‘This isn’t my fault,’ Will snapped. ‘She was fine until after your second week.’
‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ Jim said kindly. Margot was sure he was saying that just to make them both feel better. And if it was someone’s fault, then it was more likely to be Will’s because he was stand-offish, chilly and incapable of giving Blossom the love she needed. ‘She was a stray and was picked up showing signs of neglect?’
‘Maybe abuse too. She was very nervous around men,’ Margot said pointedly and gave Will a sharp look. Not that Blossom was nervous around men anymore. Currently, she was nosing Jim’s hand in the hope of more treats.
‘So, she’s had a tough time and lots of new experiences in the last few weeks, but she’s got the message that she’s now in a safe, loving space. She knows that she’s got somewhere warm to sleep, she doesn’t have to worry about being hungry or thirsty.’ He stroked Blossom’s muzzle with his knuckle. ‘Which is why she’s testing her boundaries. Getting to have a second puppyhood.’
‘Aww . . .’ Margot could feel herself melting and, sensing weakness, Blossom abandoned Jim in favour of sitting down in front of Margot and prodding her with her paw until she got a treat. ‘Um, good sit, Blossom,’ Margot added weakly, because she’d absolutely let Blossom take advantage of her forgiving nature.
‘She’s going to be a lovely dog once she’s dialled this back . . .’
‘She’s already a lovely dog,’ Will insisted. It was his turn to get the paw and have to produce a treat. He couldn’t praise Blossom for sitting down because she’d already been sitting down when she swivelled in his direction, so he went with a feeble, ‘Good paw, Blossom.’
Jim leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. ‘She’s going to be a lovely dog, but right now she’s taking the piss out of the pair of you.’
16
Will
After telling them off for spoiling Blossom and sending her mixed messages with their inconsistent behaviour, Jim was clear about what Will and Margot had to do. As well as the ‘good sits’ and the ‘good downs’ and turning in the opposite direction every time Blossom pulled, they needed to spend more time together.
He and Blossom . . . and Margot. This was not what Will had signed up for. It was hard right now to remember why he’d wanted a dog in the first place. Why he’d wanted Blossom and why he’d agreed to joint custody of her. Not just agreed, but instigated the arrangement.
‘It’s going to take forever just to get out of here,’ Margot groaned as she came to a halt, Blossom still in forward motion, and turned around. ‘This doesn’t seem to be working.’
‘Shall I have a go?’
‘Thank you.’ Margot relinquished the lead, and because Blossom was completely taking the piss out of them, she took the opportunity to snatch Will’s glove out of his pocket (the treat pocket, needless to say) and send it flying into the middle of a muddy puddle with a toss of her head.
It was as if she’d done it on purpose. But surely that couldn’t be the case, and anyway, hadn’t Jim just given them both a lecture on how wrong it was to anthropomorphise their dog?
Margot went to retrieve his glove and narrowly avoided face-planting into the puddle herself. ‘Sundays never used to feature mud quite so highly.’
‘I miss my former mud-free life,’ Will said bitterly. ‘Now I spend all my time brushing it off of Blossom then vacuuming dried mud out of every corner of my flat.’
Margot smiled. Not her smug smile but something a lot more sympathetic. ‘Regretting buying that white sofa now, are you?’
‘You have no idea.’ Blossom yet again began her infernal tugging at the lead, and Will quickly did a U-turn and started walking in the direction they’d just come from. ‘How are we ever meant to get out of this park, if we have to keep turning around?’
It took them a good hour. By then, Blossom’s bottom half was black with mud. Will had always thought of mud as brown, but his new exposure to it, and because Blossom’s favourite sniffing points were always perilously close to mini-bogs, meant that Will now knew that mud was black and viscous. Also, it didn’t smell good.
‘I’ll have to give her a bath.’ Margot sounded as if she might cry without too much provocation. ‘Not sure that they’ll even let us on the bus.’
‘If I had the van then I’d give you a lift, but I came on the bus too.’ It was so much better when they weren’t sniping at each other. Jim had said that that was another thing they had to stop, arguing in front of Blossom.
‘You can argue all you like when she’s not around,’ he’d told them. ‘But all this nonsense about what the other is doing and not doing is getting you nowhere fast. You’re not in competition. You both love her, that’s enough.’
Will had rather thought that they were in competition. In a constant tug of war for Blossom’s affections, but she seemed to like them both. (Will would have preferred to think that her tail wags were more effusive when she saw him, that her snuggles were deeper, but it was simply not true. Or at least, it was hard to quantify.)
‘It’s all right,’ Margot said with one of her hearty sighs. ‘I can manage.’
‘I could get the bus with you and lend a hand with bath time?’ It wasn’t the most enthusiastic offer he’d ever made. Mary would be cross that he was a no-show for Sunday lunch and would spend most of Monday morning sighing in a passive aggressive manner while insisting that, ‘I’m fine. No, really, I’m fine.’
‘Well, I suppose, if you don’t mind.’ Margot’s acceptance of his grudging offer was far from heartfelt either.
Will had forgotten how small Margot’s flat was; how colourful and cluttered.
The bathroom was no exception. Decorated with cream subway tiles and accents of black and mint green. There were bottles and jars and pots of lotions and unguents crammed into a full to bursting cabinet and a set of recessed shelves, as well as lined up on the tiled bath surround. Plants and scented candles jostled for space on the windowsill and while he detached the shower head from the wall, Margot opened another heavily stocked cupboard, which housed a grumbling boiler, to retrieve some towels.
All they needed to do now was retrieve Blossom, who’d slunk into the bedroom as soon as her lead had been unclipped and her harness removed. ‘As if she instinctively knows she has to have a bath,’ Margot marvelled. ‘Though I haven’t actually bathed her yet, just dabbed with doggy wet wipes.’
‘She might like having a bath,’ Will said without much hope, as Margot put a towel down in the tub so that Blossom wouldn’t damage the enamel or slip. Will had to concede that she was very thoughtful like that; always ready with a gesture that would minimise someone else’s discomfort.
They’d got off the bus at the same time as an old lady with her shopping trolley, and Margot had lifted the trolley down without even being asked, though she’d winced as it put a strain on her infamous wrenched shoulder. Even walking the fifty metres from the bus stop to her front door had involved saying hello to five different people.