Page 8 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

I looked over the rim of my reading glasses. They were new, and I was still acclimatising. ‘Is this the part where I’m supposed to feel sympathy?’

‘Well, yes, Patricia.’ He threw himself upright and dropped his feet to the floor. ‘I’m heartbroken.’

‘I imagine they are, too,’ I answered as I folded over the corner of my page. ‘What do you want me to say? You were giving the pair of them the run around and they found out. I don’t have sympathy for that, only sage wisdom.’

‘Okay, then give me wisdom.’

‘Don’t get caught.’ I threw a cola bottle at him and he caught it in his mouth. It was a skill we’d perfected through hours of arduous practice during our university days.

‘What’s that expression about horses and stable doors?’ he asked once he’d finished chewing.

‘What’s that idiom about the Himalayas?’

David stared back at me blankly and I threw another bottle at him; this one hit his nose.

‘Himalayan blunder. It means to make a monumental cock-up.’

‘I wouldn’t call it monumental, Patti.’

David closed the distance between us. He landed on the seat next to my own and ungraciously shuffled up and pulled at me until my legs were resting in his lap. I mistook it as a tender gesture for a moment, until I realised he only wanted to be closer to the sweets.

‘There are more in the kitchen,’ I told him.

‘But I’m eating this packet now.’

I wrestled a handful free from the bag before he commandeered it entirely.

‘Patti, you know me, I just struggle to–’

‘Stay loyal?’

‘That hurts.’

And to his credit, he looked pained by the comment. It also wasn’t a true comment, technically. David and I had known each other since we were nineteen and never in our many years of friendship had he done a thing to hurt me – apart from going out of his way to prove that Emmy Campbell was straight, which admittedly smarted a little, but it was probably for the best, before I sent her a dozen roses for Valentine’s Day. Ah, the ignorance of youth, I thought with a smile. No, there were many things that David wasn’t, but he was always loyal – in his way.

‘Have you thought of apologising?’

‘To both of them?’ he asked.

‘Well, yes, given that you’ve wronged both of them. But you might want to apologise more to the one you actually want to pursue things with.’

He opened his mouth, filled with sweets and back-chat, and I guessed what was coming.

‘Yes, only one of them,’ I cut him off before he could ask. I laughed and leaned forward for another grab at the sweets. ‘Do you remember a hundred years ago when we joked about getting married, if things didn’t work out with anyone we were seeing?’

David stared at me blankly.

‘Of course you don’t remember, you tart, but I’m telling you–’

‘It’s not that I don’t remember, you silly cow, it’s that I don’t remember joking.’

I felt my eyebrows tug together like a twitch. ‘You were being serious?’

‘Patti ’ – he swallowed a love heart whole before carrying on – ‘you’re the only woman in my life who I’ve never cheated on, never upset, and never had a crossed word with. Why wouldn’t I marry you?’

Of all things, I thought of Mum then. It had been ten years since she’d passed away – breast cancer that “got out of hand”, as she’d explained it to me – and in the months before I lost her, she’d bemoaned my choice to avoid anything like a long-term relationship with someone. She never addressed the reason why, but I always thought it was there: the rowdy toddler at an otherwise calm and proper family event. It was two months before she died that she mentioned David and I tying the knot, though. ‘You’re a couple really, aren’t you?’ she’d asked, and even though I’d wanted to lie, like this was some sort of gift I could bestow on her in her final days, David was far too much of a lad-about-town still for me to take the chance. I had images of her bumping into him and his latest fling in the centre of town and either launching her handbag at his head (hilarious) or keeling over on the spot (less so). In the end, I’d only smiled and said no, we aren’t a couple.

Now, though, I turned over a jelly ring between thumb and index finger until the hole of it started to stretch. When the texture had loosened, I held it out towards David.

‘Let’s get married then, shall we?’

He took the sweet with narrowed eyes and a wrinkled brow. David wedged the ring back into the now empty packet of sweets and shoved the wrapper into the front pocket of his jeans. He leapt from the sofa, letting my feet fall unceremoniously off his lap in the process, and he hurried out of the room.

‘If it’s a no, can I at least have my sweet back?’ I shouted after him.

‘Of course it’s not a no, you arse. I’m just getting this.’ He came back wielding my laptop. ‘If we’re getting married, we’re going to need flights…’