Page 28 of Stella is Starting Over

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Oh, come on, he’s all muscular and he works in finance.’

Lou looked at me like I’d soiled myself. ‘He’s stacked and rich? And that’s a reason to pass on him?’

‘That’s not my type,’ I whined.

Lou then took a deep breath and explained: ‘Okay, remember The Secret Garden? The children’s book?’ I nodded. ‘So there are two types of men, and they’re both in The Secret Garden. Colin, he’s the one with the fake disability who lives in the attic and claims to be allergic to sunlight. And Dickon. Dickon is the hardy farmer boy who knows how to, like, raise animals and grow stuff. Now you need to be dating a Dickon, not a Colin. Sadly, most of your previous boyfriends have been Colins.’

‘Gavin was tall!’

‘It’s not physical. Lots of women make that mistake. You can have a Colin in Dickon clothing, don’t be fooled by a tan and a decent protein intake. Your type has always been whiny little boys who’ve been indulged by their mothers, and you need a hardy farmer type.’

At this point I couldn’t tell whether she was talking complete sense or if she’d gone mad. I agreed to talk to Richard, and his conversation was pretty okay, so when he asked me on a date, I agreed. Then, this morning, to my literal shock, he messaged me to ask for my address so that he could send a taxi to pick me up. I called Lou, literally unable to process this, and she was enormously approving.

‘Give him the address for a house at the end of the street,’ she said sagely, ‘in case he turns out to be insane, but also I love this for you.’

So in an hour, a car is picking me up and there’s a small part of me that thinks he’s so too good to be true that he might be going to kill me. But Rose is still in this awful sleep regression and I’ve been up every ninety minutes, every night, for the last ten days, so, honestly, if he does kill me at least I’ll get a bit of a rest.

Rose being gone gives me a chance to go on dates, but it’s also a chance to use power tools without the noise freaking her out or it ending like an episode of Casualty. I’ve been meaning to put up a picture in the hall, by the downstairs loo, for about six weeks, but the wall is way too solid to get a picture hook into. Gavin’s drill is still in the tool cupboard and, despite having been told several times (by Gavin) that I couldn’t and shouldn’t use it, I’m completely sure that I can put a couple of little holes in the wall and then (because I’m a modern woman who can have it all) go off on my date.

I get the drill out, then, because I’m sensible, put on a pair of sunglasses to protect my eyes and an apron because I’m already wearing my date dress (Lou convinced me to take a Steve Jobs’s black-polo-neck attitude towards dressing for dates and it’s been a life-changing time-saver). Anyway, I raise a middle finger to Gavin, who is off at his mum’s with my baby, probably talking about how he’s going to be a really famous comic this time next year, and then I turn on the drill and press it to the wall. I wince at the noise, but I keep going and a few seconds later I’ve made a hole. A deliberate hole, exactly where I wanted it to go. I’m a genius. I should start an interior design account. Cheerfully, I drill another hole about 5mm from the original hole.

I step back, then look at my handiwork, ready to go and get some nails to put into the holes for the picture. Then a little dribble of water seeps from the second hole.

Oh.

I don’t think that’s a good thing?

I sort of dab at it with my apron in the hope that it’s going to stop. But, if anything, that makes it angry because the dribble turns into a sort of spray, and now my hallway has a water feature and it’s spurting a fine but nevertheless very real, spray of water onto the opposite wall, which I lovingly painted when we moved in.

‘Fuck!’ I shout.

One finger pressed over the offending hole, I grab for my phone and google ‘emergency plumber’. I call three different numbers, all of which ring out. Then I ring Lou, who doesn’t reply. I could ring my dad but he’s in Surrey, and I know he’d get in the car and drive up here but he really shouldn’t drive at night and it’s the better part of two hours. I call another plumbing service who say they’ll be back tomorrow morning and then I start scrolling down my phone book. Fairly quickly, I pause. Dom.

Honestly, I don’t think about it for very long. He lives five minutes’ drive from my house and he said he was good at DIY. He’s very clearly my best option.

‘Hello?’ he says, sounding bemused when he picks up.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Look, I know this is very weird but you said you were good at house stuff, and my wall is leaking.’

‘Your. . . wall?’

‘Yes. My wall is leaking and I need help, and I thought if you were home and you weren’t busy you might be able to come over and help me.’

He takes a breath. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Sure. Yeah. I’ll be right there. Do you know where your stopcock is?’

‘My what?’ I yelp.

‘Never mind,’ he says.

Literally six minutes later – and I’m fully aware of how long it’s been because I’m standing here holding my thumb to the hole – the door goes. I take my hand off the leak, run to the door, open it and then run back to the leak, pressing my hand back against it so the water runs down the wall, instead of spraying.

‘What happened?’ asks Dom, who is carrying the kind of toolbox you’d usually see in some kind of period drama.

‘I drilled into the wall and then it started leaking.’

‘Didn’t you use a stud finder?’ he asks.