Page 63 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

I didn’t, though, for fear of seeming spiteful – and perhaps a bit mad.

‘Patti Billsworth?’

‘Yes!’ I leapt from my seat like an OAP with a winning bingo card – and then remembered why I was there. ‘Yes,’ I said again, making every attempt to sound frailer.

The doctor checked everything, short of lifting my back leg to check for signs of lameness. He typed hurriedly at his computer, adding so many notes that I felt certain he’d found signs of something hideous lingering inside my chest cavity. But then, in a turn that was entirely anticlimactic and unwelcome, he clasped his hands together, turned to me and asked, ‘Mrs Billsworth, have you ever had a panic attack before?’

‘A panic attack?’ I repeated, as though hearing the words together for the first time. Of course, I was aware of the concept. But I’d long ago relegated it to the same age group as fair working policies and Taylor Swift. ‘No, I’m a robust woman, I’ve never had one.’

He smiled. ‘It isn’t necessarily anything to do with your physical robustness.’

‘I meant emotionally.’

He winced. ‘It isn’t always anything to do with that either.’ He scootched his chair forwards and I suddenly felt the deep need to inch mine back; his had the advantage of wheels, though, so there was no way for me to distance myself from him without making this more awkward. ‘Do you feel as though you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, Mrs Billsworth?’

‘No,’ I answered, too quickly.

‘Okay.’ He frowned. ‘What was happening when the chest pains started?’

‘I was eating a cinnamon bun.’

The doctor nodded and thought about my answer for longer than I expected him to. ‘Anything else at all happening, at the same time as that?’

My favourite bringer of tea was telling me about having seen my ex-girlfriend with a woman.

‘No,’ I repeated.

‘I see.’ He leaned back and I sensed, of all things, a kind of disappointment in his reaction. ‘Mrs Billsworth–’

‘I’ve recently parted ways with someone, romantically,’ I admitted, all the while a voice continued to scream WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WOMAN? like a howling siren in the back of my brain. ‘When I was eating the cinnamon bun, someone had mentioned having seen that person’ – I cleared my throat – ‘with another person.’ There was a stretch of suitably awkward dead air before I added, ‘That’s when the pains…’

‘I see,’ he said again, but this time with more purpose. He turned to grab his prescription pad and I felt a wash of relief. Maybe there’s a pill for this. Maybe heartache is that easy now. ‘I think, given the situation, it likely was some sort of anxiety attack that you suffered, that you are suffering, but there are one or two things I can recommend for it all, too, so let’s have a try, shall we?’ He smiled and waited for something in return. I managed a murmur of agreement. ‘Are you able to take the rest of the day off work, Mrs Billsworth?’

‘I’m self-employed, so I can, if the occasion really calls for it.’

‘Okay.’ He paused to scribble something down. ‘Let’s see what we can do…’

* * *

By the time David walked into the kitchen I’d resorted to using three squares of Dairy Milk in place of a spoon. I was manoeuvring another load of butterscotch ice cream into my mouth when he came to a sudden stop just inside the doorway.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

‘I was at the doctor’s today.’

‘And he’s prescribed more sugar?’ He pulled out a chair and sat opposite me. ‘If I’d known doctors were doing that these days, I might have been more inclined to go.’ David broke off his own three squares and tried my method. ‘Genius, Patti, it truly is.’ He spoke around a square of chocolate and a lump of butterscotch. ‘Why did you have to see a doctor?’

‘I had chest pains.’

‘You had chest pains?’ he repeated, in a decibel higher than I’d used.

‘It was a panic attack.’

‘A panic attack?’

‘Are you an echo?’

‘No, I just… A panic attack, really?’ He awkwardly spooned out another mouthful. ‘You just don’t seem the type, no offence.’