‘Shall we drop my gear off first as it’s on the way?’ he suggested.
Margot desperately wanted to get home and begin what she’d unashamedly called her puppymoon in the ‘Ovaries Before Brovaries’ group chat with Tracy and her two other best friends. Then again, she was quite curious to see where Will lived and, more importantly, where Blossom would be spending every other week.
Will parked the car in a mews behind an Edwardian shopping parade in Muswell Hill. Blossom obviously knew the way because as soon as she exited the car, she tugged gently on her lead and looked expectantly at Margot and then at the entrance to the mews. Meanwhile Will had opened the boot and, despite his so-called infallible system, was looking a lot like a man who had no idea where to begin.
‘May I make a suggestion?’ Margot ventured cautiously because men always hated to be told what to do. Man-mansplaining, her work husband, Jacques, called it.
‘Knock yourself out,’ Will said with little enthusiasm.
‘If you put things in the dog bed and then carry that, we can probably do this in one trip,’ Margot said, as she tried to keep her tone neutral rather than impatient. ‘Feel free to load me up like a little pack mule.’
‘I suppose we could try it your way,’ Will said, like Margot’s way was ridiculous. They achieved their goal in one back-breaking, arm-aching trip, not helped by Margot having Blossom’s lead wrapped around her wrist with Blossom at the other end of it and Will hustling both of them past the florist shop and through his front door with indecent haste.
Didn’t he want his family to meet Blossom’s other owner? Or perhaps all that talk about how his family had fallen in love with Blossom was just a ruse, though to what end, Margot didn’t know. She stumbled up the stairs, Blossom leading the way, the new slow-feeding mat clenched between Margot’s teeth, as Will brought up the rear. Eventually, after climbing two short flights of stairs, they reached a small landing.
‘Permission to unload?’ Margot asked, and even that didn’t crack a smile out of Will as he stepped past her so he could unlock the door.
‘Permission granted,’ he said, and Margot gratefully let loose the jute bags and totes that Will had brought with him to the store. (At least she knew he cared about two things: Blossom and the environment.) ‘I can take it from here if you want to . . .’
‘See where Blossom is going to spend the time that she isn’t with me? Don’t mind if I do,’ Margot said with a fixed smile, because he wasn’t getting rid of her that easily. And if he was running some horrific dog-fighting ring and wanted Blossom as a bait dog, then now was the moment to find that out.
But if Will was running a dog-fighting ring then he wasn’t doing it from the beautiful flat above the florist. From the small entrance hall, Margot walked into a huge open-plan room, with four large picture windows letting in every possible drop of autumn sunshine.
There wasn’t much in the space: a huge white sectional sofa, a glass coffee table with sharp edges and a large TV suspended on the wall above the period fireplace. It was all very modern, very un-dog-friendly. It was just as well that Blossom didn’t have much fur and that some of it was white because there was going to be dog hairs all over that sofa and the coffee table was the perfect height for her to walk into and cut her precious little face on. Margot would leave it a week or two and then ‘suggest’ that Will might want to stick foam corners on it or replace it with something a little less angular.
Through a wide arch was the kitchen and dining area. The kitchen had glossy white units with jutting-out handles, though they were positioned too high to inflict any damage on Blossom but the slippery floor tiles could prove to be very dangerous indeed. In the dining area was a table big enough to seat four, and under it, curled up on a pile of towels and blankets, was Blossom.
‘That’s where she sleeps?’ Margot didn’t even attempt to keep the scathing judgement out of her voice. ‘Under the table?’
‘Yes, her choice,’ Will said, coming into the room with Blossom’s new dog bed. ‘It’s where she felt safest and I wasn’t going to drag her out of there.’
‘No, but . . .’
‘Once she settled in, she spent a lot of time on the sofa, but now she has her dog bed and numerous fleecy blankets—’
‘Three blankets hardly qualifies as numerous,’ Margot interrupted.
‘. . . she’ll be perfectly happy here.’ Will looked around the room then at the dog bed in his arms.
‘If I can make another suggestion . . .’
‘But for now, the dog bed is going under the table so she knows that she has a safe space,’ Will continued very firmly, as if he was fed up with Margot’s suggestions.
She held her hands up in surrender. ‘Do you need any help with unpacking?’
Will shook his head. ‘I do have quite a lot of work to get through this afternoon.’
It was already two and considering that Margot only had a week with Blossom before she handed her back, half a day was already gone.
‘If I order an Uber now, it will be here by the time we unpack my stuff from your car,’ Margot said, digging her phone out from her coat pocket. The sooner she left, the sooner she and Blossom could start their puppymoon.
‘Obviously I’m going to give you a lift,’ Will said in a tight voice, as if something was pressing against his windpipe. ‘Shall we go?’
10
Will
Will managed to get Margot out of the door and round the corner into the mews without anyone from the shop seeing them, thank God. Ian was still insisting that Blossom was a he. His mother had been absolutely bereft this morning when she realised there’d be no Blossom hanging out under the flower arranging table and Sage had already offered to speak to Margot on his behalf and ‘tell her to go and get her own dog’.
‘How are you going to manage with Blossom if you don’t have your own car?’ Will asked Margot as they left the mews.
‘There’s this thing, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it: walking,’ Margot said tartly, which was fair enough. ‘Also, buses and tubes, though you have to carry dogs on escalators and Blossom doesn’t seem to like being picked up. There are pet-friendly taxis too but I’m ready to lose my five-star Uber rating and argue with any driver who won’t take Blossom.’
Will already pitied those poor Uber drivers, but for now Blossom looked quite content curled up in the footwell. She had such a soft nature that she’d be no match for Margot’s unique blend of suggestion and complete lack of compromise, Will thought as they reached Highgate Village with its quaint high street full of independent shops: greengrocer, butcher, pharmacy, bakery, but also a Tesco Metro and the numerous coffee chains and estate agents that proliferated on every London high street.
‘It’s just round the corner on the Square,’ Margot said, indicating right with one hand. ‘The parking’s not great, I’m afraid.’
The Square, just a whisker away from the famous Flask pub, was quite the address. Such a Highgate affectation to name it the Square like it was a cut above any other squares that London might have to offer. The houses on the north side of the Square where Margot lived weren’t as large as the grand Victorian villas on the other side, and looked quite ramshackle by comparison, but still came with a hefty price tag.