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Chapter Sixteen
It’d been almost forty-eight hours since I’d arrived back in London and—shock horror—I hadnotyet returned to work.
Normally, I would have gone straight from the airport to the office, or locked myself away in my study at home and stayed there until midnight, frantically trying to work my way through hundreds of emails and feel like I was up to speed with every single thing that had happened whilst I was away.
But that was theoldme.
ThenewSophia had decided to ease herself back into real life gently instead. And I wassoglad I did. Naturally, I’d called the office on Tuesday afternoon when we’d landed and again this morning to check that everything was okay and confirm someone had been taking care of my emails (come on, I couldn’t let go completely. Rome wasn’t built in a day). But after Harrison and Robyn had assured me that everything was totally fine and under control (and cheekily praised me for switching off from work for a change), I wasted no time snuggling back under my duvet.
Ah yes, sleep. I’d never been one for long lie-ins, particularly on weekdays, as there was always so much work to do. But I’d discovered it was the best way to try and avoid thinking about Lorenzo and our wonderful night together. Every time it flashed into my mind, I’d get the tingles.
Another reason why it was great that I hadn’t gone straight back to work was because I’d been in constant contact with Fran, Grace and Dan. As we’d all taken extra time off, Dan had set up a WhatsApp group, and we had exchanged about fifty messages back and forth over the past twenty-four hours alone. Unlike me, who had been pretty much whiling away the hours either sleeping or gazing at Lorenzo’s Facebook photos, Dan was more productive and had got stuck straight into recreating the dishes we’d learnt, plus had sent us a flurry of pics to prove his culinary prowess.
Grace had been doing the same, as her grandchildren were eager to taste all the food their nana had been cooking and couldn’t wait to help her recreate them. The photos she’d sent through were adorable. Fran had also been whipping up some amazing meals for her husband.
In fact, the only one who hadn’t cooked anything yet was me. I couldn’t let the side down any longer. I locked my iPad screen to prevent me from logging back on to Lorenzo’s Facebook page, peeled myself off the bed, had a quick shower, then headed downstairs to the kitchen.
I picked the recipe sheets that Erica had given us up from the worktop. Thankfully, my Ocado delivery had turned up last night, so I had all the ingredients I needed. Super-fine 00 grade pasta flour, eggs, butter, oranges, cod fillets, leeks, chopped tomatoes—I was ready to go.
A few hours, two Spotify dance playlists and one very messy kitchen later, I was done. I carefully arranged the finished dishes on the glass dining table, then captured my creations on my iPhone before getting stuck in.
Whilst the strips weren’t perfectly uniform, the tagliatelle tasted nice (though I’d learnt that it was even harder to roll out the dough without a chef to do most of the hard work for you). My orange cake wasn’t as light as the one Lorenzo had helped us make, but it was still really tasty and great for a first attempt. And I made no apologies for blowing my own trumpet, because the cod with leeks was bloody amazing, plus, most importantly, a doddle to create. I’ddefinitelybe making this every week.
I loaded the dishes in the dishwasher, went to the living room and curled up on the sofa, feeling pleased with my new-found skills. A week ago, I hadn’t known how to make any of these dishes, and now look—first solo outing and pretty good all round. I picked up my phone and sent a string of photos to the group chat. Within minutes, they’d all replied, praising my work. But of course, they soon shifted their focus to ask about Lorenzo…
Fran:So, have you heard from lover boy Lorenzo yet?
Dan:Have you been sending lots of saucy nude pics and sexting Lorenzo all night?
Grace:How’s it all going with Luciano, Stella?
They were like a bunch of persistent tabloid reporters.
Sensing a different approach was required, Fran switched tactics. She took the conversation away from the group chat and messaged me directly. I’d filled her in on what had happened with Lorenzo late last night as, in true Fran style, she’d been messaging me from the moment we’d landed to find out the details. I knew she also wanted to genuinely check I was okay, and she said that she was there for me if I needed any advice.
Whilst I didn’t yet know what I was going to do next, what Ididknow was that, far from enjoying that night together and just moving on, which had been the plan, I was now completely and utterly smitten. I couldn’t help it. I logged out of WhatsApp and back on to look at his Facebook page. Again.
In between the millions of food pics and all the fancy dishes he’d cooked for and with other groups were old holiday photos. There were beautiful topless ones of him on the beach with tight swimming trunks and even some dodgy budgie smugglers, which ordinarily I’d report to the fashion police, but in this case, it was ajoyto look at…
Two hours later, I’d gone through several years of photos and seen him with at least four different hairstyles: head completely shaved, mohawk, big curls where he’d not cut his hair for months and it had grown into a mini Afro, and his current ’do. There were clean-shaven snaps, photos with a thick beard, a moustache, a goatee. He definitely liked to change up his look, and as I’d suspected when he’d posed for the photos on our last night, he loved having his picture taken. Not that I was complaining, of course. It had given me hours of pleasure.
By 4 p.m., the voice of reason, who lately was popping into my head so frequently that I had decided to call herReasanna, piped up again:
Stop this now, Sophia, she scorned.You are becomingobsessed. Step away from the iPad, close down Facebook and get a grip. Either bite the bullet and contact him or just forget about him, but stop sitting on the fence. You’ll get splinters.
She was right. So now it was Thursday and I was weighing up what to do. I didn’t want to be too keen. Yet at the same time, I didn’t want to leave it so long that he’d forget about me either. But as hard as it was to admit, because it made me sound weak, I was nervous.
If I didn’t contact him, I could still exist in this fantasy world. But the minute I stepped out of this bubble and got in touch, I risked rejection. What if he didn’t reply? Or if he replied and said, ‘We had fun but, now you’re back in London, I’m not interested?’It was too daunting to think about.Time to take my mind off him.
What else was going on in the world? I clicked on the News app, and before I knew it, I’d got sucked into reading the sidebar of shame: the black hole Ialwaysavoided at work because logging on to this newspaper’s website was akin to taking valuable hours of your day and quite literally flushing them down the toilet. You couldneverread one story and log off. One story turned into ten and before you knew it, what felt like an entire afternoon had evaporated.
After skimming the story about the squeaky-clean TV star and his addiction to prescription drugs, I then started reading about a Hollywood actress who had announced her pregnancy, aged forty-seven. This, declared the journalist, was amiracle baby. Admittedly, I was also surprised. Particularly as women are constantly told it’s curtains for our ovaries post thirty-five.
Given the fact that I was still contemplating what options were going to be open to me if I was going to have a baby, either by seeking out a sperm donor or adoption, I was intrigued. I Googled ‘celebrities baby over 40’. Multiple stories flashed up. There was Susan Sarandon, who had been told she’d never have kids due to her endometriosis but had gone on to have two boys—one at forty-two and another at age forty-five; Gwen Stefani, who had given birth at forty-five; Céline Dion: forty-two; Madonna: forty-one; Geena Davis, aged forty-six; Janet Jackson: fifty…the list went on.
Did this help? I wasn’t sure. In a way, I felt like I was perhaps being given a false sense of security. It was all very well looking at a headline on a website and assuming it was simple and that because it happened for them, it could happen for me too. But just as with fertility, unless you know each individual’s circumstances, it’s impossible to comment. They might have been trying for several years, the child might have been conceived via IVF or they might have had help from a surrogate. Only they knew their journey (and rightly so, as it was no one else’s business) and making assumptions about the ease or difficulty of their child’s conception would be foolish.
I thought about what Monique had said at my birthday party about women she knew having a baby in their forties. Perhaps that would be more realistic. Rather than looking at what went on in the showbiz world, what was the reality for the average woman? I did another search and came up with more stats:
