnancy life that are never going to fit or have a purpose in my wardrobe again. I sand and paint the woodwork in the spare room, strip the hideous wallpaper from the upstairs hall.

On Thursday, Richard comes over – a new compromise on our step towards him being in my life in a more formal capacity. I make us a bolognese and he tells me about his trip – he’s just got back from Dubai, bringing a beautiful and very expensive-looking doll for Rose, and a beautiful and even more expensive-looking pair of earrings for me. I light candles, lay the table properly, revel in having someone come to the house to justify making things nice, instead of shoving some food in a bowl and eating it while I mindlessly scroll the internet. We sit at the table, him tanned from his trip, me tired from my day, and it feels nice.

‘How was the party?’ he asks as I dust Parmesan over our food.

‘It was good,’ I say, which was true. All our old friends, the ones who’d known me and Gav through baby classes, turned out in force. Though, I suppose they’re more my friends now than ‘ours’. I doubt they’re talking to Gav, now he’s not in the WhatsApp groups where we trade questions about our kids’ poo and rashes. Many of them fled London the second their babies breathed in a whiff of pollution. A handful of my school friends came with their babies. Gavin had the good grace to have a ‘gig’ that afternoon (again, I’m really not sure who’s going to see comedy on a Saturday afternoon), and obviously Louella was brilliant, if a bit hungover. ‘We had a lovely time.’

‘Who was there?’

I run him through the guest list. ‘Though, my friend Dom brought his new girlfriend and Louella said she was a complete dick.’

Richard looks amused. ‘How so?’

I recount how unfriendly Florrie was, and her vintage showdown with Louella who is the patron saint of not gatekeeping.

‘Maybe she’s threatened.’ Richard smiles.

‘By Lou?’

‘By you. How do you know her boyfriend?’

‘We matched on an app ages ago,’ I say. ‘When I was dating.’

Richard’s demeanour changes. ‘He’s an ex?’

‘Not an ex, no,’ I explain, twisting a strand of spaghetti around my fork. ‘We went on one date, then he came over here for dinner and it was a total disaster.’

‘I thought you didn’t let men meet your daughter.’

It feels weird that he still calls Rose ‘your daughter’ but maybe this isn’t the moment to raise it. He also seems oddly bothered about something that I’ve so easily explained to him. ‘Yeah, anyone I’m romantically involved with, sure. But I’m not romantically involved with him.’

‘But you were.’ Richard has put his fork down and is looking at me searchingly. ‘Right?’

‘For a bit,’ I say. ‘But like I explained, we worked out pretty quickly that we’re better off as friends, and now we’re just friends.’