Page 53 of Stella is Starting Over

‘It’s vintage,’ Florrie replies.

‘Love that – where did you find it? I feel like all my go-to places are so barren for good stuff at the moment, just like wall-to-wall old Zara.’

‘I don’t really like to share where I source my pieces,’ Florrie says, smiling. ‘Otherwise they get too popular.’

I might not have two X chromosomes but even I can tell that this is a bad thing for one woman to say to another woman.

‘Right,’ Louella says with a smile. ‘Well, I should try to force these horrible snacks on some other victims. Have fun.’

I watch Louella go and wish I’d made a better impression, or at least any impression.

‘Who is that?’ Florrie asks.

‘Stella’s sister. Rose’s aunt.’

‘Oh.’

Florrie surveys the party with a look of distaste. ‘How long do we have to stay?’

I try to look like I don’t think this is a staggeringly rude question. ‘Uh, another half hour or so.’ I want to add that I’d imagine everyone is probably going to be keen for us to leave because we’re standing in the corner talking to each other and being rude to anyone who does attempt to make conversation with us. But I don’t. I increasingly think this might be my final date with Florrie so it’s probably incumbent upon me to see it out with good grace, so she doesn’t pay an internet witch to put a curse on me, or start an Instagram account about what a bad man I am.

At the other side of the garden, Stella is sitting on a striped rug, eating a cupcake messily. She laughs and wipes her hand on the rug, then feeds Rose a tiny bit of icing. They’re in their own little world, those two. I’m not sure it would much matter if any of the rest of us weren’t here and yet, somehow, I’d really like to be sitting on that rug with them.

Stella says something that I don’t hear and everyone laughs, and I wish I knew what she’d said.

Twenty minutes later, we’ve had a stilted conversation with another couple who’ve brought a baby. They met Stella and Gavin through something called Bump and Baby, which seems to be a sort of training programme for new parents. They talk about Gavin as if he died in a terrible accident instead of bailing because he’s a twat. Florrie answers questions about what she does for a living (student), all of which make her sound like she’s about twenty-one and make me sound like a complete pervert.

‘Shall we go?’ I ask Florrie.

‘Sure,’ she says.

I hug Stella tightly as I say goodbye. ‘You’ve done an amazing job.’

‘Turns out kids’ parties are a doddle, just balloons and unlimited carbs.’

‘I meant more generally,’ I say quietly. Florrie is waiting by the front door and it’s unreasonable to keep her waiting. ‘This whole thing, your mum-ing. You’re a rockstar.’ I kiss her on the forehead and then follow Florrie out into the street. She starts striding in the direction of the nice pub I bribed her with earlier.

I barely talk on the way there because I’m replaying the party and the weekend, and also trying to convince myself that I don’t have to break up with Florrie because I could probably just be busy and avoidant, and let her get the message at a distance. But then she surprises me.

We sit down outside the pub. I get her a glass of wine and me a pint, and she rolls a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘For what?’

‘For being shit, at the kids’ party.’

This is a genuine surprise. ‘You weren’t that bad,’ I lie.

‘I was rude. Or at least, I seemed rude. I find stuff like that really hard, I can’t work out what to say to people like that.’

‘People like what?’

‘Kid people.’

‘Oh,’ I say, processing this.

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t like kids, don’t want them, and places like that freak me out. I don’t know what to ask and it’s just like, standing inside this whole life that I really, deeply don’t want to have, and I freak out that I’m going to tell someone how much I hate it, so I say the wrong thing. Or I say nothing and then everyone thinks I’m horrible.’

I want to tell her that she didn’t seem horrible, but we’d both know that was a lie. ‘Why did you want to come?’ I ask gently.