Something had been building up inside him ever since they sat down. A feeling that at first Will couldn’t identify, but when he put his arm around Blossom too and she made an agreeable snuffling sound and Margot turned to smile at him, he realised what it was and why it had taken him so long to identify it.
Contentment.
People were far too fixated on happy, but happiness could be so fleeting, circumstantial. Whereas contentment, it felt more permanent. More sustainable. It was a warm glow of belonging, of rightness, compared to the elusive and ephemeral happiness.
Maybe it was best to stop thinking and just live in the moment. This night. This bench tucked away in a forgotten little corner. This dog. This woman.
He didn’t even know how long they sat there, but suddenly the calm was shattered by the distant sound of tooting car horns, a faint cheer and the first firework climbing high in the sky and leaving a trail of pink sparks behind it.
Margot turned to him and smiled. ‘Happy New Year.’
‘It will be a happy new year,’ Will vowed and it was perfectly natural, the proper thing to do, for both of them to lean back, past Blossom, so they could mark the occasion with a kiss. On the cheek. Nothing to see here.
But the angle was awkward and Blossom was in the way – that was Will’s story and he’d swear to it on a whole stack of bibles – so he ended up brushing his lips against Margot’s mouth, which she opened in a gasp, because he must have taken her by surprise. But then she kissed him back with a fierceness that took Will’s breath away.
Her mouth moved under his, her hand creeping up to touch the side of his face with icy fingers. Will’s hand was moving too, to catch a handful of her curls and gently tilt Margot’s head back so he could kiss her deeply . . .
‘Jesus!’
‘Rude!’
The kiss stopped as suddenly as it started when Blossom, either furious at being squashed or furious that, for once, she wasn’t the centre of their worlds, managed to headbutt both of them.
‘One day she’s going to break my nose,’ Margot said, standing up and brushing down her dress. She was in shadow, so it was impossible to see her face, and if Will couldn’t see her face, which never hid anything, then it was impossible to know what she was thinking about. ‘We should get going,’ she said briskly. ‘Bad manners to duck out of my own party.’
And that seemed to be the end of that.
25
Margot
You could tell a lot about a man from the way he kissed. How kind he was, how generous he was, how caring he was. But there was a flipside to that: Margot could also tell how selfish someone was, how her pleasure, her comfort, her feelings were unimportant.
Will’s kiss had been pretty close to perfect. He’d cupped her head as if Margot was made of something precious and fragile, and she’d never imagined that his mouth, which had said some very unkind things, could also be an instrument of pleasure.
But sometimes, a kiss was just a kiss. That was how people marked the end of one year and the beginning of the new one; they turned to the person nearest to them and embraced. It didn’t mean anything. Will was deeply tangled and embedded in her life, but by default. He was Blossom’s other person.
It was a complication that Margot didn’t need. What she needed was to find someone to kiss that she didn’t share a dog with.
No time like the present. ‘Blossom, selfie!’ Margot pulled out her phone, and Blossom, who was sitting next to Margot on the 134 bus, immediately rested her head on Margot’s shoulder and found her light. Like mother, like fur daughter.
Blossom didn’t take a bad picture. Unfortunately, Margot did, and it took several attempts before there was a picture where they both looked cute but like ladies who didn’t take any nonsense. Then it was just a few swipes of a touchscreen to log into Hinge, Bumble and the dreaded Tinder, to change her profile picture and her tag line to ‘Designer, Dreamer, Dog Mum’.
The next day, Margot woke to a winter wonderland of snow. She’d also woken up in one of the most advanced cities in the developed world that had ground to a halt because quite a lot of white stuff had fallen from the sky.
Getting a bus was out of the question, as no buses could manage the steep climb up Highgate Hill, so Margot had no choice but to walk down to Archway station.
‘Blossom! Stop! Pulling!’ was Margot’s constant and terrified refrain as she tried to go slowly down a snow-covered hill as a strong, powerful dog kept yanking her forward. By the time they reached the turn-off for Whittington Hospital and gritted pavements, Margot had fallen over once, her shoulder was screaming and she now had to pick Blossom up to travel on the escalator.
Only Will was allowed to pick up Blossom. When Margot picked up Blossom, two arms clutched around her middle, Blossom twisted and wriggled and generally acted as if she was being dognapped. It was a wonder that neither of them plunged to their deaths, taking out several other commuters at the same time. Thank God their destination, Chalk Farm, had a lift.
All too soon it was time for Blossom’s lunchtime walk. Margot had wondered if Will might join them, he often did on a Tuesday, but he’d gone back to his terse ways since New Year’s Eve. Not that Margot needed Will. She could manage just fine. Although, since Christmas, Margot had been added to a #TeamBlossom WhatsApp Group and now Mary was inundating Margot with messages. Worried that Blossom might get salt or grit in her paws. Terrified that she would freeze to death because she had no fur on her belly. Also very perturbed that Margot’s office might not have central heating. Margot was sure that even when she was a panic-stricken new dog owner, she’d never sent Will quite so many messages.
But right now, the only people she was messaging were her colleagues.
‘I’ll pay actual money for someone to take Blossom for her lunchtime walk,’ she pleaded on the Teams chat, but there were no takers.
So, it was just Margot and Blossom skidding along Regent’s Park Road to Primrose Hill. ‘Blossom, why can’t you behave just this once?’ Margot begged as she clung to lamp posts and other pieces of street furniture, although Jim had said that she had to stop projecting her own fears and issues onto Blossom. ‘Would it kill you to do a wee on the pavement? Come on!’
Blossom was more interested in chugging along like the little engine that could. When they finally got to Primrose Hill, Margot’s fingers blue as they peeked out of the top of her fingerless gloves, her shoulder aching, her bottom sore from her fall earlier that morning, Blossom became incensed. When there were so many dogs frolicking in the snow, who could blame Blossom for rearing up on her hind legs and barking furiously? Margot only stayed upright by grabbing hold of a railing.
It wasn’t a controlled environment. They weren’t under the watchful eye of Jim. There was no Will to hold out his arms and call Blossom so she’d come running. There was also every possibility that Blossom might try to eat another dog, but if she stayed on the lead, there was also the very real possibility that Margot would fall over and break something.
Margot tried to slip and slide a little further along the path to where it was quieter, but they were moving uphill and she couldn’t get any purchase.
‘I am a positive person. I have an unbreakable bond with my dog who will come back instantly. My dog will not attack another dog and have to be put down,’ Margot muttered under her breath as she unclipped Blossom’s lead.