‘If I got top marks at school or did well at sports, he was furious. Jealous. Felt like he’d been emasculated,’ Will said. He’d understood this long before he started therapy with Roland and began to unpick the tangled knots that had kept him tied up for so long. ‘But if I did badly at anything, it was because I wasn’t good enough. I would never be good enough. I’d never be successful at anything. Never be a real man, but a snivelling little sissy.’
‘Oh, Will . . .’ Margot’s hand was still cupped protectively over his heart and she didn’t say anything more than that, didn’t interrupt his flow, the stagnant stream of memories.
‘He had so many rules. We weren’t allowed to watch telly, weren’t allowed out in the garden, weren’t allowed to have friends round or go over to theirs, and anyway, we were all too useless, too ugly, too dumb to have friends. All we had was him and he was disgusted by us.’ Will took a couple of deep, centring breaths, though he didn’t feel centred, he felt dangerously adrift. ‘I get it. That he felt he had no control over his life, so he controlled us. He wasn’t capable of looking inwards, of taking responsibility so he blamed us. I get that, but just because I understand it doesn’t mean I’m able to move past it.’
‘So, what happened? He’s not around anymore . . .’ Margot gently prompted.
‘There was one night, nothing special about it, but he was going in on Mum; I’d just turned twelve and realised I was as big as him now and I’d simply had enough.’ It had taken him three sessions to spit these words out with Roland. The first session, he hadn’t been able to speak at all, but saying something once made it easier to say it the second time. Especially where there was someone keeping guard over your heart. ‘I got between him and Mum and I said to him . . . I said, “Don’t talk to my mum like that. She doesn’t deserve it.” ’
Margot curled even tighter into him. ‘What did he do, then? ’Cause you said that he never laid a finger on you.’
‘He didn’t lay a finger on Mum, but he knocked me across the room.’ Which had been a good thing because it had finally woken Mary up from the deep, dark spell that Peter had cast on her. But before the good thing, there’d been a very bad thing. ‘We had a dog. Muttley. Actually, I think he was the only thing in the house that my dad really loved, no judgement with dogs, right? It always made him mad that Muttley preferred me, and when he hit me, Muttley went for him. He was only a little thing, but my dad took him by the scruff of his neck, slammed him hard into the wall, then stormed out, shouting that we’d never see him again. We waited until we were sure that he’d gone but it was too late . . . Muttley, he was . . . We buried him in the back garden.’
‘Oh God!’ It was gone three now, though the morning felt as if it had happened to someone else centuries ago. The mid-afternoon sun streamed in through the windows, though it seemed as if the day should be overcast and cloudy, not glorious with the promise of warmer days ahead. Margot lifted her head so she could wipe her eyes with the edge of the duvet. ‘I’m so, so sorry. What a shitty childhood.’
‘It did get better,’ Will said, sitting up and groping behind him so he could prop himself up on the pillows, Margot following suit, duvet tucked under her arms. ‘Because before he came back, we’d gone. Mum phoned Bernie and Mo, my grandparents, she’d barely spoken to them in years. Too ashamed, too convinced that she was a disappointment to them too. Anyway, Rowan and I came home from school the next day and there they were, all our stuff packed in the Blooms’ van and we left, and that was that.’
It wasn’t quite that. Peter had turned up in Muswell Hill a couple of weeks later but Mo, redoubtable Mo, all four feet and eleven inches of her, had seen him off. Although with hindsight, Will and Rowan had decided that Bernie and Mo had probably paid Peter to get out of their lives for good. There’d been another Blooms’ in Winchmore Hill, with two flats above the shop. It had been sold, not long after they arrived back in London.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ Margot said, and she took Will’s hand and entwined their fingers, then brought his hand up to her mouth so she could kiss it. ‘Some of it I’d already worked out. After Christmas Day . . . but I didn’t want to pry. I thought that if and when you wanted to tell me, then you would.’
‘Now I have.’ Will wasn’t done. Sometimes he felt as if he’d never be done. Never be finished with it. ‘You’re only the second person I’ve told. I told my therapist.’
‘Well, that’s understandable,’ Margot said, squeezing his hand tight.
‘My father would say real men don’t need therapy,’ he said, glancing sideways to gauge Margot’s reaction, which was an extravagant rolling of her eyes.
‘Yeah, well, your father is an absolute bastard and nothing he says should carry any weight.’ She crossed her arms.
‘So, you don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing a therapist?’ Apart from Rowan, who’d had post-natal depression after the birth of the twins, Will didn’t know anyone else who’d been in therapy. Apart from when he lived in New York and then everyone was in therapy. But not in London, not in the small world that he now lived in.
‘Look, if I feel sick, I see a doctor. When I wrenched my shoulder, I went to an osteopath and when my soul is hurting, I go and see Olivia, my therapist, so I can get my groove back. Or find a new groove.’ She tried out a little smile.
‘I’m not in therapy anymore,’ Will assured her. He’d been right to quit when he did – if this wasn’t forging an emotional connection with another person then he didn’t know what was. But he was surprised that Margot was in therapy. Or rather, that she treated therapy as ongoing, rather than getting fixed then moving on with her life. ‘You see your therapist on the regular?’
‘Not regularly. There have been gaps, large gaps.’ Margot blew out a long breath that ruffled the curls that were falling in her face. ‘After my mother died, I was so lost. I felt so alone. It wasn’t just grief . . . there was a lot of other stuff mixed in with it and I didn’t know how to navigate all the big, scary feelings that were blocking my way.’
Despite everything that he’d gone through, Will had always had Mary and Rowan. He’d never suffered entirely on his own. ‘I can’t even imagine what that would feel like.’
‘Yeah, it’s not fun,’ Margot said. ‘So I saw Olivia when I was in my early twenties and then when I hit thirty, I had another huge emotional crisis, stuff that I hadn’t really addressed when my mum died . . .’
‘What kind of stuff?’ Will asked as delicately as he could.
Margot sat up so she could turn her face away from Will. The tense line of her shoulders was a section break. A boundary that wasn’t to be crossed – for now. He had so many boundaries of his own that Will knew to be respectful of other people’s. ‘Stuff that I’m ashamed about and also all the stuff that comes when you’re a single woman who’s always been looking to replace the family that she lost, and then you hit thirty and realise that you’re not getting any younger . . .’
With a quiet sort of jolt, Will remembered their conversation in the pub a few weeks ago. How Margot had said that she didn’t have time to be kissing men just for the sake of it. And now they’d done more than just kissed. A hell of a lot more. But Will was sick of regrets. Though usually it was regret for all the things he hadn’t done, rather than for something he had.