Dominic
I cycle into the office on a Lime bike because it’s warm outside and I’m fully committed to the spring vibes.
Then, halfway through the cycle, I realise that I’m seeing Stella tonight and curse myself.
Why would I cycle when I have a date? Specifically, why would I cycle when I have a date with Stella who is a) brilliant and b) has been very clear that we’re going to have sex.
I can’t turn up at her house with bike crotch.
It might sound unromantic but I find her approach deliciously refreshing.
We’ve been sending each other filthy messages since our date last week, and a couple of days ago she told me she had the house to herself on Thursday night and she wondered if I wanted to come over.
And then, when I said that sounded nice, she launched into a long stream of conversation about how she’d like to have sex but it was totally fine if I didn’t and there was no pressure or expectation, a stream of consciousness that only ended when I told her that I’ve thought of basically nothing else since we first met and that, yes, I would really like to fuck.
So now I’ve got all the excitement at the prospect of going there, and none of the lingering dread I usually get that I’ve misread the situation and I’m set to massively embarrass myself.
At the office I make a cafetière of coffee for everyone – or rather, three cafetières, while regretting offering to make everyone coffee.
We have a meeting about a building where the client wants to put bathrooms on every other floor to save money (illegal, as well as mean) and at lunchtime I nip into Boots to buy some condoms and a packet of baby wipes in case I’ve got a sweaty sack from cycling, and the nice wine shop down the road from Boots for a tasteful bottle of ‘thanks for having me over’ wine.
The afternoon passes painfully slowly; I spend most of it looking out of the window at Clerkenwell Green and the bright late-winter sunshine casting shadows on the tombstones.
But eventually it’s six, and I can leave.
This is not my first rodeo, as Georgie would say.
It’s not even my hundredth rodeo, I don’t think.
But I’m nervous. I’m always nervous. I want this to go well, I want us both to enjoy it.
I want us to have mutually gratifying sex (ideally far better than what she was having with her ex-husband because I’m nothing if not competitive) and then enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep before agreeing that this was fun and we should do it again in a month or so.
I get on the train at Farringdon, headed towards Dulwich, and then follow Google Maps from the station.
When I arrive at the address she’s given me, I stop, stand and look at the building, trying to work out how I could have got the address wrong because there’s no way this could be her house.
It’s an old Victorian house with an SUV on the drive.
I go to WhatsApp and check, but yes. This is it.
This is the address she gave me. Then I look on Google Maps to be completely sure that there aren’t two Murphy Streets in Dulwich, but there aren’t.
This is it. Maybe it’s her parents’ place and she’s house-sitting?
Or inherited it? I’m just psyching myself up to press her high-tech doorbell when the door opens.
‘The neighbours will ring the police if you stand there long enough,’ says Stella, smiling at me. She’s wearing a white top, low cut and pretty, with jeans and bare feet. Her toenails are pale pink.
‘I thought I had the wrong place,’ I say. ‘This is insanely. . . grown-up.’
‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she says, ushering me in. ‘I am a grown-up.’
The hall gives way to an open-plan kitchen and living room.
There’s an island with stools, the same bifold doors that Georgie and George have, a green velvet sofa and some kind of floor mat.
Also covered in toys. The fridge has a blotchy hand painting on it, and a leaflet for something called ‘Jump & Jiggle With Mummy’.
It smells like cooking and fresh flowers and laundry.
‘Do you want a glass of wine?’ she offers. Her face is slightly flushed, like she might have been drying her hair ten minutes before I got here.
‘Yes,’ I say, looking around, trying to make sure that my eyes are processing this place correctly and that there are a load of books with ducks on them in a pile on the coffee table. ‘So your housemate’s out tonight?’
She laughs, which is surprising because it wasn’t a funny comment. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘With her dad.’
‘Nice.’
I turn to look at Stella and behind her on the floor is a basket full of stuffed toy baby animals. ‘Are you. . . house-sitting for someone?’
Stella looks bemused. ‘No.’
‘You live here?’
The expression on her face makes me think that I must have missed something. ‘Yes?’
‘But why is there so much kid stuff?’
She looks even more bemused. ‘Because I have a kid?’
I sense she might now not be the only one with a bemused expression. ‘What?’ I say.
‘I told you? On our date?’
Did she? I think back to standing outside my formerly favourite – now blacklisted for becoming a TikTok hotspot – bar, chatting away, her talking so fast and the people around us so loud that I occasionally missed something she said.
‘I thought you said you could be a kid,’ I say weakly. ‘Like, you could act like a kid sometimes.’
‘That would be quite a weird thing to say,’ she responds. She looks worried.
‘Are they. . . here?’ I ask, dropping my voice in case I’m liable for waking up a baby. Stella laughs.
‘Of course she’s not here. Her dad takes her on Thursdays – just said that?’
‘I thought you were talking about your actual housemate.’
‘Why would my adult housemate be staying with her dad every Thursday?’ She laughs again.
‘I don’t know!’ I say. ‘I just didn’t realise – I didn’t think. . .’ I trail off, aware that I might be about to make this insurmountably weird. ‘People are strange, I didn’t want to press it!’
‘Do you want a drink?’ she says. ‘Or are you so freaked out that you’re going to fake a work emergency and leave?’
‘There’s not really such a thing as an architectural emergency,’ I say. ‘Usually just people wanting to put more balconies on things and that’s not really urgent.’
‘Good,’ she says, going to the fridge and taking out a bottle of wine. ‘It’s really not a big deal, you know? Just think of her as my housemate. My little, tiny housemate.’
I laugh. ‘Is she a good housemate?’
‘She doesn’t pay rent, which is a pain, but she also never drinks my wine or steals my clothes, so on balance, pretty decent.’
I laugh again. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to be weird about it, I just didn’t realise.’
‘It’s really fine,’ she says. ‘I get that it’s kind of weird to have your second date at a, like, family home.’
‘I sort of assumed you’d be living in a house-share with, like, one uni friend and a lot of Oliver Bonas,’ I admit.
‘Not so much,’ she says. ‘Garden?’
It’s not really warm enough to be outside, and going outside takes us further away from the bedroom, which is, I assume given Stella’s very explicit communications, the goal.
But it’s still light at nearly 7 p.m. for the first time this year and we’re too British to resist that.
She opens the back doors and we go out into the garden, which has a wooden table and chairs.
I wait for her to sit down and then sit next to her, rather than across the table.
I lift a strand of her hair that has fallen forward, in front of her shoulder, and put it back into place.
She smells like citrus and I can see a blush creeping along her neck. That’s a good sign.
‘This is great,’ I say. ‘A proper garden.’
‘It really isn’t. The people who had it before had treated it like total shit and I’ve been trying to make it look half decent, but I’ve only got like half an hour at a time to work on it. It’ll get there, though. Eventually.’
‘I could help,’ I hear myself say.
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘Sure. Like I said the other day, I like playing house. I’m just not so good at doing “house” for real.’
There’s a pause, which, if we weren’t awkward semi-strangers, would be filled with us acknowledging that it might be weird for me to help sort her garden out when we’re very much not looking for a relationship, but that she could use the help and that I’ve got two window boxes and nothing else to play with, and I really miss getting my hands dirty, so it could also be a perfect arrangement.
‘How was work?’ she asks.
‘Fine,’ I say, trying to think of something funny.
‘No buildings I’ve worked on fell down so I call that a win.
How was yours?’ I ask, remembering that she works in interiors, so that should be safe ground for us, chat-wise.
Not that we’ve actually had any issues on that front.
Or that being able to ask her about cornicing would actually save any kind of conversational drought.
‘I wasn’t at work today,’ she says, looking at the stem of her wine glass.
‘Oh, right, day off?’
‘I’m on maternity leave.’
I try to keep the surprise off my face and it clearly doesn’t work because she laughs at my expression.
‘But we talked about your job?’ I say. ‘Before?’
‘I’d just done a keeping in touch day. And I am going back – it is still technically my job.’
‘Wow,’ I say, because I’m not sure what else to do. ‘I mean, honestly, impressive work.’
She looks down, dropping her gaze, and I sense that I’ve said the wrong thing.
‘I’m on mum mode most of the time,’ she says. ‘But my ex has our daughter once a week now and I just felt like I wanted something to do – something that wasn’t, like, a yoga class or drinking alone.’