Stella #2
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?’
‘It’ is Gavin’s newly realised (or newly admitted) big dream, and the reason that he left me.
Despite having worked in finance for the better part of two decades, six months into my pregnancy with Rose, he came home from work and told me that he wanted to quit his job in order to become a stand-up comic.
This surprised me for two reasons, firstly that we had never actually been to see any comedy together, and secondly because I was six months pregnant with what was set to be a pretty expensive baby. I admit, I didn’t handle it that well.
Firstly, I laughed. Which actually isn’t the worst thing given that he apparently wanted to make people laugh for a living.
But then I looked down at my bump and looked around at the house we’d bought, which was literally falling apart, and said, ‘Gav, I don’t think we can afford for you to quit your job right now. ’
And he nodded, and we went to bed, and we never talked about any of it again. Until he left, and then explained via a drunken stream of WhatsApps that he had left me because I ‘didn’t support his dreams’.
‘He’s fine,’ I tell Kate. ‘I think.’
‘I saw on Instagram that he’d had a gig,’ Steph ventures.
Steph should have done the decent thing and known that when I said, ‘Please stay friends with him, we’re keeping things amicable,’ I meant block him on everything or you’re a disloyal snake.
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to sound cheerful. ‘He mentioned that his comedy course had an end-of-term event.’
‘Maybe he’ll turn out to be decent at it and you guys will be able to make things work?’ Kate offers.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone suggest because even if Gavin became the next Lenny Bruce there is nothing on this earth that could compel me to get back together with a man who walked out on me and our daughter.
Anyway, they all talk for a little while about how great it would be if we could get back together and I don’t have the energy to point out that if you miss six months of your child’s life before they’re a year old because you want to tell knock-knock jokes then you deserve to rot in hell.
Louella meets my eye, and I can tell she’s gearing up to tell them that they’re handmaidens for the patriarchy. I shake my head a tiny, almost invisible amount and she nods back, backing off.
‘Okay, Steph, we need to hear about this hen and about wedding prep,’ Kate says, changing the subject. ‘Do we like the new sister-in-law or do we hate her?’
I’m not going on the hen because my mum and Louella are the only people who can have Rose for two nights, and Louella’s going on the hen, while Mum is (perpetually) busy.
Well, actually, presumably Gavin could, but when I was added to the WhatsApp group with its flurry of emojis and deposit requests, that wasn’t the case, and anyway, two nights away at some luxury cabin feels like the kind of trip that belongs to a different me.
I listen, or at least pretend to listen, and eventually someone suggests splitting an Uber and they leave, to go home to their husbands, bringing stories of my horrible life for their edification. Louella hangs back.
‘Don’t listen to them about the dating thing,’ she says. ‘They’re pricks.’
‘Yeah, well, they’re my only friends, so I kind of need them to not be pricks,’ I snap. It’s obviously not Lou’s fault but the shame is making me bitchy.
‘Why don’t you make some new friends?’ Luella moots.
This annoys me even more. ‘Oh, genius idea,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I’ll just make some new friends, famously really easy in your thirties.’
‘People make baby friends, right?’ Louella says, taking a drag on her vape. ‘You did those baby classes? I thought you liked some of them?’
‘Can you do that outside, please?’ I chide, because getting shitty with her about the vape is easier than explaining that I’ve barely spoken to any of our antenatal friends because I can’t bear to tell them that unlike all their lovely, loving husbands, mine has fucked off.
She puts the vape down. ‘Look, don’t have a go at me. I’m just saying that lot were awful all evening and we should just prioritise other friends for a bit.’
‘They’re our best friends.’
‘And they’re pricks. They’re probably jealous.’
I can’t help laughing. ‘Jealous? I developed six new moles on my body while I was pregnant, some of which are significantly more 3D than I’m comfortable with, and the haemorrhoids they said would disappear postpartum are still very much sitting on my arsehole, so I’m never going to be able to have anal with anyone, which by the way is something that young, single people seem to be literally obsessed with, and I’m getting divorced at thirty. ’
‘Stella, that is unbelievably chic.’
My face clearly tells her that I’m incredulous about this.
‘I’m serious,’ she goes on. ‘I mean not about the moles or the haemorrhoids – you should really see someone about those. But being a young divorcée is so fucking chic. Plus, you’ve got a house and when it’s finished it’s going to be sick, and you’ve already got a kid so you don’t have to worry about your fertility.
And Gav is a cunt, but he’s paying the mortgage, and your maternity package is decent and you’ve got savings, and Mum gives you money because she feels bad for you.
So I’m going to say the thing you don’t want to hear, that you need to hear, which is that it could honestly be a lot worse.
Those bitches wish they could already have the house and the kid – they’re like, so many steps behind you. Okay?’
I take a deep breath. She’s wrong about them being jealous. But she is right about Rose. And about my finances. It could be worse, and thinking about myself as the hardest done by woman in London isn’t helping anything or anyone.
‘Thank you for being nice,’ I say, giving her a hug. She squeezes me and the relief of being touched by another adult is extraordinary.
‘Love you,’ she says. ‘Now you get back on the app and you find the hottest man in London to fuck, and then we’re going to show that load of jealous bitches a load of photos. Ideally nudes.’
Five minutes after she leaves, Louella sends me a link to a Harley Street haemorrhoid removal clinic and a message: Voucher for your Christmas present?