Will was surprised that Margot had decided that the dog for her was a rescue Staffy and not some pampered Pekinese or Pomeranian with a pedigree.
He found a parking spot not too far from the ‘poor end’ of the Square and hadn’t even switched off the engine before Margot had the door open and was scrambling out. ‘Just pile everything up on the pavement and I’ll do the rest. I only have four steps down to my front door,’ she added, and Will stiffened with annoyance.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll help you. And anyway, I want to see where Blossom is going to spend her time when she isn’t with me.’
Margot was hoist with her own petard. ‘Fine,’ she said thinly, and Will proceeded to purposely ignore her system of putting everything they could in the dog bed, so it took several trips to ferry everything from the car and down the four steps that led to her basement flat.
‘My garden flat,’ Margot said as she unlocked her front door, which was painted a fashionable sage green. ‘Welcome to your new home, Blossom.’ She unclipped Blossom’s lead and left her free to explore while she and Will brought everything in. ‘I’ll just quickly unpack so you can have your bags back,’ she called over her shoulder as Will followed her into a tiny hall.
‘No rush,’ he said vaguely as he looked around. ‘You could give them back when we hand over.’
The hall walls were painted teal, the doors off it a dark, smoky grey colour. Two of them were ajar. ‘Sitting room and next door is my office. We can put everything in there for now and I’ll sort it out later,’ Margot said, then nodded her head at the door at the end of the hall. ‘Kitchen, which leads through to the garden. Actually, I should probably let Blossom out.’
The kitchen was so small that Will stayed in the doorway as Margot took the three steps to the back door. ‘Blossom!’ she called. Blossom trotted in immediately. Blossom didn’t come when Will called her, because she obviously didn’t respect his authority. But Margot’s wish was Blossom’s command. She came to where Margot stood by the open back door and gazed out.
There wasn’t much to gaze at. The garden was more of a backyard, mostly paved over, though a climbing rose was doing its best to trail up the back wall. There was a small wrought-iron table and two chairs and a number of planter pots, but it was the beginning of October and whatever had flowered in them was now long gone.
‘Do you want to do a wee, Blossom? Preferably not on my plant pots,’ Margot said, but Blossom stayed where she was. Will hated to be the bearer of bad news, but in this case, he allowed himself a small moment of blissful Schadenfreude.
‘Blossom will only go on grass,’ he explained. ‘For, um, both things.’ So, it served Margot right for being so smug about her ‘garden’.
Margot turned to look at him. For a split second the clouds shifted so she was sunlit with nowhere to hide, and her cheery expression seemed more like a mask than a representation of how she really felt. Then she shrugged, almost as if she was physically shaking off the sadness, and smiled her bright, chipper smile.
‘That’s a bit annoying,’ she decided. ‘I was hoping to fudge the last walk by just sticking her outside, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to nipping into the Square in my pyjamas and a thick coat.’
‘That five-minute walk at ten thirty is the worst of all the walks. You’re all settled in for the night and then you have to force yourself out,’ Will confessed, because he hadn’t had anyone else to share these aspects of dog ownership with.
‘So, how many times a day have you been walking her?’ Blossom had backed away from the door now, so Margot shut it, locked it and turned back to him.
‘Three times a day. Depends on my schedule but—’
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
Why couldn’t she just let him finish a sentence?
‘Sorry,’ she said immediately, as if Will had said the words out loud. ‘It’s my worst habit. Cutting people off. As soon as I think things, they come spilling out of my mouth. But do you want a cup of something? I know you have to go back to work but we need to talk about walks and feeding times and how we’re going to manage the handover.’
‘That makes sense,’ Will said, slightly mollified, though wary that she was about to issue him with a whole new raft of edicts masked as suggestions. ‘I was going to ping you over my spreadsheet, but tea would be great.’
Margot looked up at one of the shelves above the hob, where there were various blue-and-white striped Cornishware china caddies.
‘I can do you herbal. Camomile, peppermint, chai, green . . .’
‘Just ordinary tea,’ Will said. He should have known that even tea would be more complicated that it needed to be.
‘Earl Grey or Lapsang . . .?’
‘Builder’s if you’ve got it.’
Margot reached for one of the jars. ‘Head into the sitting room. I’ll bring it through.’
He retraced his steps back to the hall then into the sitting room. Although the flat seemed tiny, the ceilings were high enough that Will, who was six foot in his socks, could stand at full height, but he still felt like he had to duck his head. Maybe it was because Margot had colonised every spare centimetre of space that she had.
The walls in here were painted a rich, French navy though one was completely obscured by a gallery wall; a collection of pictures in different sized frames, ranging from saucy vintage postcards to retro fashion illustrations and an old-fashioned embroidery sampler with the words ‘Nevertheless, she persisted’ cross-stitched on it. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace were all kinds of bits: candles in various stages of use, a nun in a snowstorm dome, a collection of china owls ranging in size from big to absolutely minuscule. There was also a photograph in a silver frame of a tiny girl who, judging from her mop of dark curls and the determined look on her face, had to be Margot. She was sitting on the lap of an older woman while her chubby hands clutched the fingers of an older man who was gazing at the two of them with a tender expression. Probably grandparents. Above the mantelpiece was a large painting of a woman reading that looked as if it were from the 1930s, though Will couldn’t be sure because he knew very little about art or the 1930s. There were built-in cupboards on either side of the fire, a small TV resting on top of one of them and above that were shelves, crammed with books.
There was a sofa, its colour unknown as it was heaped with cushions (how many cushions did one woman need?) and a throw and a knitted blanket that reminded Will of an ancient poncho Rowan had worn when she was in her boho phase as a teenager.
There was just enough room for an armchair covered in egg-yolk yellow velvet, again piled high with cushions, so that when Will gingerly sat down, he had to dislodge most of them. He barely had time to view the room from a seated angle before Margot came in with a tea tray and Blossom at her heels.
‘She hasn’t left my side,’ Margot informed Will cheerfully, as she placed the tray on a low table in front of the sofa. ‘Wasn’t sure of the sugar situation with your tea.’
‘Just milk is great,’ Will assured her, reaching out to take a mug, which was brewed to just the right colour and consistency.
‘Do you want a biscuit? I have some very posh ones,’ Margot said, proffering a plate. ‘Pistachio nut and clotted cream shortbreads from Fortnum & Mason. I got sent a hamper from the people who stole my cat.’