to cancel the expensive stay at short notice

[2whatdo]

And how? I am with someone who lives a few hours away. He was due to come and stay for a short while in a few days time. They have met my child before and were here to stay only a few months ago. My child has been restless and something is telling me something is wrong, I'm worried she might be ill. It might cause her a level of stress for him to he here because she isn't fully used to him/only met him two or three times, and I don't want to put her through that if she's ill. He will be upset because the cost of the train ticket was a lot of money for him to essentially throw away, and there's nothing he would be interested in doing in the area to make the ticket worthwhile. For context, recently a close friend of his who he has known for years wanted £30 and said he would repay him, but it became clear he would probably never see it back and he was ready to throw the friendship away for it and it got really nasty. He doesn't earn much, and the train ticket was more about 3x the cost of what his friend essentially stole from him, and I don't think he can get that money back at short notice. I feel awful because he was looking forward to seeing me, not sure how to tell him or how he will react.

I would agree with others that if you can’t have this conversation with him then he shouldn’t be at the level of meeting your DC.
Sometimes you can exchange train tickets for an admin fee or you could offer to pay half of it. To be honest I don’t really follow the trail of thought that just in case your DC is getting ill you’re going to cancel the visit. Again I think if I’m at the point I’d letting someone stay at my home then I’d be confident that they’d be fine around my ill child and vice versa. How old is the child?

Well it does sound like it is too soon to have agreed to have this man come and stay. But you did, so I think if you cancel and the ticket is non refundable, you should reimburse him. I would do that and then rethink the whole thing anyway.

You say that they might be ill? I would get confused if a long planned trip in a few days was cancelled on the premise that a child was restless and might be ill, I've never cancelled anything on a might. There's obviously a huge backstory to this, it doesn't sound like you are comfortable with it his person staying, probably best to cancel but do tell the truth, everyone deserves it.

Personally I wouldn't have someone stay who my child had only met a few times anyway but I think in the circumstances you need to offer to cover the cost of his train ticket (if he can't get a refund) since you did agree to him staying.

Yes, think you can usually get a refund. Or transfer to new date. If not then you should offer to pay as you are cancelling.

If its an advance ticket he can cancel it and get a full refund

Your child comes first, if he doesn't understand that then stop dating him. If he cannot be flexible he also shouldn't be dating someone with a child!

If he can't get a refund you need to give him the money.

A friend did this to me recently - cancelled a trip to see her but didn't offer to cover any of my non-refundable train costs or pet sitter. It's pretty bad behaviour, I would always offer to cover the costs I'd incurred to someone else.