Beans

I had been apprehensive about Christmas.
My favourite festive song (Fairytale of New York of course) just evoked the feeling of static charge from the storm that was threatening to break over this period last year.
And I don't expect the divvying up of important family dates, namely Isobel's first Christmas followed by her first birthday (on consecutive weekends when she would normally be staying with us) to go smoothly.
But last week that feeling changed.
Isobel stayed with us again after almost four weeks' gap.
She was wearing a fleecy Snowman bodysuit grandma bought her and looked and felt like a cuddly little teddy bear.
"I'm a real girl!" Matt squeaked in a cute Pinocchio reference when I lifted her and cuddled her all up.

She's running around in the same suit today, and we'll go out in the snow later in her reindeer hat and booties.
All is back to normal.
Matt and I have had yesterday's leftover Yorkshire puddings and gravy for breakfast and Isobel has found a box amid the mayhem on the living room floor to play in.
Which gives me a few more minutes to continue my story...

After the weekend that changed everything, I cooled things with Matt.
We spoke and texted as if nothing had changed, but I realised I was getting in too deep, felt hurt and decided to spend my time instead having a giggle with Nick. He was silly and fun and safe because he was leaving the country in a few months to study as a mature student in Spain.

But a few weeks later Matt wanted to visit. It was one of his friends' birthdays and he wanted me to go with him.
I've never really known how to say no to him.

I had told Nick I might be able to meet him after work, but hadn't said for definite. So I let Matt in and started to get ready to go out.
Nick was furious. He'd waited all day for confirmation from me. He'd got stuck with his housemate's awful family instead of taking up a better offer from friends because he was waiting for me to pop round.
He called while we were getting ready to go out. He wanted to come and pick up his oversized jumper I had borrowed but no longer deserved to wear.

I threw a paddy at Matt. "We're going to be late and then you'll blame it on me. It's always my fault when we're late!"
Actually it's usually his because he pounces on me when I'm getting dressed up and it tends to ruffle me up more than it does him.
"Go! Shower. Now. Hurry. Up!"
Matt, shocked, obeyed, ten seconds before Nick rang the doorbell.

I didn't care if Matt heard but didn't want to hurt Nick more than necessary. I gave him back his jumper and he scolded me for being selfish, then left.

My housemate Gemma, who was watching the soap opera unfold from the living room sofa with her boyfriend, quoted from a Confucius calendar she had on her desk at work.
"If you don't like beans, you shouldn't have opened the tin." Her arm was outstretched for me to gulp from her glass of red.

Matt didn't hear Nick come round, but later that night, he found condoms hidden down the side of my bed.
We didn't sleep together that night. He sulked and pushed me away. "I thought we were more than that," he told me.
I told him he had double standards and he agreed.

Two days later, I got a text of two horrifying words: "Lizzie's pregnant".
I told him I was very happy for them.

The ex

I may not incur sympathy for what I say next, although it's unlikely a surprise.
I hate Isobel's mother more than anyone I've ever met.
Actually, I don't think I've ever hated anyone before.
Lizzie and I have nothing in common, other than the two people that mean the most to me in the world.
I'm a tall leggy blonde (37in inside leg to be exact). She's about ten years older than me, short with dark hair.
I sometimes compare short people to small dogs. I find them aggressive, stubborn and bitchy. There are many exceptions, but she isn't one of them.
Lizzie already had two children, 17 and 13, to two different dads before Matt made it a hat trick.
She lives in a school caretaker's house illegally sublet to her in a rundown part of the city.
She owns a three-bedroom house up the road, which she lets through the council to her mother who lives there on her own.
She's six years older than Matt, flirty, dirty and her disregard for the rules makes her fun.
She's also manipulative, vengeful and furious that he left her.
Matt had gone back to Lizzie a few times since they broke up, but then stopped.
We were closer than we'd expected to become and he'd witnessed her nasty side too often to truly believe it wouldn't be his turn soon.
And he was right. That fateful night she deliberately conceived gorgeous innocent little Isobel as her revenge.

The first chapter

For the next couple of weeks, there's no little bubba crawling around and doing funny things I'd like to write about. So this seems like a good opportunity to explain a few things about how our funny little family came to be. The events that brought Isobel into my life have sometimes been difficult and don't easily fade into the past. Matt and I were 'friends with benefits' for a long time, during which I hoped to stumble upon a more reliable man and he played around with other women. My career was flying so I didn't have the time for a full-time boyfriend and was still pretty sore about the last one that had ended in tears. It was a good set up, giving us all the good bits of a relationship without the complications. And he'd left the northern city in which we lived temporarily to suit his career. I was fiercely independent and enjoyed being single. I had no desire to have to rely on anyone else. I didn't really believe in love, marriage or happily ever after (or a man's ability to hold to their part in any of the above). If it were ever to happen for me though, I had a vision of the man who'd eventually win my heart being much different to Matt. But annoyingly for someone so sure they break the mould, the predictable happened. Matt travelled to mine every weekend. We went out in public with our other friends and, instead of just having sex, we started to cuddle and kiss. The perfect arrangement couldn't last forever. Though now I suppose I'm glad it didn't. It started to unravel on a Saturday night in April, when I planned a night out with a girlfriend. She lived near him and I arranged to stay at his the rest of the weekend. Returning on Sunday, my bag was hidden in the wardrobe and there were two used wine glasses on the counter. "Fast work. I was only gone one night." Stupid girl, you're not supposed to care. The next weekend was Easter and my parents were having a relative over. I was summoned to their house in the village where I grew up for the weekend. Matt didn't ask me my plans and I didn't tell him, for a number of reasons. I feared I was being presumptuous that he'd come in the first place. What if he said he wasn't planning to anyway? I wanted to ruin his weekend plans last minute, not give him the chance to make more. And I wanted to teach him to have the respect to ask me first, rather than presume I'm always there waiting for him. Even if I usually was. What wasn't part of the plan however was that he was already on his way. On arrival at an empty flat, he was never going to drive all the way back home. I understood immediately what I'd done, although not yet the extent of the repercussions. My mum suggested on the Sunday of the bank holiday weekend that I go home early. I was being a mardy bitch. Back in the city I went out, got sh*t-faced with a friend and pulled a really sweet guy before falling down the staircase in the nightclub. Nick picked me up, took me home, put me to bed like a gentleman and called me the next day to meet for coffee. He was funny, cheeky but not too sure of himself. We spent a lot of time together in the warm early summer, having barbecues and drinking while he played my favourite Counting Crows songs on guitar (Mr Jones is actually quite complicated). I wasn't to know it then, but he was not the new love that was working it's way into my life.