Blossom took off like a rocket, a blur of fawn and white hurtling across the snow-covered slopes.
‘Blossom! Blossom, come!’ Margot called, but Blossom was gone, over the brow of the hill, never to be seen again.
What had she done? What the fuck had she done?
Back over the hill came Blossom, paws barely making contact with the ground. Her back legs couldn’t keep up with her momentum, so every now and again she’d do a hoppety little skip to get all four legs in alignment as she joyously galloped towards Margot, who crouched down, arms wide to receive her.
Blossom slightly adjusted her flight path so she didn’t go crashing into Margot, which Margot very much appreciated. ‘You are such a good girl! You are the best girl!’ she gabbled, pulling out the treat bag. ‘Good come, Blossom! Bloody good come!’
But Blossom didn’t want treats. Rather than the taste of freeze-dried liver, she craved the sweet taste of freedom. Off she bounded again, tail wagging so hard Margot was amazed that she didn’t take off as she watched Blossom complete a wide circle.
‘Someone’s got the zoomies,’ said a fellow dog owner, like Margot completely swathed in hat, scarf and disreputable padded anorak. ‘Love the snow, does he?’
‘He’s a she,’ Margot said automatically, she didn’t even get aerated about it anymore. Everyone was always misgendering Blossom. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever let her off the lead. She’s a rescue, you see.’
By now, Blossom had completed two loops and rather than attacking any other dog, she was at the head of a glorious, excited chain of canines, all of them barking and yapping, as they followed Blossom’s hedonistic lead. From all corners of the park, more dogs appeared and joined in, like a snowy, lunchtime edition of the Twilight Bark. Margot realised that there was absolutely no point in attempting to recall Blossom right then. And why would she want to when she’d never seen Blossom look so happy?
With tears streaming down her face, Margot waited until Blossom finally ran out of steam. She flopped onto her back, gave several good wiggles, then trotted nonchalantly back to Margot, who plastered her snout with kisses then let her have the whole bag of liver treats.
Jim always said that when your dog came back, even if you’d been waiting in the pouring rain for half an hour, you had to act as if you were delighted to see them. You had to make the coming back, and yourself, much more fun than the not coming back. Now, wasn’t that a metaphor for a successful relationship?
‘You are the best girl there has ever been,’ Margot told Blossom, and not one word was a lie because once Blossom was safely back on her lead, she trotted obediently at Margot’s side, like a little show pony, and didn’t pull once.
‘But it will be our secret,’ Margot decided as they carefully crunched over the compacted snow on Regent’s Park Road. Margot didn’t know when she’d become that person who had conversations with their dog in public, and actually, she didn’t really care. ‘Will must never know because he’d be very cross, and I can’t deal with Will being cross with me again. So, feel free to tug on the lead when you’re with him.’
However, Blossom’s tugging days were over. It was as if when Margot had released her from the bondage of her red and white polka dot lead, a switch had been flipped. She tugged just a little the next day, but when Margot, with heart in her mouth and terror in her soul, let her run free again, free as the wind, Blossom was a perfect angel when it was time to leave Primrose Hill.
Ever since then, the pulling had stopped. Margot’s shoulder was extremely grateful. Blossom had even stopped hurling herself at other dogs. Now, she was mostly non-reactive (Jim’s Holy Grail of dog behaviour) either on- or off-lead and hadn’t so much as growled at her sworn enemy, Popsy, the Cockapoo who lived on the other side of the Square and was often seen in Blossom’s favourite wee spot.
Margot’s little girl had become a woman.
26
Will
Nothing good was going to come from kissing a woman like Margot.
Margot shared his life in a way that Will hadn’t been prepared for when he’d suggested that they share a dog. She’d been in his flat, she was in his calendar, and God knows she’d been in his family home on Christmas Day and witnessed his family at their worst. Not the very worst, but bad enough.
If he kept kissing Margot, not that Margot had seemed up for a rerun when they parted on New Year’s Eve, then sooner or later, he would fuck things up the way he always did.
Fucking things up with Margot wouldn’t just affect Will, it would affect his family and it would affect Blossom. So Will did what any grown man would do in the circumstances – he’d gone silent for a week. When they met at training on Sunday, he was going to play it cool. Friendly but disengaged, which was never a stretch for him.
But when Will saw Margot and Blossom some distance away as he waited outside Jim’s hut, his heart did something strange. It seemed to beat just a little too fast for just a little too long while he watched Margot get closer in her cumbersome navy anorak. She had a red woolly hat on with an extravagant faux fur pom-pom which bounced as she walked, and when she got close enough to raise a hand, her smile was as tentative as his.
‘Hi,’ she said, looking everywhere but at him. ‘It’s really muddy today. Good job I wore my wellies.’
Will was relieved to have the excuse to look at her feet and not her face. Her wellies were red to match her hat and splattered with mud.
‘All right?’ he asked then wished he hadn’t, because it was as if he was daring Margot to say that actually it wasn’t all right, and where had he been all week, and by the way, how dare you kiss me on New Year’s Eve?
She didn’t say any of those things, but stared down at his feet, encased in equally mud-splattered hiking books. ‘Of course everything is all right. Why wouldn’t it be?’ She sounded almost defensive.
‘I didn’t say that . . .’
‘What is going on here?’ Jim demanded, his many keys jangling with every step as he hurried over to save Will from himself.
‘We thought classes were starting again,’ Will said. ‘You sent out a text.’
‘You did, Jim,’ Margot added. ‘Otherwise I’d still be in bed right now, believe me.’
Will didn’t want to think about Margot in bed, neither did Jim. He had far more pressing matters to concern himself with.
‘What have you done to Blossom?’ He stared down at the dog, actual emotion creasing his face. ‘Have you put her on Prozac?’
It was then Will realised what was wrong with this picture. Or rather, what was wrong with Blossom. She’d been wagging her tail the whole time that Margot had walked towards him but when they’d reached Will, Blossom hadn’t jumped up once. Hadn’t sullied his jeans with a single muddy paw. Hadn’t turned into a hackle-risen harpy and tried to go for another dog.
Instead she was sitting at Margot’s side and minding all her ps and qs. Margot smiled weakly.
‘Yeah. About that. Promise you won’t get mad.’
Will didn’t know if she were talking to him or Jim. ‘Is she on Prozac?’ he asked incredulously, because if Blossom was on mood-altering medication, then that went against everything they’d discussed about how they were going to raise Blossom. It also went against everything that Margot believed. All her banging on about a free-range, organic diet with absolutely no additives or chemicals, then she goes and puts Blossom on an antidepressant. ‘She’s not depressed. She’s just had a hard start in life, Margot. God, I can’t believe you’d put her on Prozac and not even talk to me first.’