Stella
‘What are you making?’ Louella asks, sitting on my kitchen sofa, cross-legged. She sniffs the air appreciatively.
‘Roast chicken,’ I say.
‘Oh my god, divine,’ she says, lying back. ‘That is my favourite news. Remember before you had a baby and your life blew up, and you used to make us amazing food all the time?’
‘Yes,’ I say, hunting through drawers for a potato peeler. ‘That must have been really hard for you.’
‘Thank you!’ she says with enthusiasm. ‘People were really focused on you and the baby, and there was very little support for me.’
I laugh. ‘Okay, so some things you should know about Richard,’ I start. ‘He’s—’
‘Really rich,’ Luella interjects.
‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘He’s really rich, but also he’s quite a gentle soul. Like, slow burn, more of a listener than a talker—’
‘Rich man who doesn’t talk much? Absolutely ideal,’ says my mother, coming in from the garden where she’s been smoking and sulking because I won’t let her smoke in the house.
She hadn’t initially been invited to dinner, but she’s staying with Louella this week while she has some repair work done on her own flat (because Louella has time to procure fresh flowers for the spare room and no screaming 6:30 a.m. wake-up call) and she got wind of it.
So now, rather than a casual evening where Richard meets Louella over a glass of wine, he’s meeting my mother and my sister.
‘Mum,’ I say. ‘Please, please don’t say things like that in front of him.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘I won’t, obviously. Is your father not joining?’
I shake my head, wanting to point out that I didn’t invite him this evening in much the same way that I didn’t actually invite her. ‘He’s got a parish council meeting.’
‘They have those every fifteen minutes,’ my mother says, shaking her head. ‘Surely he could have missed it. He should want to meet your partner.’
‘He’s not my partner,’ I almost whimper, the word landing horribly hard.
‘He’s someone I’m dating. We haven’t even—’ I stop myself before I tell my mum that Richard and I haven’t had sex yet, because that’s the kind of thing she’s liable to bring up over dinner.
‘He’s someone I’m dating, and that’s it. Okay?’
‘Well, he should want to meet someone you’re dating,’ Mum insists, refilling her wine glass.
‘He’s driving Lisa from down the road,’ Louella says archly. We both know that Dad is shagging Lisa (or whatever slightly religious people in their sixties do when they’re dating). Mum is in denial about this.
‘He’s such a pillar of the community,’ she says grandly.
‘She’s very lucky to have him. Honestly, living in that village in the middle of nowhere and not being able to drive, it’s utter madness, I’d go mad.
But then I need more social and cultural stimulation than someone like Lisa.
’ She says the name like it’s a skin disease and the doorbell goes before Louella can fire any more shots, much to my relief.
‘Hello,’ I say, looking up at Richard. He’s tanned and handsome in a white T-shirt and chinos, and he’s carrying four bunches of flowers.
‘That’s a lot of flowers,’ I say. ‘Did you take them off a lamp post?’
He looks confused. ‘They’re for your mother and your sister,’ he explains.
We reach the kitchen and Lou and my mother are obviously in raptures over this. ‘These are for you,’ he says, handing Louella a bunch of peonies. ‘Your sister mentioned that you like them.’
Louella is literally blushing, which I’ve never seen her do before.
‘And these are for you,’ he says, handing Mum a bunch of white roses. ‘I thought you might like a classic.’
‘I always like a classic,’ says Mum in an insanely saucy voice that I never want to hear again. ‘These are yours.’ He smiles, passing me a bunch of tulips, which admittedly I do love.
‘Who are those for?’ Louella asks, pointing at a bunch of tiny tea roses.
‘Ah.’ Richard looks bashful. ‘Probably silly, but they’re for Rose. I didn’t want to leave her out.’
‘That’s incredibly sweet of you,’ I say, feeling a smile spread across my face. ‘Thank you.’
‘You should give them to her,’ Louella says. ‘We can get her up? Right?’
‘No,’ I say, flatly. ‘She’s only just gone down.’
‘She probably isn’t asleep yet,’ Mum ventures.
‘It’s not that,’ I say, trying to make this conversation go away as quickly as possible. ‘Richard hasn’t met Rose yet. But she’ll love these – thank you. I can’t wait to show her in the morning.’
‘Why haven’t you met?’ Mum asks, looking confused.
‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ I ask. Richard indicates that he’d like me to open the bottle of red he brought and I look for a corkscrew, grateful for something to do.
He asks Louella about work, my mother about living in Chelsea (her favourite topic), and they chatter away. At one point I think my mother might actually be fluttering her eyelashes at him. Eventually, he goes to the bathroom and they both round on me.
‘I love him,’ Louella says.
‘He seems like a very good sort,’ Mum agrees. ‘Lovely manners. Very clean fingernails.’
She is absolutely right about that, I have never seen Richard with anything less than pristine nails. He comes back from the bathroom and picks up the wine. ‘Can I top anyone up?’ he asks.
‘They were talking about you while you were in the bathroom,’ I say, putting potatoes into a pot of boiling water and salting the water liberally.
‘Oh!’ Richard says. I think he might be blushing. ‘Right. Well, I guess that’s to be expected.’
‘She’s so indiscreet.’ Mum tuts. ‘We were just saying how lovely you are. And I was about to say that I think it’s very modern that you don’t mind about Rose, or about Stella having been married before. I think a lot of men would be—’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I interject.
Richard studies the tiles on the kitchen floor. ‘I think Stella seems wonderful,’ he says, clearly absolutely and completely out of his depth in this conversation. ‘And we’ve all got our pasts, right? Everyone’s got their baggage.’
I bristle at the word ‘baggage’, a word that I’ve consciously avoided when describing myself and especially when describing Rose.
It’s such a hideous expression, and I know it’s fair.
It’s actually very accurate. A lot of the time having a baby does feel like I’m dragging a suitcase around behind me and I’m not allowed to put it down or leave it at left luggage. But still.
‘Sure,’ Louella adds. ‘Exactly. And Rose isn’t baggage, anyway. She’s a bonus.’
‘Quite.’ Richard nods.
‘Dom always calls her my tiny housemate,’ I say, ‘which I quite like.’
‘Dom?’ asks Mum.
‘A friend of mine,’ I reply, blushing in what I hope isn’t enough of a deep red that anyone notices.
‘Which one is Dom?’ Mum asks. ‘The one who doesn’t shave her armpits?’
‘No, Mum.’ Louella sighs. ‘That was Lola, and she went through a very brief phase of not shaving in 2015.’
‘Did Rose take to you?’ Louella asks Richard, shifting in her chair. ‘No judgement if not, she cried every time I came into the room for the first three months.’
‘They haven’t met,’ I say again. Louella knows that they haven’t met because she’d have grilled me for details about their first meeting, which means she’s deliberately testing the water with him. Annoying, but equally exactly what I would do.
‘Stella has been very cautious about introducing anyone into her life in a more meaningful capacity,’ Richard says. ‘Which I think is admirable and deeply pragmatic.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Mum says, raising her glass.
I mash the potatoes, take the tenderstem broccoli out of the oven when it’s sizzling and charred in the skillet but not cremated, and everyone sits down at the table.
The evening is still so warm that we have the doors open and even though the garden is a ramshackle mess, the air smells so sweet and the weeds I keep promising to tackle are in flower so it manages to look quite pretty.
‘Has Gavin said how long he’s willing for you to keep living at the house?’ Mum asks, after we’ve sat down and everyone has made noises about how delicious the chicken is. Louella rolls her eyes at the question.
‘Mum.’ She sighs. ‘That’s not a question for now.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I’m perfectly happy for Richard to hear about it, it’s not a secret.’
Richard looks interested; he refills my water glass, studying me. ‘Your ex still owns part of the house?’
‘We agreed that because he left, he’d keep paying into the mortgage, I’ll keep living here, instead of him paying child maintenance. And then once I finish fixing it up I’ll sell it, and we’ll both take back what we put in.’
‘Wow,’ says Richard. ‘That’s rough. Still having to have so much connection to someone who’s hurt you so much.’
Mum and Louella nod in agreement. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘But then, we share a kid so I guess we’ll always be connected.’
Richard nods but doesn’t reply. There’s an embarrassing lull in conversation.
‘What about Rose’s birthday party?’ Louella says, throwing the perfect, easy distraction into the conversation. ‘Excited?’
Mum gets a cab back to her hotel; Louella is delighted to see that the Lime bike she arrived on is still outside on the street (as if anyone living in the suburbs of Dulwich is biking anywhere at ten-thirty on a Tuesday night).
Richard waits until they’ve gone and then wraps his arms around my waist. ‘I think that went well,’ he says.
‘It literally couldn’t have gone better,’ I agree. ‘If we break up my mum will never forgive me. Even if it’s you who does the dumping.’
‘Why would we break up?’ Richard looks stricken.
‘I’m joking!’ I say. Which is mostly true, I am joking.
But also, the sense of relief from my mother was genuinely palpable.
I think she might have looked at me with Richard and seen an immediate fix to all the damage from Gav and the break-up, a cure to Rose growing up in a broken home, a sort of emotional Gorilla Glue to provide a life that looks like the one she wants for me.
And I get that. I feel it myself, sometimes.
‘I just mean, they really liked you. They’d be sad not to see you again – I was just being silly.
Do you have to head home or do you want to stay for a while? ’
‘I’d like to stay,’ he says, running his hands along my back, underneath my top. He kisses me and I try to work out whether my mouth will still taste like chicken or if the wine will have taken the edge off. I tighten my muscles, trying to pull in my stomach.
‘I’d like that too,’ I say.
We kiss on the sofa for ages, like a pair of teenagers.
He seems sanguine about my refusal to let him go upstairs, a strange sort of rule I’ve created which makes me feel safer about Rose, or like I’m doing something less badly behaved.
I figure I’d have men down here for dinner if they came over as friends, or as boyfriends of friends, so having a man down here and making out with him has to be fine. Right?
He runs his hand up my inner thigh and it sends shivers down my whole body. He – to my absolute shock – presses his leg between mine, making me whimper. ‘I like that noise,’ he says breathily into my ear.
‘I like that feeling,’ I say, trying to make words into sentences. It has been so fucking long since I had sex. So fucking long since I had the weight of another person on top of me and that blissful, glorious sensation of another body pushing into mine.
‘Should I get a condom?’ I whisper.
He pulls back. ‘I should probably head off,’ he says.
I honestly think I could cry. I know I shouldn’t mind, I know he’s entirely within his rights not to want to sleep with me, and I know that there’s nothing less acceptable than expecting sex from someone else.
But fuck me (or, in Richard’s case, don’t), I’m so frustrated right now that I could genuinely scream. Did I do something wrong?
I inhale, trying to work out whether there’s any chance that despite a shower, perfume and deodorant, I might actually smell.
‘Okay,’ I say weakly. ‘Cool.’
He gets his jacket and finds his keys, all the while I’m thinking that the second he’s gone I’m going upstairs, finding a vibrator and praying that it’s got enough battery power left to get me off.
‘There’s just one thing that I wanted to mention.’ He drops his gaze. ‘I feel a little concerned about your ex-partner having so much control, in terms of the house.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s not my favourite, but we are where we are. And he has actually been pretty reasonable, giving me the year to get myself straight, and when we do sell it then at least I’ll have a small deposit so I can get a little place with Rose, still in the area. It could be worse.’
‘I just wondered whether it might be easier if I were to pay into the mortgage, rather than him.’
I look aghast. My brain was mostly focused on how badly I wanted to get myself off, so I was only sort of half concentrating, and now I’m worried that I’ve misheard. ‘Sorry?’ I say. ‘You want to pay Gavin’s half of the mortgage?’
He nods. ‘I looked at what you paid for the house, and based on what I assume you’d have put down for a deposit, it’s not a prohibitive sum.’
I feel myself bristle. He looked up how much my house was worth?
He did a financial assessment about how much my mortgage must be, based on profiling me?
But then, how often do I look up someone’s house after I visit them?
And that’s not because I want to help them.
It’s because I’m being nosy. At least he’s trying to do something nice here.
‘You could return it when the capital is released at the point of sale, or we could just regard it as a gift,’ he goes on.
‘A gift?’ I say weakly. ‘A gift is like, a necklace. Not a mortgage.’
‘It’s only a suggestion,’ he says. ‘But we could have paperwork drawn up so that it’s all watertight and you weren’t at risk.
And it would mean that you didn’t have so much tie to him.
I will entirely understand if it doesn’t appeal, but it seemed a more elegant solution than your being obliged to him. ’
‘Wow,’ I say, trying not to think about the fact that he talks like a badly-written romantic hero in the kind of book my mum reads in the bath.
I shouldn’t be a bitch. He’s being incredibly nice.
And obviously, I’m going to say no. I have to say no.
I can’t just let this man that I’ve known for less than three months start paying to keep a roof over my child’s head.
‘Richard, that’s insanely generous. Emphasis on the insane.
And I love that you offered. I think you know that I can’t accept, but really, thank you. It means a lot.’
He kisses me again and the raging arousal is back, instantly.
Then he’s gone, and I can’t face the hunt for a vibrator; I’m face down on the sofa with my hand between my legs within seconds of him leaving.
I’ve almost certainly come before he’s got his seatbelt on.
Afterwards, I lock eyes with a Peppa Pig stuffed toy, lying on the floor, looking mournfully at me.
‘Sorry you had to see that,’ I say. Time for bed.