Page 55 of Stella is Starting Over

Richard says nothing. He goes back to eating. I’m completely unsure how to approach this. Gavin never had the slightest whiff of jealousy about him. I’m assuming this is jealousy, anyway. So I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to handle it. Presumably it would be best to reassure him. I know there’s nothing to worry about, obviously, but he maybe doesn’t? Louella has gone to Korea for work and she’s hooking up with a guy from the office out there, so I’ve resolved to give her a break from my stupid questions about dating. I could message my uni friends but – and I know this is pathetic – they enjoyed the divorce so much, I just know how this would go down and I can’t deal with days of questions about whether we managed to resolve this terrible situation. So I should just follow my instincts. I have good instincts. I mean, not with men, historically, but more broadly. At work, people think I do, and with the interiors for the house.

‘I could not have Dom around Rose again,’ I say tentatively. ‘If you think it feels like a double standard.’

Richard nods. ‘I think that sounds sensible.’

‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Let’s do that.’

I go back to eating, assuming that this will shift the weird, moody cloud that’s settled over the room, but it doesn’t.

‘I think,’ Richard says after a few minutes of silence, just the music and our forks on our plates, ‘if you don’t mind, I would feel more comfortable if you stopped seeing him entirely.’

On a flight back from Italy a few years ago a woman accidentally knocked an icy gin and tonic into my lap while having a row with her husband, and it’s a similar sensation to this, a sort of cold shock. ‘Stop seeing Dom?’

‘I mean he’s a new friend, right? It’s not like you go back a long way, or anything?’

He’s right, technically. And I don’t know how to explain that because Dom found me when I was this squishy broken shell-less snail of a person, and he was the only one I could properly talk to in that weird moment, it feels like we bypassed all the temporal limitations of becoming friends and skipped to having known each other for years. ‘He’s important to me,’ I venture.

‘I understand that,’ he says, not looking at me. ‘But. . .’ He trails off.

‘But what?’

He gets up, going into the kitchen. He takes the water jug as if he’s going to refill it but I’m not sure who this pretence is for. When he comes back, he takes a deep breath then sits down again. ‘I was in a long-term relationship. Before we met.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You said.’

‘She cheated on me,’ he continues, halting, like he’s hardly able to get the words out. ‘With an ex-boyfriend. Someone I always had a bad feeling about.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, suddenly understanding. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Now I know,’ he adds, ‘this isn’t entirely rational and I am working through it. But my therapist has told me that if I have a boundary, I need to ask for that boundary to be respected. So for now, while I’m still very hurt from what I went through, I have to ask if you’ll consider not being in an active friendship with any exes.’

He’s not an ex. I want to reiterate that he’s not an ex. But I get it. I wouldn’t date someone with a blazing but unspent need to try stand-up comedy, in case they did what Gav did to me. And maybe this is just exactly the same thing?

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll stick a pin in the friendship with Dom, and we’ll check in and see where things are going a bit further down the line. Cool?’

I don’t like saying it. The words feel wrong as they leave my mouth. I know what Louella would tell me. I know what I’d tell Rose if someone asked this of her. But Richard is sweet and respectful and successful, and he wants me despite all the complexity of my life. He’s made huge compromises in how we date, coming to my house rather than going out, my only ever going to his place on a Thursday night, him never being allowed to go upstairs at my house. Those things are huge. So really, is it such an enormous deal if I make one sacrifice in return, for him?

Stella

It’s been less than a week since I told Richard that I’d stop spending time with Dom, and he’s currently on his way over to my house.

Just as I’ve never been the kind of person to cheat on a partner, I’ve also never been the kind of person to lie. To a fault, actually. If I went to dinner with my friends and one of their husbands had been fired or they were sporting new filler in their lips, I’d come home and tell Gavin straight away. I always took the view that ‘don’t tell anyone’ didn’t include Gavin because he mostly didn’t care. Only he was actually a huge gossip, so he very much did care and I shared secrets that, on balance, I probably shouldn’t have, including my own. I told him what I’d bought him for his birthday before he’d even seen the wrapping paper, I ruined every surprise I ever tried to plan, I even told him that I knew he was going to propose because I’d seen a chunky charge on his credit card statement. Lying just isn’t my thing.

So this morning, when I saw three missed calls from Dom, I knew that I was going to have to lie to someone and I felt deeply, painfully ill-equipped to do so. Rose was on the floor, playing with some tasteful wooden animals in a Noah’s Ark that one of my uni friends bought her. I open my phone and I swear I’m about to message Dom to tell him that I can’t talk, when he calls again. Four calls in a row is not nothing, so I answer.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi,’ he says, sounding absolutely dreadful. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine – what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ he says, once again sounding truly dreadful. ‘No, nothing. Just. . . Have you got a minute?’

I should say no, but I don’t know how, and it would be such a complete and utter lie. If I was busy then I could say that I’m busy, but realistically, I don’t just have a minute, I have an entire day. Richard and I are having dinner tomorrow night. I’ve promised to make a roast because he said he misses a home-cooked roast so badly. But until then, it’s just me, Rose and a booking for the slightly shit local zoo.

‘I’ve got ages,’ I say. ‘Do you want to come over?’

‘Yes, please,’ he says. I want to feel guilty but his tone is too strangled and I’m too worried about him. What could it be? Maybe he and Florrie broke up, but he didn’t seem that attached to her so I doubt he’d be devastated about a split there. Could be someone in his family, but surely he’s got closer people to call for that?