Page 22 of Stella is Starting Over

‘Just got to catch up on a bit of sleep.’ From the one wake-up he did overnight. I’m tempted to ask how he ever thought he was going to handle the horrors of having a job and a baby at the same time, but then he bailed before there was any chance of having to find out so it would be a pointless question.

Right. I resolve not to say anything bitchy because Rose is going to understand what we’re saying to each other one day and it’ll be easier if I don’t have to suddenly stop being a massive cow overnight. I’m just about to force a placatory goodbye when a shadow falls across Gavin’s face. I can feel someone behind me. Fuck.

I turn slightly, still holding Rose on my hip. Obviously Dominic has woken up, and looks like he slept in his clothes because he has absolutely slept in his clothes. Gavin stares. Dominic freezes. Time seems to entirely stop moving.

‘All right, mate?’ Dom says, after what feels like an hour of them staring at each other.

‘This is Dom,’ I say slowly. ‘Dom, this is Gavin.’

They eyeball each other. Then Gavin turns on his heel and without saying anything walks away. I look at Dom. I look at Rose. I look at the bags and bags of things Gavin brought home with him, things that I’m going to have to launder and put away before doing the whole thing again next week.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Dom says after a moment. ‘I thought it was a delivery.’

‘It’s fine,’ I say, going inside. ‘But I’d really appreciate it if you could leave.’

‘Sure. Yeah. No, I’ll go now, I just wanted to make sure that we were okay – obviously that must have been pretty fucking awkward for you. And this is your kid? She’s really cute—’

He reaches out to give her one of his fingers to grab on to and I physically wince.

‘Don’t!’ I yelp.

Dom freezes and pulls his hand back. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s not you. I just. . . I really need you to leave.’

This is so deeply, painfully wrong. On my list of things I was going to do to make sure that this whole dating experiment was okay, no man meeting Rose until we’ve been together for at least one year was top of the fucking list. It was the number one promise that I made to myself and I’ve literally already broken it. My inability to get anything right is staggering. It should be studied.

‘Okay,’ Dom says. ‘Sure. Course.’

He shoves his feet into his shoes without undoing the laces and pulls his coat off the coat rack, accidentally taking several others with it. He looks at the coats, the floor, at me, at Rose, and correctly summarises that there’s no advantage to hanging them back up properly, and just shoves them back up so they don’t fall.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, not meeting his eye. ‘Really.’

‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘Really.’

There’s a long silence. ‘Maybe we could be friends?’ I ask, like a small child asking if Father Christmas is real.

He smiles. ‘We’re already friends,’ he says. ‘You can’t watch that much Mormon telly with someone unless you’re friends. And I’m serious about helping you with the heavy lifting on the house. I’m bring a drill next time and sort out all those shelves that need to go up.’

I blink back some very embarrassing tears. ‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Always nice to have a new friend.’

‘Bye,’ he says, as he closes the door gently behind him.

What the fuck was I thinking? In what world was I going to be able to make this work? I had one night to have nice, no-strings-attached sex and instead I had a platonic sleepover with a guy I then introduced to my daughter and ex-husband. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I go to the toy box, unroll the beautiful, expensive playmat that Gavin’s sister bought us, and then put out a variety of toys and books. I place Rose comfortably in front of it. Then I go and sit on the sofa, out of her eye line, and I sob.

Stella

It’s been six days since Dominic left my house, and I haven’t heard from him once. I’ve stared at his profile picture on WhatsApp. I’ve watched to see the online status under his name pop up. I’ve looked at his Instagram (a private account) and his LinkedIn (shortly before remembering that if you look at someone’s LinkedIn they can see that you’ve done it) and found his long-defunct Twitter-now-X account, which has a string of medium-funny jokes about the 2015 series of The Apprentice, and a message for Southern Rail complaining about his delayed train. Suffice to say, I am not expecting to ever hear from him again. I don’t even need to ask my savvy dating friends to check. I might be a complete dating dummy, but even I know that if you chuck a guy out while you’re half crying, having offered him sex and introduced him to your kid and ex-husband by accident, you don’t see him again.

Maybe as an act of penance, or maybe in self-preservation, I’ve also deleted Tangl. No notifications. No messages. I muted and archived the guys I had been talking to and officially shut up shop. No more men.

Luckily there’s something else to worry about this week, because my mother has decided to turn her focus on me. My mother is exactly the sort of person you’d want to be friends with. She was in PR, mostly fashion, when I was a kid. A few years ago, after she’d divorced my poor father, she sold her business for an undisclosed (but, we’re pretty sure, massive) sum, decided that she was tired of the countryside and moved to back to London, spending her half of the family pot on a one-bed flat in Chelsea where she hosts dinner parties and makes friends with ‘interesting people’ from creative backgrounds, which is genuinely great for her and probably is, but in real terms means that I can’t visit with Rose in case she smashes something and Mum is never available to babysit. Obviously it’s great for her and I’d be a complete dick to resent her having a sexy, exciting time in her sixties, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the cosy ex-vicarage where we grew up, or get pangs of jealousy when my friends post pictures of their nice, dowdy mums going apple-picking with their grandchildren.

Anyway, they’re coming for dinner tonight because I can’t go anywhere without getting a babysitter, so my social life basically revolves around my own kitchen. Earlier this afternoon Rose and I did a long walk in the pram to the Waitrose that I claim is ‘down the road’ (an A road) and bought all sorts of tiny little foods to try and tempt my mother who eats like a bird and sees weight loss as being akin to getting your PhD. On my wedding day she couldn’t think of much to say about the whole thing (admittedly I do now kind of get why) so instead she told me that I looked ‘very thin’ and it remains the best compliment I’ve ever had from her.

I’ve also managed to clean the entire ground floor despite Rose’s pathological phobia of the hoover, and I’ve washed my hair and put on a pretty white blouse and a pair of jeans that just about fit. Then I wait for everyone to arrive and pretend that I’m not nervous, because how can I be nervous to have my own mother over for dinner?