It was a shame. He hadn’t realised how much he valued her friendship until he started to feel it slipping away. Especially now he had Hannah, had something special to share, and no one to share it with.
‘You look nice,’ Stella said when he arrived.
Paul looked down at his T-shirt guiltily, noticing how faded and scruffy it was, and suddenly wishing he’d made more of an effort. Stella looked stunning, as usual. She didn’t seem to mind, though. She merely slipped her arm through his and pushed through the double doors into the pub as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Which, he supposed, it was. Or at least it had been before. This was how they would walk down the street if they went shopping or out for lunch. Stella was fairly demonstrative but he’d never taken it to mean anything special. Until now. Now he found himself unconsciously analysing her every touch and gesture to see if they contained a deeper meaning.
‘You look nice too,’ he told her, adjusting to the noise level inside the pub. Even in her thirties, Stella turned heads wherever she went. It used to make Paul proud of her, the way a brother feels proud of his little sister. Now, for some inexplicable reason, it made him nervous.
They picked out a table and Paul, feeling ridiculously self-conscious, went to the bar. A hundred times we’ve done this, he told himself, a hundred times we’ve been here, or to bars like this, and chatted and laughed and chatted some more. Paul was starting to wish that he could go back in time two weeks and wipe away what had happened. It just seemed as if since then everything that was usually smooth and easy between them had become hard work.
Before, he could say anything to her. Like:
You really upset me, Stella, when you suggested Hannah might not be mine, and now I think about it every time I see you
.
But now it was impossible to say something like that without feeling as though he was crossing some invisible line. And she was definitely more touchy. He wasn’t imagining that.
Before, he would have spoken up and they’d have talked and sorted it out. It wasn’t as if it was the first time Stella had said something which pissed him off. She could be clumsy sometimes, in every sense of the word. It was one of the things he found so endearing.
He watched her now out of the corner of his eye, playing with the beer mats, ripping little slits in them and trying to construct some kind of tower. Paul also noticed three lads in their late twenties eyeing her openly, one of them smoothing his hair back in a completely affected way, trying to get her attention. He paid for their drinks and hurried back.
‘So,’ he said, trying to sound upbeat. ‘What’s new?’
‘God, you’ll never guess. My bloody mother only wants me to go and see my dad.’ That was Stella – straight into it, no preamble, no messing about.
‘Wow!’ Paul leaned across the table to block the view of the three lads. ‘What did you say?’
‘Oh, I said “Yes, Mummy, of course I’ll go. What time would he like me to get there?” What do you think I said, you idiot? I told her to get stuffed.’
Paul readjusted to this suddenly angry Stella. ‘Good, good. Well, let’s hope she leaves it alone now, eh?’
She leaned back in her chair, leaving a pile of decimated beer mats behind. ‘Yeah, I guess. Although, really, it’s not as easy as that, is it?’
‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’
‘I mean, he’s going to be out soon. Did you know that? He’s going to be out and coming home to my mother, living in what is, after all, still his house. Even though they had to remortgage it to pay off the bloody fine and court costs, and even though she’s had no
support ever since. It’s still his house.’
‘Yeah, that’s true.’ Paul sipped his drink and nodded warily.
‘And, even though I don’t want anything to do with him, if my bloody daughter decides to stay in that house, which I can’t really stop her doing now she’s sixteen-nearly-seventeen – as she so loves to remind me – I’ll have to face him sooner or later.’
She was warming up now, hair flicked back in irritation, long fingers tapping on the table. Paul longed to look round and gauge the lads’ reaction to her – Stella was even more beautiful when she was fired up like this – but he didn’t dare in case she noticed and thought he wasn’t listening.
‘Well,’ she was saying, ‘what do you think?’
‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that you should do whatever feels right for you.’
‘Oh, you’re right.’ She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. ‘The thing is, Paul, I’m not sure I do know what feels right for me. I’ve spent so long feeling angry with him, for leaving us, for causing such a huge big mess, it’s impossible to think about it logically now. Will you help me?’
The look on her face was just like the old Stella, and he chided himself for being so paranoid. So what if she had made a pass at him – he should be bloody grateful, not freaked out. Look at the way those lads were eyeing her. She was a real catch, was Stella, and here he was, having a drink with her, sharing her problems and her worries, holding her hand ...
If anything, he should consider himself lucky. Very lucky indeed.
What was his problem?
‘Will you help me, Paul?’ Stella said again, her eyes big and pleading. And suddenly, with all the subtlety of a concrete block falling from a crane, Paul knew exactly what his problem was.
His problem was Stella. Beautiful, passionate, funny, clever, crazy Stella. Why was he so jealous of those guys eyeing her up? Why was he so protective of her with his mates, and with every bloke she’d ever dated? Why did he always drop everything to help her out if she needed him? Why did he think (hope) it was her every time his phone rang? Why did he hate John Dean so much? And why, oh why, had he never noticed it before?
He thought about Hannah and about what it meant to him – having a child, being a parent – and he realised for the first time how empty his life really was. He’d been hiding from it for a long time, too scared to open up and risk letting someone become close. But someone had been close all along. He’d just refused to admit it – to himself or to her.
Stella was still looking at him questioningly. He gripped her hand with both of his and forgot the three lads with their smoothed-back hair, and forgot he’d ever been angry over what she’d said about Hannah. All he could think about was the way her lips had felt on his and how much he wanted it to happen again.
He knew why he’d been feeling so awkward around her lately, and why their relationship felt so different, so altered.
He’d built a wall up around himself, so thick and strong it had taken someone like Stella to knock it down. No one else could have done it. No one else would have stood a chance.
He gazed into her eyes now and felt the rest of the world fading away. ‘Of course I’ll help you, Stella,’ he said. ‘Let’s go through it one step at a time. Together.’
***
Three pints of lager and three white wines later and Paul was sitting on Stella’s side of the table with her head on his shoulder, a mixture of her tears and a healthy serving of snot making a damp patch on his T-shirt. This is love, Paul thought hazily. He wasn’t drunk exactly, he just had that slightly detached feeling – detached, that is, from all the inconsequential things which usually bothered him. It felt liberating. He should do it more often. And what better way to get pissed than with a lovely woman on your arm.
They’d talked about her father, about her feelings and her anger and disappointment. Paul had counselled her to go and visit the man in prison. He knew it was the right thing to do, and he knew it was what she wanted, really. She just didn’t want to admit it, not after all this time. She was proud like that. He hoped they would be reconciled; he wanted everything in her life to be perfect for her.
And he desperately wanted her to notice him again.
Stella, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, sat up suddenly and peered at her drink. ‘S’empty,’ she slurred.
Stella
was
drunk. Paul had seen her three sheets to the wind enough times to know the signs, not that they were too hard to read: the slurring, the glazed eyes, the overflowing of emotion when normally she was quite guarded in that department. Not that he minded, far from it. In fact, he was starting to think that this might be the perfect opportunity to return her pass with one of his own. Not in a taking advantage kind of way, of course. He wasn’t planning on trying to get her into bed or anything. Nice though the idea was now that it appeared in his head in all its naked glory …
No! Bad thinking, Smart. Not very smart at all. Probably better to wait until she’s actually sober and you can both at least remember how great it was.
‘Drink!’ Stella said again, pushing her empty glass across the table, which was now completely littered with pieces of beer mat as well as a large number of wet tissues.
‘I think you might have had enough to drink, madam,’ he told her. ‘Unless you fancy an orange juice.’
‘Spoilsport.’ She pulled her face into a sulk. It was very sexy. Paul put his arm around her shoulders again. It felt so natural, so right.
‘Stella,’ he began softly, ‘I’ve been thinking. About us.’
‘Mmm?’ She nestled closer. He wished those three lads hadn’t left half an hour ago and that they were still here to see this.
‘About what happened that day. You know, when you, when you tried to, erm, kiss me. I know that we haven’t really mentioned it since, and that our friendship is the most important thing to both of us but I think that –’
Stella sat up suddenly, pulled his hand off her shoulder and gripped it tightly. ‘It’s OK, Paul,’ she said, trying to focus her eyes on his, failing, and then trying again. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘You’re going to say that I shouldn’t have done it and that we should stay as friends, because if we didn’t have our friendship what would we have? And you’re right. You’re absolutely right, Paul Smart. You really are very, very smart, Mr Smart.’ She collapsed into giggles.
Paul shook his head. No, that wasn’t what he was going to say at all. He had to put her right. He opened his mouth to speak but she was off again.
‘And the thing is,’ she said loudly, pointing her finger at herself, ‘I’m actually rubbish at relationships anyway. So it’s just as well you knocked me back. Look at my track record. It’s like a disaster movie.’
Paul had to admit that Stella’s rare forays into the world of love had more often than not ended pretty badly. From that bastard John Dean onwards every man she’d dated had turned out to be wrong for her in more ways than you could name. Even her most recent beau, the slimy Joshua, had revealed himself to be an obsessive-compulsive who only wanted to tell her the best way to live her life – his way, of course. Stella wouldn’t hear a word against him though, said he was being a “good friend”. Ha!
But he didn’t want to think about that now. He needed to shut her up and get back to talking about them. Unfortunately she was on a roll and all he could do was listen.
‘And I need all the friends I can get, Paul, I really do. Because I’m at one of those points in my life where I’m feeling so confused. I know you’re confused too, about Hannah and everything. So I understand, you see, that you want to leave things the way they are between us and just be friends.’
‘Yes, but I…’
‘Because we’re
real
friends and there’s nothing can get in the way of that. Is there?’ She didn’t give him a chance to answer, just carried on over him, twisting her hair into a ball on top of her head as she talked. Her eyes were smudged from crying, with little rivers of dried tears streaking down her face. Paul wanted to kiss them off one by one.
‘I’m just so confused,’ she said again. ‘I mean, he comes back into my life just when I think I’m getting myself all sorted out. He comes back into my life like nothing’s ever happened and I’m supposed to just forgive him, am I? Just say, “Oh, hello, come in, how’ve you been? What did you do with your life after ruining mine?”’
Paul figured he’d lost track of this conversation somewhere along the line. Who the hell was she talking about? He’d thought they were talking about whether they should stay friends or become more than that. He stopped her hands from twisting, held them in his, and made her face him again.
‘What are you going on about, Stella? Forgive who?’
‘Bloody fucking John Dean, that’s who. Oh, he knows exactly the effect he has on me, always has. But I won’t fall for it again. I just won’t. You won’t let me, will you, Paul? You’ll help me to resist him.’
Paul slumped back in his chair, feeling the hard wooden slats dig into his spine. The fog around his head was starting to clear, and he felt himself sobering up very quickly.
So that was it. John Dean was back on the scene. Sounded like a poem, he thought. A sick, twisted poem. Stella had been a sucker for that lowlife since the first day she’d met him. How could he compete with that, compete with the father of her child? Should he even try, for that matter? But surely she wouldn’t really be tempted, not after everything the man had put her through? Stella was far too switched on for that. Wasn’t she?
Suddenly Paul felt slightly sick, the effects of the alcohol wearing off too quickly and leaving him with nothing but an early hangover. For a brief moment back then it had all seemed so perfect – Stella liked him, he liked Stella, what could be more simple? Now, though, he had to face the very unpleasant thought that he might have blown it after all. He’d left it too late. She’d changed her mind. And now he had the inimitable John Dean to contend with.
This was not good. This was not good at all.
Chapter 14
Lipsy stood outside Café Crème and steeled herself for the ordeal to come. Today, to make the right impression and to give herself the best chance of a good outcome, she had left her hair slightly wavy, the way her mother liked it, not straightened to within an inch of its life. She’d also worn jeans and a top which covered up her midriff; now was not the time to go showing off her new, and very sore, belly button ring.