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I let out a mirthless laugh.
How I loathed the dating app that Poppy signed me up for earlier in the year. It’s been so long since I thought about it that I can’t believe it’s still on my phone. I think back to Poppy’s relentless mission to ‘get me out there’, how convinced she was that I should open up my heart again. And how the very next day I met Joe. My heart squeezes at the thought of him, the familiar sinking feeling I get every single time I’m reminded that he’s leaving now.
What will Poppy say when I tell her he’s going? Joe and I decided pretty early on that we’d let our fauxmance fizzle out by the end of the summer holidays but it seemed so far in the future back then that I barely gave the notion a second thought. I was too busy typing up questionnaires, grilling Joe on his likes and dislikes, and quite quickly realising that he was my favourite person on the planet bar Lila. Frustrated, I kick the picnic bench and take a sharp inhale of breath as my big toe screams out in protest.
I am going to have to tell my sister that my fake boyfriend and I have fake broken up. I turn the words over in my mind. ‘Poppy, Joe and I are splitting up.’ It feels like they’re real. Like this is an actual break-up.
Lila waves to me and I smile as she heads down the slide backwards, other kids following suit. She’s such a daredevil, my daughter. Not like me, I’ve always been very cautious, very by the book.
Going solo to Alexis’s wedding feels like the shitty pièce de résistance. I’ve been to a few weddings over the past few years and I always feel like a fairground attraction as distant relatives and old friends gravitate over to see how poor old Sophie is coping. This time I’d imagined Joe and I throwing back champagne and busting out our best moves on the dancefloor. I’d pictured us watching the sun set over the sea from the fancy hotel in Cornwall, me wearing his suit jacket because it would have got cold by then.
I shake my head to clear painful thoughts of the future me that will never be. I will go to this wedding on my own, just like I always do. That’s how I operate, I remind myself, taking a slurp from Lila’s smoothie and hoping she doesn’t notice. (She can be very territorial about her beverages.)
I don’t need a man. It’s a phrase I’ve told myself time and again. Only what used to make me feel empowered, filled up and proud now has the opposite effect.
I’m fine by myself. Aren’t I?
My phone starts chirruping again and the Barnaby’s Babes appear to be in organisation mode. I scan through the messages. Celeste is wondering whether we should celebrate the end of their first year at school with a Michelin-starred lunch with the kids? I can barely get Lila to eat with cutlery, let alone navigate her way around a formal setting. I imagine her using a fish knife to catapult peas in Oscar’s direction, or simply stabbing him with an oyster fork. Pleased to have something to take my mind off things, I hit reply to the group chat.
Perhaps a class trip to the park would be simpler?
Frankie: I’m with Sophie. No way am I forking out for a posh lunch for Jack. He’d smash the place up
Olivia: Park trip sounds great!
Tally: I’m keen on the park idea too Sophie! I can arrange some entertainment. Maybe a magician or a fire-breathing tiger?
Mel: FFS! We’re celebrating the end of reception class Tally, not a royal wedding.
Tally:
Celeste: Of course Douglas and I had great fun at Harry and Meg’s big day. Absolutely marvellous!
At this point Frankie sends me a direct message filled with nothing but the vomit emoji, which makes me smile. I reply again to the group chat.
Great! I’m happy to organise.
Where the heck is Mark? He’s almost an hour late now. I’ve walked the perimeter of the playground just in case I find him lurking by one of the entrances, plucking up the courage to come in, but he’s definitely not here.
Irritated, I dial his number.
‘Sophie, hi,’ he answers, sounding harried.
‘Mark, where are you? You’re late.’
‘Sorry! Business meeting overran.’
‘Right,’ I saw slowly. ‘And that’s more important than the first time you meet your daughter?’
‘Come on now, don’t be like that,’ he says in a coaxing, chipper tone which gets my hackles up even more.
‘Like what, exactly?’
‘Look, you must remember what it’s like. Business is even more hectic now we’re branching out and there’s been a lot of last-minute headaches that I could do without. Did I mention that we’re also trialling Mylk It up in Manchester? It’s doing really well so we might need to focus our efforts on the North East instead. You turning down the Bristol job really threw a spanner in the works, Sophie. I’m actually dashing up to Manchester tonight.’ He pauses, as if trying to remember where he was going with this. ‘Anyway, back to the playground! I could be with you in thirty?’
And I don’t know if it’s the way Mark is banging on about business when his focus should be entirely on my daughter today, or whether it’s a culmination of that and every other thing going on in my life right now, but something snaps.
I’m not having it. Why am I waiting around for him to turn up late to meet my daughter when it is crystal clear that Lila will never be his priority?
