‘I’m not saying this to be difficult or a dick,’ he began, which pretty much promised that he was going to be difficult and a dick. Margot visibly deflated in her bulbous coat.
‘I take it that’s a no then,’ she said dully.
‘It’s a no, but only because all my family are so excited about having Blossom with us for Christmas Day,’ Will tried to explain, as Blossom wandered in from the kitchen where she’d been noisily drinking from her water bowl.
Now she burped then jumped up on the sofa to lean against Margot, who put her arm around her, but said nothing, simply stared down at her coffee, her face set and still.
Usually Margot wasn’t one to hold back from expressing herself, so Will was left floundering. ‘I thought you’d be spending Christmas with your family,’ he said. ‘You’re a Londoner, right?’
‘From Gospel Oak originally,’ Margot revealed in a rusty voice, as if the tears weren’t far off.
‘Look, you don’t want to be carting Blossom and a ton of presents across the Heath to Gospel Oak,’ Will pointed out. ‘I get that it’s your first Christmas with her and you want it to be special but—’
‘I’m not going to see my family for Christmas,’ Margot said abruptly, the words all sticking together. ‘It’s just me.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Will meant it. He could understand, even empathise. Families were complicated and sometimes the best, the safest thing you could do for your own sanity was not to see them or speak of them or even know if they were alive or dead. ‘How long have you been estranged?’
Margot raised her eyebrows and to Will’s surprise she smiled. Not her usual grin, something more low-key. ‘No! Not estranged.’ She set down her coffee cup on the side table and finally unzipped her coat so she could shrug it off, as if she was settling in for a long explanation. Will braced himself. ‘Dead, not estranged.’
Apparently the explanation wasn’t going to be that long after all.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘Your parents, then? That must be tough not to have at least one of them around.’
‘I’ve got used to it.’ Margot wrapped both arms around Blossom so she could squeeze her and kiss the side of her face, which Blossom seemed to tolerate rather than actively enjoy. ‘My parents were quite old when they had me. My mother was forty-five when I was born, my dad was fifty-four.’
Occasionally, Will wondered if he could bear to have children. He knew that he needed to come to a decision, make peace with the past sooner rather than later. So he’d still be young enough to be one of those engaged dads that played football and went camping and all the millions of other wholesome activities you’d do with your children, if you were a good, kind, generous father.
‘Fifty-four is quite old,’ he said carefully.
‘Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart have had children much later, though I don’t expect they’re getting up to do night feeds or change nappies,’ Margot said. ‘I loved my dad, even though he was older than all my friends’ dads. He took me swimming after school and to museums and there’s no reason that he shouldn’t have lived to a grand old age, but he was knocked down crossing the road when he was sixty-one.’
She’d been seven. When Will was seven, he wished that his dad was dead, but then he hadn’t had the kind of father who took him swimming or to museums.
‘That must have been hard,’ Will offered awkwardly.
Margot nodded. ‘If I’d had a much younger father, he might still have got knocked down and killed by a drunk driver. And then it was just me and my mum, and she was great too and I miss her so much . . .’ Her voice became too thick for her to carry on. She turned her head away so Will couldn’t see her face, but Blossom turned herself round in Margot’s arms so she was able to put her paws on Margot’s thighs and start licking her face.
Will got up, stood there for one helpless moment, then went to the kitchen to tear off a few sheets of kitchen roll. ‘I’m a man living on my own. I don’t have tissues,’ he told Margot as he handed them to her, and she managed one hiccuppy laugh. Then she tried to manoeuvre Blossom into a more comfortable position by lifting Blossom’s paws off her legs. ‘Bloss, you weigh a ton.’
Blossom lay down so her front legs were now draped over Margot’s thighs. Margot winced and tried to shift her again. ‘She has the sharpest elbows.’
There was quite a lot of tussling until Blossom was persuaded to stop sitting on Margot and burrow against her instead, her head on Margot’s lap, her eyes reproachful that Margot had dared to question her paw placement.
Will wished that they were done with the previous conversation, but he knew that they’d only taken a break. ‘You were talking about your mum,’ he prompted gently.
Margot shrugged. ‘She died when I was eighteen. Cancer.’
‘That really sucks,’ Will said, because it did. He wasn’t one for platitudes, but Margot seemed to appreciate the lack of clumsy condolences.
‘It was the absolute worst. Beyond words. Not just because I loved her and we really were best friends, but Mum and Dad were both only children so there were no aunts and uncles, no cousins.’ She smiled weakly. ‘I’m the end of the line and I’m OK with that. Really OK. But at Christmas, I’m not as OK as I usually am.’
‘I get that.’ Will looked at Blossom who had now, inevitably, rolled onto her back and was prodding Margot with a paw until she got a belly rub.
‘I might not have a “family” family.’ The hand that wasn’t rubbing a soft belly made quote marks in the air. ‘But I’ve made myself a logical family. I have so many people in my life who love me, and I love them. Real ride or die people . . .’
‘I’m glad.’ Will had his “family” family who had to put up with him because they were bound together by blood and shared DNA and all the things that had happened to them, which meant that Will couldn’t let anyone else get close enough to become logical family. ‘You should have people like that in your life.’
‘Usually I’d spend Christmas with friends, but this year they’re all out of town.’ Margot did that thing where she scrunched up her forehead, so her eyebrows almost touched in the middle. ‘I wouldn’t mind spending Christmas on my own if I had Blossom, because then I’m not really on my own . . . So do you think you might change your mind? Can I have her just for Christmas Day maybe?’
Despite what all his ex-girlfriends thought, Will wasn’t made of stone. He had real feelings, real emotions, where possible he did try to do the right thing. So he did the only thing he could in the circumstances. ‘You’re not going to spend Christmas alone. Not on my watch,’ he said forcefully. ‘You will see Blossom on Christmas Day because you’re going to spend Christmas with my family.’
And may God have mercy on your soul.
21
Margot
Margot would have been perfectly content to have only Blossom’s company for Christmas Day rather than the company of Will and his family. Yet here she was, late on Christmas morning, barrelling down Southwood Lane while trying to keep the large box she was carrying steady. Will had been adamant that she should just bring herself, but Margot hadn’t been raised by wolves – she’d been raised by a mother and father who’d loved her very much. And this morning, like every other Christmas morning, Margot had sat in the bath and cried because she missed them. Their absence was a blistering pain that would never really heal.