Page 71 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

‘I’m sorry, the first lady said to bring them here?’

‘Yeah, she was at…’ He lifted his clipboard and parroted back Sheila’s address.

‘She said to bring them here?’

‘Yeeees.’ He let the vowel hang long and deep, as though that might help me to understand. ‘Do you… Am I leaving them or…?’

I hesitated. She doesn’t want the flowers, Patti, a voice from deep in the back of my brain answered the situation. It was an effort, but I stretched my hands forward and took the bouquet from him.

‘Can you sign here?’

I ran on automatic to sign my name, and the delivery man bolted out of there like he’d narrowly avoided a flower-related emergency – which in some ways he had. I took the flowers back to the counter with me, and in answer to Michel’s wide-eyed expression I only managed to shake my head, don’t ask. I was grateful that he didn’t. I stared down into the box of blank porcelain faces that were upturned towards me, and I’m sure I saw one of them – a red-haired, pink-cheeked madam – smirk.

‘Michel?’

‘Hm?’ he answered, pretending to be distracted by something on a nearby shelf.

‘Does your wife like flowers?’ He turned to face me. ‘These are going spare…’

* * *

Like a teenager loitering outside an off-licence, I waited for the friendly expression of someone who might be willing to do a kindness for a stranger. The shop had been open for thirty minutes, but their delivery service didn’t kick-in for another hour. I’d had to get inventive with this particular step of the plan. When a typical working-man – paint-stained overalls and a hungry air about him – was about to hit the entrance, I reached out an arm to stop him.

‘It looks like it’s been a long day for you.’

The man frowned and, without saying anything, he looked at the direction of the counter: so close and yet so far. Thanks to the crazy woman who just commandeered him…

‘It… has been?’ His answer upturned, as though he wasn’t, in fact, quite sure of it.

‘How do you fancy earning yourself a free dinner?’

Where there had only recently been a frown, the muscles of his face now relaxed into a wide smile; he had a hearty laugh that matched the size of his stomach. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, and that’s when I noticed the wedding ring.

‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch, lady, not in my experience.’

I murmured agreement. ‘How about, a woman who’s in trouble with her wife?’

There came the same chuckle again, this time deeper. ‘Well, that’s definitely a–’

‘If you help me get back in the good books with mine,’ I interrupted him, ‘I’ll foot the bill for anything you plan on buying for you and yours.’

‘You’re in the dog house, are you?’

Trying though the entire situation was – and had been, for the thirty minutes I’d been waiting on a willing stranger – there was something heart-warming, encouraging even, about the fact that I had just made Sheila into my wife – and this man didn’t care. I imagined my mother spinning in her proverbial grave, muttering all sorts of, ‘Fancy a woman being married to a woman…’ comments.

‘Well, I know that spot well,’ he added when I didn’t answer. ‘What do you need?’

A large fish and chips slathered in ketchup with a side of curry sauce – delivered to Sheila’s address. She mightn’t forgive me for flowers, I reasoned, but maybe the route back to Sheila’s heart would be through her stomach – and through fond memories of eating fish and chips while standing her kitchen, bathed in our post-sex stupor.

The man gave me a head-start. While he ordered – fish and chips three times over with his choice of a side and whatever change he could get from the forty pounds I’d given him – I rushed to Sheila’s street. She lived a brisk walk away from the fish bar and somehow I was desperately out of breath by the time I got there. I felt for the cigarette box in my pocket and swiftly deposited it in the first rubbish bin I happened to spot, on the opposite side of the street to Sheila’s home. Enough of those, I thought, though my trousers now felt uncomfortably empty without them. And while I nervously shifted from one foot to the other – looking every bit like the suspicious loiterer, which was a strand of my persona I could have happily lived without – I wished that I’d waited until after the fish and chip delivery to decide to quit smoking again.

There came a brisk cough from the side somewhere that caught my attention, and I looked up in time to catch the man walking towards me with a plastic carrier in each hand. He winked, then looked across the street to search out the delivery address. And in that time, I went from panting heavily through to holding my breath altogether as he crossed the street, as he climbed the front steps, as he rang the bell.

Sheila answered the door in denim overalls that were pockmarked with various colours of paint, and I imagined her beavering away at a piece of furniture somewhere in her living room in the minutes before this. Even though I hadn’t thought it possible, somehow I’d managed to forget just how bloody beautiful she was, too, only realising, or remembering, when the wind was knocked clean out of me as she smiled at the man, laughed – and an exchange unfolded that I was too nervous to even imagine. But soon her smile faded and became a head shake; the man gestured with the bag; Sheila shrugged and moved to close the door. Everything was movie montage instantaneous. It felt like I was watching jump-cuts from one angle to another even though I hadn’t moved, and this poor sod was still standing on Sheila’s step! I saw him gesture with the bag once more before the door was closed in his face. He crossed the street back to me with a drooped head, looking every bit as though he was the one who’d been rejected.

‘Sorry, love.’ He held out the bag towards me. ‘I reckon it’ll take more than a chippy tea.’

I ate the fish and chips standing in the kitchen with Fred pawing at my leg for scraps. The post-sex glow from my last memory of this scenario entirely absent now, having been replaced by Celine Dion’s ‘All By Myself’ on repeat.