Page 8 of Stella is Starting Over

I jerk my head up and look at them. They’re sitting around my table, which I’d hastily covered with a pretty blue-and-white tablecloth minutes before they arrived, all staring at me.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘I just asked you three questions and you were staring at your phone the whole time. Is it Rose?’

I want to lie, but I’m afraid that would tempt fate. So I tell the truth. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s not Rose.’

‘Then what are you so obsessed with?’ asks Kate.

Louella looks smug. ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘Tell them.’

I don’t want to tell them, but obviously no one has ever escaped a ‘go on, tell them’ without telling. ‘I joined a dating app,’ I say. ‘I’m doing the Mantourage method.’

They all explode. Mostly laughing at me for calling it ‘a dating app’ like I’m someone’s grandmother.

‘What’s the Mantourage method?’ asks Kate.

I explain about Lexie Leung. ‘God, I’m so glad I’m not single,’ Kate says. ‘This sounds so tiring, I don’t know how you’re doing it!’

‘Which app?’ asks Olive.

‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ demands Steph. ‘Don’t you need to be alone for a while?’

They continue asking questions without giving me a window to answer them and I let it wash over me, then eventually I refill my glass of wine and look at Louella. ‘It’s her fault,’ I say.

‘I just pointed out that she’s had basically no dating experience.’

‘That’s true,’ agrees Olive, archly.

‘I feel like before she’s ready to date to find an actual partner, she needs to put some points on the board,’ Louella says languidly. They listen to her, because everyone always does. In fact, everyone who was asking me if I was entirely sane before now murmurs their agreement. ‘She’s literally only had sex with two people,’ Louella adds.

She’s probably got a point. You can’t just jump back into having another husband with that kind of body count.

‘Lou!’ I retort. ‘It’s three – I’ve had sex with three people.’

‘Liar, you gave William C a blow job. It didn’t go all the way in and you know it; you’re rewriting history.’

‘That wasn’t my fault. I should get to count it as three because we got to the point of penetration,’ I retort, louder than intended. The others are used to this, so it doesn’t rankle, but Kate, who is always the sensible one, takes a deep breath. ‘Look, I don’t want to sound like a downer, but is this healthy? Are you ready to be dating? You literally just had a baby. Is it even safe? Ryan and I didn’t start having sex again until nearly a year after Rufus was born.’

I did not literally just have a baby, I had a baby eight months ago, and Kate would know that if she’d done anything other than arrive wearing a lot of perfume when Rose was a newborn, bringing an insanely expensive cashmere Babygro, and then continually tell me that we should go for ‘day wine’ on a weekday when she’s got a free afternoon, but never actually respond to my suggestions for actual dates.

‘Yeah,’ I say, looking into my glass. ‘Yeah, I get that.’

My face is burning red, which is probably partially the wine but also the abject mortification of thinking that they were going to want to hear about my Carrie Bradshaw antics and instead getting told off.

‘She’s not trying to be mean,’ Olive offers, typically the peacemaker. ‘We’re just worried about you. Gavin’s been gone for, what, four months?’

‘Six.’

‘Six months, and the baby is still really small. There’s so much time for dating. Shouldn’t you just be focusing on being a mum?’

Everyone nods earnestly.

Even in the moment I’m aware that tonight, when they’ve gone home, I’m going to think of ten brilliant things I could say to this. I’d really like to be able to explain that most weeks I can go forty-eight hours without saying more than one line of dialogue to another adult, that this massive unfinished house is so quiet at night that it gives me psychosomatic tinnitus, that sometimes I get on the bus at rush hour when I don’t need to because I want to feel the weight of other people’s bodies next to mine because I’m so achingly, bone-crushingly, physically lonely, and that these app guys have magically turned into a virtual support system for distraction and amusement. But right now, I’ve got nothing.

‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘I guess that’s probably true.’

‘How is Gav?’ Kate asks, her head tilted to one side. ‘How’s it going?’