Will had been back in Muswell Hill for over a year but he barely knew any of his neighbours. If it were impossible to avoid a regular customer or someone with a dog (unfortunately dog owners were a very chatty breed) then he’d reluctantly offer them a tight smile.
Much like he was doing now as Margot asked him to get Blossom while she started running a shallow bath. ‘We have that moisturising lavender doggy shampoo from the pet superstore,’ she said as Will advanced towards her bedroom – the flat was so small that she didn’t even have to raise her voice to make herself heard. ‘So, she’ll smell nice as well as being freshly laundered.’
Blossom seemed quite happy to continue smelling like sewage. As soon as Will entered the bedroom, she disappeared under Margot’s bed. Margot couldn’t make do with a duvet and a couple of pillows like any sane person. She was what Sage would call ‘extra’, and so were the folded grey satin throw edged with pale pink pom-poms, the duvet cover reminiscent of a spring meadow, and approximately twenty pillows and cushions featuring everything from candy stripes to embroidered parrots.
The rest of the room, what Will could see of it amid the shelves inset on either side of the fireplace full of neatly folded clothes and neatly paired shoes at the bottom, two clothes rails, a shelf of books above the bed and a bedside table featuring yet more books, was painted pale pink. It was as if Will had stepped inside a seashell. It was clearly and solely Margot’s domain. Not the kind of room that was set for seduction or even had a regular male visitor (the other bedside table was notable for the vase of deep pink cactus dahlias that sat on top). There could be a boyfriend for all Will knew, but Margot hadn’t mentioned one, and if there had been a significant other in her life, then surely he would have come up in conversation? Anyway, a boyfriend would have taken a very dim view of his beloved sharing a dog with another man and texting that man with the frequency that Margot texted Will.
He tried to imagine what kind of man Margot would be attracted to. He’d have to be very good-looking to come up to her exacting standards, and someone who knew his own mind so he wouldn’t let Margot ride roughshod over him. Although maybe Margot’s hypothetical boyfriends enjoyed it when she rode roughshod over them. She’d be very forthright in bed, very firm . . .
‘Has Blossom made a run for it? What’s taking so long?’ Margot shouted, pulling Will away from such dangerous thoughts and back to retrieving Blossom from under the bed.
Her potato-shaped bottom, tail at half mast, was poking out, but Blossom was obviously counting on the fact that if she couldn’t see Will, then he couldn’t see her.
‘We have a bit of a situation,’ he called out as he heard a muffled exclamation, then Margot was at the doorway.
‘Should we tug her out?’ she wondered. ‘I don’t want to damage her back legs. They always look so delicate.’
‘Or traumatise her.’
They both stared at Blossom’s generous rear end, then back at each other.
‘We could google it . . .’ Margot said doubtfully, but Will was all out of any other ideas, so he pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans.
‘Have you got any peanut butter?’ he asked Margot after a quick and productive Google search.
‘That’s the most rhetorical question since records began,’ Margot said, and she headed for the kitchen.
In the end, they’d had no choice but to pull Blossom out from under the bed so Will could carry her, face like thunder, paws pedalling furiously, to the bathroom and put her in ten centimetres of lavender-scented water. She sat there, shoulders hunched, huge head hanging down, body averted from the flannel in Margot’s hand, until Will brought out their big gun.
He opened the family sized tub of peanut butter, spooned out a generous dollop and smeared it on the tiled wall nearest to Blossom’s miserable face.
Her nostrils twitched and though she clearly didn’t want to give in to such a blatant attempt at bribery, she really was highly food motivated.
As she licked the peanut butter off the tiles, Margot scrubbed her and Will rinsed her down with a gentle cascade of warm water from the shower head.
The whole operation only took seven minutes and a minimal amount of splashing before Blossom was deposited on the bathmat and wrapped in a towel. She tolerated Margot’s brisk rub down then sat there, staring at Will and Margot both sitting on the edge of the tub.
It wasn’t the forlorn, desperate expression of the very damaged dog from a few weeks ago. Oh no. This was the pissed-off face of a dog who’d been done an egregious wrong. Will had never seen such spectacular side-eye before.
‘You are ridiculous,’ he said to Blossom. ‘But you smell much better than you did.’
‘Absolutely ridiculous,’ Margot echoed. ‘I’d forgotten that she had white bits rather than grey bits.’
Margot stood up and stretched, and even though she was wearing a loose-fitting sweatshirt, which proclaimed Woman Up, Will had to avert his eyes. Margot wasn’t a woman, not in that way. She was Blossom’s other owner. They were, as Margot was far too fond of saying, co-pawrents. So there was no point in Will appreciating that Margot was a woman and that she had some very admirable qualities, like the pale strip of soft-looking, intriguing flesh that had momentarily been revealed.
It would only lead to complications and sharing Blossom was already complicated enough. Time that he made his excuses and—
‘I don’t know about you, but I am ready for a large glass of wine,’ Margot said with great feeling. ‘Red or white?’ She left the bathroom as if she was expecting Will to not just stay, but to follow her into the kitchen. So he did.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ he said as Margot turned to him with a bottle in each hand.
‘Oh, I have beer instead?’
Will shook his head. ‘No, really . . .’
‘Well, what about a gin and tonic?’ She smiled brightly. ‘Bar’s in the other room. Who doesn’t love a gin and tonic?’
‘I don’t,’ Will said baldly, because in his experience it was better to just come out with it. He followed her into the living room. ‘I don’t drink alcohol.’
He hadn’t even noticed the little vintage sideboard in the living room, but Margot had already slid its door open to reveal an impressive collection of bottles. She shut it quickly and Will prepared himself for one of her usual onslaughts or interrogations about why he didn’t drink. Was he on antibiotics? Was he an alcoholic and how many days had he been sober?
He’d heard them all, numerous times.
‘In that case, I bet you’re in need of a cuppa,’ she said, her expression as neutral as a can of magnolia paint. ‘Builders, isn’t it?’
He really should have been long gone, but instead he sat down in the armchair while Margot made tea and something to eat (‘You must be hungry. I got a sourdough loaf yesterday, which I need to use up. Do you want a posh cheese toastie?’) and watched as Blossom, still indignant and still with the stink-eye, rubbed every inch of her newly clean body against the sofa.
There was something cosy and comforting about sitting in Margot’s wonderfully capacious armchair while his part-time dog now repeatedly dug her snout into an embroidered velvet cushion. From the kitchen, he could hear the kettle coming to a boil, a drawer opening then the sound of cutlery against crockery and the wonderful, Sunday afternoon-ish aroma of toast and cheese under the grill.