‘I will cry,’ Margot warned Will as they drove through Finsbury Park. Having regular sex with someone who didn’t drink meant that she was no longer reliant on public transport or an Uber if she was feeling very drunk or very flush. ‘I feel like crying now and we’re not even there yet.’
‘You’re allowed to cry,’ Will said, putting his hand on Margot’s knee. It was warm enough for bare legs now, but instead of sliding his hand up a few thrilling centimetres, he patted her skin lightly. ‘Though I’d give it an hour before you properly unleash.’
‘If Den’s dad has written a speech, that will be it for me and my mascara,’ Margot said. ‘At their wedding, even the vicar was sobbing.’
‘Just as well I decided not to wear mascara tonight.’ Will caught her eye. This was perfect. So far, Will hadn’t put a foot wrong. But soon he would, and that would make things better. It was easier to think about expiration dates and exit strategies when someone started acting like a dick.
‘It’s still very early days,’ she said later, when it was just the four of them. Margot, Jess, Sarah and Tracy, the old gang back together for one last time, huddling on the patio even though late May was still a bit too cold to be out of doors, without tights, after eight p.m. ‘Who knows what the future has in store for us? But, oh my God, we are having so much sex.’
‘Yes, you might have mentioned that once or twice,’ Jess said a little bitterly, because she’d mentioned once or twice that after having her daughter, Alice, her pelvic floor had been absolutely destroyed, and she never wanted to have sex again.
‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ Margot sighed, staring through the French doors where Will was in the kitchen talking to Den’s sister and her wife. ‘Beneath that slightly gruff exterior is an absolute beast. I still can’t look at his kitchen island without blushing.’
‘Note to self: never go round to Will’s for a home-cooked meal.’ Sarah pretended she was making a note on her phone. ‘I do miss the heady, early days of a relationship, and all you can think about is how long before you’re naked again.’
Margot rubbed her arms. They really were going to have to go in soon. But she couldn’t bring herself to suggest it. Not yet. Not when she didn’t know when the four of them would be together again. Maybe never. But that didn’t mean she could let Sarah’s last remark go unchallenged. ‘Oh, we’re not in a relationship,’ she insisted. ‘We’re just seeing each other. I told you, head not heart. My last fling before I settle down.’
The three of them seemed to sigh in unison. ‘Margs, there is nothing about this that feels like one last fling,’ Tracy pointed out gently.
‘Yes, I know that we’ve known each other for months, but that doesn’t automatically make it a relationship. It just means that we’re friends with some pretty amazing benefits and we’ll go back to being just friends when this is over.’ Tracy and Jess were nearest, so Margot grabbed each of their hands. ‘Don’t burst my bubble, please.’
‘You’ve spent the last six years saying you were prioritising having children over anything else,’ Sarah muttered. ‘That your ovaries were calling the shots.’
‘I’ve asked my ovaries to stand down for a while so I can have a little bit of fun with a really lovely, really handsome man.’
‘He seems like a sound bloke, and it makes leaving a little bit easier knowing you’re happy, but I know you, Margs. You’re always all in, right from the start,’ Tracy said, hanging onto Margot’s hand so she couldn’t pull free. ‘You don’t know the meaning of chill.’
‘I am so chill.’ Or rather, Margot was trying to be chill and it was bloody killing her.
‘So, you haven’t asked him what the two of you’ll be doing for Christmas even though it’s only May?’ Jess asked sceptically.
Margot shook her head. ‘I haven’t. I wouldn’t do that because we’re not in a relationship.’
Technically it was the truth. At no time had Margot questioned Will as to what his Christmas plans were, because she already knew that he’d spend Christmas with his family. And of course, Margot would probably spend Christmas with them too. She’d shared their last Christmas and that was before she and Will were anything.
‘You’re only thirty-six,’ Tracy reminded her. ‘We’ve always told you that you’ve got loads of time before you need to start worrying about having kids.’
That was easy to say when you’d already found your One and had been together long enough to make plans about having a family. It was easy enough to nod in agreement like Jess and Sarah, but they’d already found their Ones too. They already had children, had put down roots, had a permanence to their lives that they took for granted.
They didn’t know what it was like to be thirty-six, nearly thirty-seven, and still feel as if your life was somehow transient. They’d never had dark, sleepless nights, agonising about whether to freeze their eggs because time was marching on, their reproductive systems were no longer shiny and new, and there was still no sign of a half-decent man on the horizon.
So, Margot was giving it as much time as she could for a woman who was in a race with her own biological clock. Who had waited so long to be someone’s person, their family. And now, she was doing her best to convince herself that it was a relief not to have that constant pressure weighing down on her.
Margot glanced through the window again at Will, who raised his head from his contemplation of something on his phone. He looked directly at Margot, smiled and mouthed something that she hoped was, ‘I’m missing you’.
Will wasn’t a half-decent man. He wasn’t a make-do. The last one standing in the last chance saloon. He was so much more than that, even if he didn’t realise it himself.
‘Exactly,’ Margot said. ‘A few months of fun with Will isn’t going to hurt me.’
36
Will
Will had known that getting together with Margot wasn’t going to be some fly-by-night, flash-in-the-pan thing. But the actual reality was terrifying, like being on a rollercoaster and Will always threw up when on rollercoasters, which is why he didn’t go on them anymore.
But it was also not terrifying, because this was Margot. Kind, funny Margot, who always knew exactly what to say. Sexy Margot, who pursued her passions in the same way she pursued life – with focus, determination and a hell of a lot of text messages.
If Will had known that Margot would be completely insatiable – not a complaint – then maybe he’d have done something about the two of them sooner. But this wasn’t just about sex. It wasn’t just about the two of them either.
It was Will and Margot (and Blossom, of course) and a cast of thousands. Not an exaggeration, Margot easily had a thousand friends, and in the space of a few weeks, Will was sure he’d met all of them several times over.
Then there was his family. There was a reason, several very good reasons, why Will had never introduced his women to his family. Apart from his sixth-form girlfriend, Emily, whose grandmother was pally with Mo, and Dovinda, who he’d dated in New York. (Dovinda had gate-crashed a family brunch with Bernie, Mo, Mary and Ian who were in town, turning up at the restaurant unannounced after looking at Will’s phone when he was in the shower. Dovinda had big trust issues, which had met Will’s intimacy issues head on. It was amazing that they’d lasted as long as they had. Four months.)