I watched from the window as the plane soared higher into the clouds. Ciao, Italia. I’d certainly had fun. I took a moment to reflect on everything that had happened over the past four days. It was nothing short of a miraculous transformation for me.
I’d come on holiday on my own, lived with three strangers who I now believed would become lifelong friends, learnt to cook dozens of amazing dishes, eaten food I previously would never have touched with a hundred-foot bargepole, and drunk from a ‘dirty’ glass (not an achievement for most normal people, but a major one for me). I’d also put my obsessive fear of germs on the back burner and had happily eaten food cooked by many different hands without freaking out about how clean they were. And guess what? I was still alive.
I’d stayed in accommodation that didn’t have a spa attached and that wasn’t five-star. I hadn’t checked my emails since Saturday—a whole four days. I’d worn very basic clothing (much of it high street, which I hadn’t done since my uni days) and zero pairs of high heels, had applied at least seventy percent less make-up than I normally would, and on the whole, I still felt confident and had received dozens of compliments.
Oh, and of course, there was also the small fact that I’d hooked up with a hot Italian chef…
I grinned from ear to ear. I was finally allowing myself to have fun and starting to live my life a bit more.
I pulled my handbag from underneath the seat and rummaged around to find my notebook. I flicked through the pages until I got to the MAP section.
1) Stop being a workaholic…
Probably a half check. Four days without checking emails had to count for something. More to be done, but we were making progress.
2) End my relationship.
Yes.
3) Experience passion.
Check! Although, definitely to be continued…
4) Go on an educational holiday.
Hell to the yes.
5) Throw a party.
No, but definitely next year.
6) Look into adoption.
I was just starting to rediscover myself, so whilst time was against me, it still felt a bit too soon. Rain check…
7) Have fun/live life to the full.
Certainly felt like I was doing that. Check.
In just three months, I’d ticked off four and a half out of seven challenges. I was over halfway there. But as the cliché goes, life’s a journey not a destination, so experiencing passion once, for example, wasn’t going to cut it. I had a taste for it now, and I wanted more…
My thoughts turned to Lorenzo. Would I see him again? By the sounds of things, it wasn’t looking likely, but never say never. When I got back home, I’d organise drinks with Roxy and Bella and see what they thought.
I couldn’t wait to tell them. They were not going to believe what Little Miss OCD Workaholic MARGIN Sophia Huntingdon had been up to.
Chapter Sixteen
It’d been almost forty-eight hours since I’d arrived back in London and—shock horror—I had not yet 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 the old me.
The new Sophia had decided to ease herself back into real life gently instead. And I was so glad 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’d definitely be 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 I did know 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 a joy to look at…
Two hours later, I’d gone through several years of photos and seen him with at least four different hair
styles: 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 her Reasanna, piped up again:
Stop this now, Sophia, she scorned. You are becoming obsessed. 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 I always avoided 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 could never read 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 a miracle 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:
The number of women aged over 40 having babies has now overtaken those under 20 for the first time in almost 70 years.
Sounded encouraging enough…until you got to the bit that said:
As well as it potentially taking longer to get pregnant, later maternity can involve a greater risk of miscarriage, a more complicated labour, and medical intervention at the birth. Conceiving does take longer the older you are, and that is a reality—you have fewer quality eggs towards your later 30s, so each month there’s a lower chance the mature egg your ovaries produce will be good enough to fertilise. So at 40, you have a 5% chance of conceiving per cycle, compared with a 20% chance at 30. Furthermore, treatments such as IVF don’t work for everybody, and success rates also decline with increasing female age…
Oh, great.
Not looking good for me, then, was it (as Fertility Felicity had also ‘kindly’ pointed out), seeing as I was single and knocking forty? Nope. This was not helping me at all…
Speculation was the worst thing to do. The only way I was going to know for sure was to go and see an expert myself. I couldn’t face it right now, though. I needed to sort my head out first. All this Googling and Facebook stalking I had done today was toxic. I locked the screen of my iPad and went back to sleep. And it was 6 p.m. This wasn’t good.
I woke up at 8.37 p.m., feeling a bit more positive. I needed to get out of this destructive obsessing/oversleeping cycle. First things first: I started by arranging an FTA catch-up next week, as Bella and Roxy were both busy over the coming days and I preferred to see them in person rather than chat on the phone.
Next, Lorenzo.
Maybe I’d message him tomorrow…
No! screamed Reasanna. Has Albert’s passing taught you nothing? Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?
True. Okay. Right. I needed to think about what to say: I can’t stop thinking about you and drooling over your beautiful pictures on Facebook.
Definitely not.
It was true, though. I don’t think I’d stopped thinking about him since I’d got back. If men think about sex every seven seconds, then I must have been thinking about Lorenzo every five. In fact, no. Make that four. I kept thinking about his lips all over me and replaying this time two days ago we were… thoughts in my head. Bloody hell.
Those four days had shown me so much. I got it now. I understood how fun life could be. How you could lose yourself and feel happiness and joy. How people got married after knowing each other for just a few weeks.
Oh yes. That was another thing I had shamelessly been doing. Practising how our names would sound together (Sophia Rossi did have a nice ring to it…), imagining us getting hitched (even though, despite my parents being married for forty-five years, I had never really been into the whole marriage thing myself), planning how many kids we’d have if I was still able to conceive (two), which was debatable after this afternoon’s gloomy online research, and what we’d call them (Florence for a girl as a tribute to where we’d kind of met, and Angelo for a boy—a strong Italian name) and mentally decorating the dream family home we’d live in together after he moved to London to be with me.
Why do women like me who are normally sensible and intelligent have these crazy thoughts after knowing a man for five minutes and before we’ve even found out how they like their coffee? Next thing you know, I’d be scrawling S loves L. over press releases and my notebook like some lovesick thirteen-year-old. So embarrassing.
I started jotting down my thoughts as a draft email:
Hi, Lorenzo,
Really enjoyed our lessons together. You’re an excellent teacher. I think we’ve mastered lesson number 1. Still available for lesson no 2…?
There. Nice and light. Not too full-on, with a hint of flirting. I’d put my mobile number at the bottom. And if I didn’t receive an email or message back, at least I’d know he wasn’t interested and I could just move on.
I’d considered going for a walk to let my thoughts marinate and to check that I was one hundred percent happy with what I’d written, but I needed to continue the relaxed approach I’d adopted in Italy and stop overthinking things.
It’s not like I was submitting an official announcement from a client for publication in The Times. It was just supposed to be a casual email. Not too contrived. Just natural.
I read it one more time. That’s fine.
&nbs
p; I typed in his email address, skim-read it again and then hovered my finger over the send button.
Once I click this little blue button, everything could change.
I was apprehensive, but I had to do it.
I pushed my thumb down.
That’s it. Gone. Nothing I can do about it now. The ball is firmly in his court.
Right. Time to take my mind off things. Mum had messaged me earlier about coming round for dinner one evening this week. I messaged her back to say tomorrow or Sunday would be best and to let me know.
I was feeling peckish so went to the fridge, took out the leftover cod with leeks, ready to reheat, and just as I was closing the door, my phone chimed. Then pinged again.
That’s good. Mum’s getting better at replying to text messages. Normally it took her at least twenty-four hours before she even remembered she actually needed to take her mobile out of her handbag more than once a day to check whether someone had been in contact, rather than waiting for the house phone to ring (who even used a fixed phone anymore?).
But as I touched the screen, I saw the WhatsApp logo flash up, along with a number I didn’t recognise.
That’s not Mum’s number. If it was, it would have come up with her name.
That’s a very long number. A foreign number.
Wait. That was an Italian mobile number.
It couldn’t be. It’d only been ten minutes—fifteen tops—since I’d sent the email. He couldn’t have got back to me already.
My heart was racing…
I unlocked the screen and clicked the WhatsApp logo.
Holy shit. Lorenzo had replied…
The Middle-Aged Virgin: A Chick Lit, Romantic Comedy Novel: Newly Single And Seeking Spine-Tingles... Page 14
