Page 24 of Stella is Starting Over

‘Can’t she stay up for a bit?’ asks Mum. ‘I haven’t seen her for so long.’

Whose fault is that? ‘No,’ I say, biting my tongue. ‘She needs her routine. Children do better with routines.’ She should be offended by that, because her idea of a routine was keeping the same nanny for more than six months at a time. But she doesn’t even seem to notice.

I carry Rose up to her bedroom and switch my brain off while I put her into the bath, wash her with the elephant flannel she likes, as opposed to the pony flannel she’s terrified of. Then I give her a massage with oat-based moisturiser (paraben-free, not that I know what a paraben is, or why it’s bad). I cuddle her, read her a story, feed her a bottle and put her into her cot with her mobile playing. For a moment I sort of hope that she’ll cry when I leave the room and I’ll be able to stay here in the warm, pink darkness of her bedroom, smelling her baby smell. But she does a long, deep breath and is very clearly falling blissfully to sleep. So I force myself downstairs, my legs aching on the stairs. Why are they aching? I’ve done basically no exercise since I got pregnant. Presumably that’s why.

Lou and Mum are sitting at the table, having made significant headway into the bottle of wine. I pick up my own untouched glass. ‘What did I miss?’ I ask.

‘It sounds like it’s more what I’ve missed,’ my mother says, like she’s in a raunchy vintage film. ‘You’ve been a busy girl.’

‘I mean I’m trying to get this place finished, and look after Rose, and think about going back to work. . .’

‘Yes, fine, but Lou said you had a date!’

I look at Lou, across the kitchen table. She drops her gaze, clearly not willing to receive the ‘I’m literally going to murder you’ look that I want to give her. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I had a date. And it didn’t go well.’

‘What happened?’ Lou asked. ‘You’ve been insanely vague about it; I need some actual detail.’

I sigh. And then I tell them the whole story, the fact that I couldn’t cope with having sex (this is the kind of thing my mother finds extremely normal to discuss with us – I’m aware that sounds insane) through to the wake-up call from Gavin. At which point my mother starts laughing. Properly, genuinely laughing. ‘Why is this funny?’

‘Sorry,’ she says, calming down. ‘I just love that Gavin had to see it. Serves him right.’

‘Yeah, well, it also completely ruined things with Dominic and humiliated me, and meant that Rose saw some guy leaving our house.’

‘Rose isn’t even one yet, darling. She barely knows what her hands are. Your father and I were still regularly having sex with you in the same room at that age when we went away for holidays. You girls always came with us and there was no point getting an extra room just for you, you were babies.’

‘Mum!’ Lou and I say, both viscerally disgusted.

‘I always forget how prudish the British are about sex.’ Mum sighs.

‘You’re British,’ Lou retorts, through gritted teeth.

‘Anyway,’ I say, trying to break up what could become a fight. ‘It was a disaster and I’ve sworn off all of it forever. The universe was clearly trying to tell me that I’m moving too fast.’

Mum looks concerned. ‘Don’t say that, darling.’

Lou starts clearing our plates. I had given Mum a performatively tiny portion of pasta in the hope that she’d have to ask for more, but she hasn’t even finished it.

‘Sorry,’ she says, when she notices me looking at her plate. ‘I just don’t have such an appetite as you two. Honestly, I envy you.’

Lou is behind Mum’s back and looks up to the ceiling mouthing ‘give me strength’. I just about manage to laugh. Then she comes back to the table with another bottle of wine and I gratefully accept another glass.

‘I have to say,’ Lou ventures. ‘I don’t actually think that date went that badly.’

‘I’m sorry? You heard the part where I cried on him? And the bit when he met Gavin?’

‘No, sorry, just to clarify,’ Lou says. ‘I mean, obviously you were insane and a total disaster. But I mean him. He actually seems really solid.’

‘I agree,’ Mum adds. ‘He didn’t have a tantrum when you couldn’t deliver on the sex you’d promised him—’

‘That’s, like, the bare minimum of consent,’ I argue.

‘Yeah, I know, but this is London dating on the apps in the 2020s,’ Lou counters. ‘The bare minimum deserves a fucking parade.’

‘That is insanely depressing.’ I sigh.

‘Come on,’ says Lou. ‘Get back on the horse. Let me see your profile.’

‘Absolutely not.’