Page 74 of Stella is Starting Over

Terrible. Horrible. Awful. I hate the idea. But none of that is rational, or fair.

‘What’s she like?’ I ask.

He shows me pictures of her. She’s a smiling, busty, blonde woman in her late thirties or early forties. Gavin offers to show me a video of her current set, but the idea of playing sound out loud in a restaurant makes me feel like a criminal. I watch a couple of TikToks of her, with subtitles, and she seems funny. And nice. And normal. And even if she didn’t, I have no leg to stand on. Legally, I can’t stop him from introducing her to Rose if he does it during his visitation, and if I wanted to I’d be a huge hypocrite because I would have done it with Richard. I shudder very slightly at the memory of Richard who, to my relief, blocked me on every platform, including LinkedIn, and hasn’t been in touch once.

‘She seems great,’ I say, handing Gav’s phone back. ‘I’m glad you’ve found someone you like.’

‘Thanks,’ he says shyly. ‘She’s the same age as me, so we can talk about kids’ TV shows we both watched.’

This is meant to be self-deprecating, and I know he’s trying to be nice, so I try not to mind that he’s telling me the ways that this woman is a better partner for him than I was. ‘You’re very welcome to introduce her to Rose,’ I say. ‘I’ve got some articles you can read about how to introduce romantic partners without screwing your kids up.’

‘Thank you,’ he says earnestly.

We order hot drinks, because we might as well, and he asks me an inevitable question. ‘What about you? Are you dating anyone?’

I shake my head. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘What about that bloke I met?’

‘Dominic,’ I say, forcing my face into a fixed position of neutrality. ‘He was actually just a friend.’

Gavin raises one eyebrow. ‘Right.’

There’s a lull in the conversation while Gavin stirs a sugar cube into his coffee and I think we should probably get the bill, because it’s been a very nice hour and I’m glad we did this, but there’s a reason that we’re exes and the chances of this turning into an argument are never zero.

‘Can I say something?’ he asks, when he’s finished clinking his spoon against the china of his cup.

‘Sure.’

‘I know it might sound strange coming from me, but I. . .’ He takes a moment to consider what he’s going to say. ‘I don’t want you to be alone.’

It takes a lot of self-control to not point out that he could have prevented that from happening by not leaving me.

‘I think you should think about dating,’ he says. ‘You deserve to find someone who makes you happy.’

I half laugh. ‘I did quite a lot of dating last year and it was a disaster. I picked terrible people, I got into some shitty situations, and it’s not going to work, so there’s really no point in trying. This isn’t my time to be happy, this is my time to focus on Rose, and work, and getting my life together. Then I can think about meeting someone.’

‘Why do you have to have your life together before you can meet someone?’ asks Gavin, bemused. ‘When I met Hannah I was living at my mum’s—’

‘You still live at your mum’s—’

‘And I wasn’t legally divorced and I was trying a whole new career—’

‘I know, but that’s different—’

‘Why is it different?’ he asks. ‘The right person can help you get your life together.’

I’m exasperated. ‘That’s not how it works.’

‘Says who?’

Everyone. Literally everyone says this. ‘I don’t know.’ I sigh. ‘The experts, the relationship influencers, every magazine I read when I was a teenager, everyone knows that you’re supposed to get your life together and then meet someone. That’s just. . . it’s just a fact.’

Gavin considers me for a moment, looking at me like he’s doing a really hard maths problem. ‘But if you get your life perfectly sorted before you let yourself meet anyone, how is there going to be any space in your life when you do eventually meet them?’

I think about it for a minute. Then for another minute. And I really, truly, genuinely don’t have an answer to his question.

Dominic