Page 5 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

Marvin Gaye

I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

David turned the book over to read the back cover, huffed, and put it down on the table. He’d ruined the poor seller’s display. When my brute of a husband was looking elsewhere, I shuffled the book back into its original place on the table and then caught up with him. It had become something of a tradition, me going to the local flea market, every other month when it popped up in the big old market hall just outside of town; David coming with me, huffing periodically, and then asking where I wanted to stop for dinner on the way home. I’d never invited him, incidentally, though I didn’t mind him coming. What I did mind was the puffing and the guffawing and the–

‘Patti, I think I’ve got a book in me.’

I had been midway through swallowing a mouthful of tea and my beige life flashed before my eyes in the same second as my throat forgetting how to work. I wiped my mouth clean before I answered and vowed not to take another sip until this spiel was done.

‘Do you think you might have sat on it, or swallowed it in your sleep?’

David froze. ‘Are you taking the piss out of me?’

‘Yes.’ I thumbed a porcelain bowl with a chip on its rim. ‘Yes, I am a little.’

‘Patti, why wouldn’t I have a book in me? Do you see some of the tosh people write about?’ He picked up a book at random – whatever happened to be nearby on the next stall across and within snatching distance. It didn’t help his cause that when he turned the cover towards me, I saw that it was Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. ‘See,’ he started, though he sounded less sure of himself now, ‘a young girl falls in love with her employer and they have an affair.’ He threw the book down where he’d found it. ‘Tosh!’

‘Three pounds,’ the stallholder said, clearly having heard nothing of the conversation.

‘Oh, we’ve already got a copy, thanks,’ David answered with a smile I recognised from the hours he spent perfecting it in his full-length mirror. ‘Patti, I mean it. I think I’ve got a brilliant story in me somewhere.’

‘So you want to write fiction?’

I was only half in the conversation. David had picked up and put down an awful lot of things since he’d left journalism seven years ago. He’d taken his life savings and invested in a string of online men’s magazines – which I’d joked, at the time, must be the sign of a quarter-life crisis – but the decision had actually paid off, leaving him all the time in the world to become an “expert” in many other things. To begin with he’d said there was a book, then there was a film, then there was the gym, then there was crochet– Good God, the crochet. I held back a moan at the memory of arriving home one evening to find bowls of yarn spun out across the living room and David worrying at his fingers, asking how quickly arthritis might set in. Then there was the book club, and the audio drama club, and the swinger’s club – an idea I had very quickly vetoed. I didn’t doubt my husband’s ability to do anything he set his mind to; I’d known him for long enough to know that was very much an area he excelled at. It was the actual setting his mind to it in the first instance that seemed to be a problem for him…

‘No, no, I think I’d write an autobiography.’

‘Of your life?’ I snapped before I could censor the question.

‘Yes, Patti’ – he nudged me softly – ‘that’s how they usually work.’

‘A tell-all from a late-in-the-day Lothario?’ I said wistfully.

‘A tell-all from my time in journalism?’

‘I think you’d do better with the Lothario angle myself.’

We wandered between another row of stalls, and I was painfully aware of how many old and broken and beautiful things I was missing. Meanwhile, David was planning the next leg of his life as a bestselling bloody author.

‘It would give me something to do,’ he admitted at last, and I felt a twinge of sadness.

‘Well, that’s a good enough reason to do it.’

David elected not to work, but I’d never understood why. He tired of journalism and that, of course, was reason enough to leave. But to down tools entirely had been beyond my understanding at the time. I often wondered what he did all day, while I was out making my pennies – and I mean that very literally because the shop was hardly lucrative, it only kept my hands busy. That said, I never would have questioned what David did, lest we turn into a hideous role reversal of our parents. I had grim images of opening my mouth and my father’s voice coming out: ‘What do you even do all sodding day?’ His hands bloodied from the butchery work he’d been practising; my mother’s bloodied from the meat she’d prepared for his dinner. I had cut-glass clear memories of them looking as though they’d done ten rounds with each other when Dad had only been through the door three minutes. In many ways, I couldn’t blame him for having left us both when he did – for a woman who worked, much to my mother’s dismay. I think that had offended her more than the extramarital relations, if I’m honest. But David and I weren’t those people. It didn’t matter to me what he did when I was out of the house; only that he enjoyed his time doing it.

‘Is it a waste of time, though?’

‘My darling, isn’t everything?’ I pinched the petal of a silk flower between finger and thumb just to enjoy its softness on our way past another stall. I thought we were making a line for the exit but David soon yanked me back.

‘How much for the bouquet?’ he asked, digging his wallet free of his front pocket.

‘Oh, they’re individual flowers.’ The stallholder smiled. ‘It’s not a bunch.’

‘Can I take the lot, then?’

‘Oh, ah…’

‘David–’