Page 41 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

Nina Simone

FEELING GOOD

Sheila offered to collect me from the flat and I promptly shit myself and asked her to meet me outside the shop instead.

‘You don’t want her to meet me?’ David answered. He was leaning against the kitchen work surface in a pair of silk boxers while he shovelled Cheerios into his mouth.

‘My husband? No.’

He laughed and spoke around a mouthful of hoops. ‘Welcome to my world.’

I was wearing one of the new skirts I’d picked out during my shopping splurge with Janet earlier in the week. It was pleated and admittedly quite comfortable, though it felt a bit too flash for my usual everyday style. But Janet had told me that my backside looked good in it, and that it was worth showing off my legs, too, because they were, apparently, a good asset. Of course, I’d all but flung my credit card at the cashier as soon as Janet had said that. I’d paired the black skirt with a pale pink blouse, and I felt every bit over-dressed for the flea market that Sheila and I were planning to spend the day at. Somehow, though, every occasion with Sheila was starting to feel worth every bit overdressing for. I was painfully aware of the spring in my step as I walked from home to shopfront, stopping partway at Dock of the Bay to get two teas – one breakfast, one herbal, so Sheila could choose.

‘You look different today, Patti,’ Bill said as he handed me a cupholder for the drinks.

‘Good different?’

‘Very good different.’

I laughed. ‘In which case, thank you, Bill.’

‘You have a good day now, Miss Patti.’

‘And you,’ I shouted back.

‘Give my best to your husband.’

I pretended not to hear.

When I was with Sheila, it was only too easy to place glaring blinkers over my vision and forget that I was, in fact, married – by law, if not by… Well, everything else, I thought. But when I wasn’t with her, I was becoming more and more aware of this twist somewhere in me. The same sort of twist that had happened when I didn’t do as well on my O levels as my mother had hoped I would; when I told her I was studying English at university; when I handed in my notice at one university to leave and teach at another and then, eventually, to leave teaching altogether. The twist, I knew, was actually a nagging, period pain of a worry: I will disappoint; I could be better; I am being disloyal.

‘Ah, you stopped to get tea!’

My head snapped up at the sound of Sheila’s voice. I’d been so lost in the beginnings of worry that I hadn’t even realised I was nearing the shop. Sheila was parked, a trailer on the back of her car in preparedness for whatever she might buy at the market, and she was leaning against the back bumper holding her own cup holder with two drinks.

‘What did you get?’ she asked.

‘Herbal and breakfast.’

She laughed. ‘Snap. Come on, we’ve definitely got enough to keep us hydrated for the twenty-minute drive that’s ahead.’ Sheila was climbing back into the driver’s side but she looked over the top of the car to add, ‘By the way, Pat…’

‘Hm?’

‘Love the skirt.’

I made a mental note to text Janet when I was home and thank her.

* * *

That day I did another thing that I hadn’t done for a long time: I walked hand in hand with a woman. It had been so long, I realised, that the world had changed into largely not caring, too. Of course, there were one or two people who glanced in our direction and I spotted them clearly enough, even if Sheila claimed not to have done. But others only smiled or, more often than not, ignored us entirely as they went about their own shopping. Though the real bonus to our hand-holding was the way in which it acted as a marker for everyone who Sheila introduced me to – every other stallholder it seemed, at one point.

‘You know most of the people here,’ I joked with her.

‘I do this a lot, wander around flea markets. Sometimes I don’t even need to come; sometimes they call me, as though they’re personal dealers.’ She paused to make eyes at an old chest of drawers before moving us along. ‘It must be the same with the shop, surely? How about the man with the… Well, you know, the day we met,’ she said through a slow-forming giggle.

‘The man with the dildo,’ I blurted out. ‘You may as well say it.’

‘Well, yes, him.’