Page 50 of Stella is Starting Over

‘Wow,’ says Richard. ‘That’s rough. Still having to have so much connection to someone who’s hurt you so much.’

Mum and Louella nod in agreement. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘But then, we share a kid so I guess we’ll always be connected.’

Richard nods but doesn’t reply. There’s an embarrassing lull in conversation.

‘What about Rose’s birthday party?’ Louella says, throwing the perfect, easy distraction into the conversation. ‘Excited?’

Mum gets a cab back to her hotel; Louella is delighted to see that the Lime bike she arrived on is still outside on the street (as if anyone living in the suburbs of Dulwich is biking anywhere at ten-thirty on a Tuesday night).

Richard waits until they’ve gone and then wraps his arms around my waist. ‘I think that went well,’ he says.

‘It literally couldn’t have gone better,’ I agree. ‘If we break up my mum will never forgive me. Even if it’s you who does the dumping.’

‘Why would we break up?’ Richard looks stricken.

‘I’m joking!’ I say. Which is mostly true, I am joking. But also, the sense of relief from my mother was genuinely palpable. I think she might have looked at me with Richard and seen an immediate fix to all the damage from Gav and the break-up, a cure to Rose growing up in a broken home, a sort of emotional Gorilla Glue to provide a life that looks like the one she wants for me. And I get that. I feel it myself, sometimes. ‘I just mean, they really liked you. They’d be sad not to see you again – I was just being silly. Do you have to head home or do you want to stay for a while?’

‘I’d like to stay,’ he says, running his hands along my back, underneath my top. He kisses me and I try to work out whether my mouth will still taste like chicken or if the wine will have taken the edge off. I tighten my muscles, trying to pull in my stomach.

‘I’d like that too,’ I say.

We kiss on the sofa for ages, like a pair of teenagers. He seems sanguine about my refusal to let him go upstairs, a strange sort of rule I’ve created which makes me feel safer about Rose, or like I’m doing something less badly behaved. I figure I’d have men down here for dinner if they came over as friends, or as boyfriends of friends, so having a man down here and making out with him has to be fine. Right?

He runs his hand up my inner thigh and it sends shivers down my whole body. He – to my absolute shock – presses his leg between mine, making me whimper. ‘I like that noise,’ he says breathily into my ear.

‘I like that feeling,’ I say, trying to make words into sentences. It has been so fucking long since I had sex. So fucking long since I had the weight of another person on top of me and that blissful, glorious sensation of another body pushing into mine.

‘Should I get a condom?’ I whisper.

He pulls back. ‘I should probably head off,’ he says.

I honestly think I could cry. I know I shouldn’t mind, I know he’s entirely within his rights not to want to sleep with me, and I know that there’s nothing less acceptable than expecting sex from someone else. But fuck me (or, in Richard’s case, don’t), I’m so frustrated right now that I could genuinely scream. Did I do something wrong?

I inhale, trying to work out whether there’s any chance that despite a shower, perfume and deodorant, I might actually smell.

‘Okay,’ I say weakly. ‘Cool.’

He gets his jacket and finds his keys, all the while I’m thinking that the second he’s gone I’m going upstairs, finding a vibrator and praying that it’s got enough battery power left to get me off.

‘There’s just one thing that I wanted to mention.’ He drops his gaze. ‘I feel a little concerned about your ex-partner having so much control, in terms of the house.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s not my favourite, but we are where we are. And he has actually been pretty reasonable, giving me the year to get myself straight, and when we do sell it then at least I’ll have a small deposit so I can get a little place with Rose, still in the area. It could be worse.’

‘I just wondered whether it might be easier if I were to pay into the mortgage, rather than him.’

I look aghast. My brain was mostly focused on how badly I wanted to get myself off, so I was only sort of half concentrating, and now I’m worried that I’ve misheard. ‘Sorry?’ I say. ‘You want to pay Gavin’s half of the mortgage?’

He nods. ‘I looked at what you paid for the house, and based on what I assume you’d have put down for a deposit, it’s not a prohibitive sum.’

I feel myself bristle. He looked up how much my house was worth? He did a financial assessment about how much my mortgage must be, based on profiling me? But then, how often do I look up someone’s house after I visit them? And that’s not because I want to help them. It’s because I’m being nosy. At least he’s trying to do something nice here.

‘You could return it when the capital is released at the point of sale, or we could just regard it as a gift,’ he goes on.

‘A gift?’ I say weakly. ‘A gift is like, a necklace. Not a mortgage.’

‘It’s only a suggestion,’ he says. ‘But we could have paperwork drawn up so that it’s all watertight and you weren’t at risk. And it would mean that you didn’t have so much tie to him. I will entirely understand if it doesn’t appeal, but it seemed a more elegant solution than your being obliged to him.’

‘Wow,’ I say, trying not to think about the fact that he talks like a badly-written romantic hero in the kind of book my mum reads in the bath. I shouldn’t be a bitch. He’s being incredibly nice. And obviously, I’m going to say no. I have to say no. I can’t just let this man that I’ve known for less than three months start paying to keep a roof over my child’s head. ‘Richard, that’s insanely generous. Emphasis on the insane. And I love that you offered. I think you know that I can’t accept, but really, thank you. It means a lot.’