Stella
Mum has made friends with a concert violinist from Poland, who lives with a much older man down the road from her, and has lost interest in hanging out with me – those few weeks over so suddenly – and Lou is on a work trip to Stockholm.
The girls’ WhatsApp group carries on chiming like ever before, and if they’ve noticed that my replies are muted since the awful dinner at the start of my dating experiment then no one has said anything.
I lick my wounds for a few days and then I accept that I’m inevitably going to take Lou’s advice, so I might as well download a couple of other apps that aren’t overtly hospitable to casual sex.
I started new profiles, which didn’t mention having kids but also didn’t say that I was looking for no-strings-attached fun, and I had polite if slightly boring conversations with nice men about their jobs, their hobbies, their families.
It’s amazing how much less traction I’m getting now that I don’t offer no-strings-attached fun.
Before I’d get hundreds of connections per day, and men begging me to go to expensive bars and restaurants that same evening.
Now I get maybe a dozen a day and they’re vaguely interested in doing something at some point, usually ‘a roast’ on a Sunday, which obviously doesn’t work with Rose.
But I soldiered on. I asked questions about the dogs in various men’s profile pictures and eventually, just as I knew I had to, I went on dates.
There was an Aperol in the evening sun with Jamie, thirty-six, whose fiancée broke his heart by breaking off the engagement because she wanted to ‘travel more’.
He cried halfway through the date and we agreed that he probably wasn’t ready to move on quite yet.
Tom, thirty-four, who ran a fishing supplies company, took me to – I am not joking – a sushi restaurant and told me how much he wanted to move out of London, and Jim, thirty-one, took me to see some stand-up and then told me at the interval that he found some of the jokes ‘problematic’.
All nice, decent, inoffensive men who I had no desire to see again.
After each date we exchanged a handful of messages and then sort of let it mutually peter out.
None of these men set my world on fire. But each one of them did give me a reason to put an underwired bra on, blow-dry my hair and leave the house.
And with my friends increasingly locked into their long-term partners, Lou weirdly busy with work and Rose gone one night a week, I have to admit it was starting to feel like the closest thing I have to a hobby.
Tonight’s victim is Richard, thirty-nine, who describes himself as six foot (though they all do that), and into film, travel and cooking.
He lives in Shad Thames, something he seems quite excited by because he mentioned it several times before I googled it and realised that it’s a fancy part of London, by the river.
Richard didn’t initially do much for me.
Not ‘my type on paper’ as people keep saying on their profiles, which is apparently a joke from Love Island.
Gavin didn’t like reality TV so I have no idea about half the in-jokes these men are using, a bit like I grew up in some kind of cult.
Anyway. Richard. He works in finance and seems like he drinks a lot of protein shakes.
I was worried that he might be a bit. . .
meaty for my tastes, but Lou was looking over my shoulder when his profile popped up and I was about to swipe ‘no.’
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Oh, come on, he’s all muscular and he works in finance.’
Lou looked at me like I’d soiled myself. ‘He’s stacked and rich? And that’s a reason to pass on him?’
‘That’s not my type,’ I whined.
Lou then took a deep breath and explained: ‘Okay, remember The Secret Garden? The children’s book?
’ I nodded. ‘So there are two types of men, and they’re both in The Secret Garden.
Colin, he’s the one with the fake disability who lives in the attic and claims to be allergic to sunlight.
And Dickon. Dickon is the hardy farmer boy who knows how to, like, raise animals and grow stuff.
Now you need to be dating a Dickon, not a Colin.
Sadly, most of your previous boyfriends have been Colins. ’
‘Gavin was tall!’
‘It’s not physical. Lots of women make that mistake. You can have a Colin in Dickon clothing, don’t be fooled by a tan and a decent protein intake. Your type has always been whiny little boys who’ve been indulged by their mothers, and you need a hardy farmer type.’
At this point I couldn’t tell whether she was talking complete sense or if she’d gone mad.
I agreed to talk to Richard, and his conversation was pretty okay, so when he asked me on a date, I agreed.
Then, this morning, to my literal shock, he messaged me to ask for my address so that he could send a taxi to pick me up.
I called Lou, literally unable to process this, and she was enormously approving.
‘Give him the address for a house at the end of the street,’ she said sagely, ‘in case he turns out to be insane, but also I love this for you.’
So in an hour, a car is picking me up and there’s a small part of me that thinks he’s so too good to be true that he might be going to kill me.
But Rose is still in this awful sleep regression and I’ve been up every ninety minutes, every night, for the last ten days, so, honestly, if he does kill me at least I’ll get a bit of a rest.
Rose being gone gives me a chance to go on dates, but it’s also a chance to use power tools without the noise freaking her out or it ending like an episode of Casualty.
I’ve been meaning to put up a picture in the hall, by the downstairs loo, for about six weeks, but the wall is way too solid to get a picture hook into.
Gavin’s drill is still in the tool cupboard and, despite having been told several times (by Gavin) that I couldn’t and shouldn’t use it, I’m completely sure that I can put a couple of little holes in the wall and then (because I’m a modern woman who can have it all) go off on my date.
I get the drill out, then, because I’m sensible, put on a pair of sunglasses to protect my eyes and an apron because I’m already wearing my date dress (Lou convinced me to take a Steve Jobs’s black-polo-neck attitude towards dressing for dates and it’s been a life-changing time-saver).
Anyway, I raise a middle finger to Gavin, who is off at his mum’s with my baby, probably talking about how he’s going to be a really famous comic this time next year, and then I turn on the drill and press it to the wall.
I wince at the noise, but I keep going and a few seconds later I’ve made a hole.
A deliberate hole, exactly where I wanted it to go.
I’m a genius. I should start an interior design account.
Cheerfully, I drill another hole about 5mm from the original hole.
I step back, then look at my handiwork, ready to go and get some nails to put into the holes for the picture. Then a little dribble of water seeps from the second hole.
Oh.
I don’t think that’s a good thing?
I sort of dab at it with my apron in the hope that it’s going to stop.
But, if anything, that makes it angry because the dribble turns into a sort of spray, and now my hallway has a water feature and it’s spurting a fine but nevertheless very real, spray of water onto the opposite wall, which I lovingly painted when we moved in.
‘Fuck!’ I shout.
One finger pressed over the offending hole, I grab for my phone and google ‘emergency plumber’.
I call three different numbers, all of which ring out.
Then I ring Lou, who doesn’t reply. I could ring my dad but he’s in Surrey, and I know he’d get in the car and drive up here but he really shouldn’t drive at night and it’s the better part of two hours.
I call another plumbing service who say they’ll be back tomorrow morning and then I start scrolling down my phone book. Fairly quickly, I pause. Dom.
Honestly, I don’t think about it for very long. He lives five minutes’ drive from my house and he said he was good at DIY. He’s very clearly my best option.
‘Hello?’ he says, sounding bemused when he picks up.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Look, I know this is very weird but you said you were good at house stuff, and my wall is leaking.’
‘Your. . . wall?’
‘Yes. My wall is leaking and I need help, and I thought if you were home and you weren’t busy you might be able to come over and help me.’
He takes a breath. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Sure. Yeah. I’ll be right there. Do you know where your stopcock is?’
‘My what?’ I yelp.
‘Never mind,’ he says.
Literally six minutes later – and I’m fully aware of how long it’s been because I’m standing here holding my thumb to the hole – the door goes.
I take my hand off the leak, run to the door, open it and then run back to the leak, pressing my hand back against it so the water runs down the wall, instead of spraying.
‘What happened?’ asks Dom, who is carrying the kind of toolbox you’d usually see in some kind of period drama.
‘I drilled into the wall and then it started leaking.’
‘Didn’t you use a stud finder?’ he asks.
‘That sounds like some kind of gay dating site,’ I snap.
Dom laughs, then moves my hand away. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’ve drilled into a pipe.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I had kind of gathered that.’
‘Are you going to be this moody the entire time I’m helping you?’ he asks.
‘I’m sorry!’ I say. ‘No.’
‘I’m going to find your stopcock,’ he says. He disappears for a few minutes and goes upstairs. I try to remember if I’ve left a pair of knickers on the bathroom floor or not, but before long the water stops.
‘It’s stopped!’ I shout.
‘Yeah, that was the idea,’ he shouts back. ‘Some sociopath put your stopcock in the loft.’
I smile. It’s nice to bicker with someone.
He comes back downstairs looking smug. ‘Right,’ he says.
‘I can probably find something to patch the damaged part of the pipe, and I’ll go in via the wall inside that cupboard, so you won’t be able to see it much.
You’ll need someone to come and take a proper look, and patch the pipe with a blowtorch, but this will tide you over long enough not to pay for an emergency plumber.
Or I could get a blowtorch and learn serious plumbing rather than just quick fixes. ’
‘You’re a literal angel,’ I say. ‘And I don’t think you should buy a blowtorch. Can I get you anything?’
‘I’ll take a drink when I’m done,’ he says. I must have looked worried, because he looks down at my phone, then my outfit, then puts two and two together. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘You’re off out?’
At that exact moment, a car horn sounds. I don’t want to answer it, because I can see from the silhouette that whatever company Richard uses to ferry women around sends a driver wearing a fucking uniform and a hat.
‘I don’t have to go,’ I say. ‘I can let my friend know that I’ve had an emergency – this is literally an emergency.’
‘No, no,’ he says. ‘You’re all dressed, you look great, you should go. I can finish this and then let myself out.’
‘You absolutely don’t need to do that.’
‘No, I know,’ he smiles. ‘But I’m an incredibly good guy. And I like getting a chance to show off my DIY skills.’
I laugh. I think for a moment that I’d really like to stay here.
And that it’s insane to let him handle this by himself, and irresponsible, and taking advantage.
But if I don’t, we won’t have any water, and when Rose gets home we’ll have to go to Lou’s or something until I get a plumber to fix it, and that’ll probably be hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Well, listen, I owe you a favour. And I hate owing people favours so I need you to actually let me do something for you at some point, okay?’
‘Sure.’ He smiles. ‘Now get going. If he’s sending you a driver he must be keen.’
I go bright, deep, painfully red. ‘Bye,’ I say, staring at the floor. ‘Thank you.’