But Margot had already met his family, and as soon as they found out that there was something to find out, they’d all but adopted her. There were the Wednesday-morning walks with Mary that filled Will’s heart with dread, because he’d told Margot a story, which wasn’t completely his to tell.
Mind you, the Wednesday-morning dread was nothing compared to the taste in Will’s mouth, like he’d been licking batteries, when Margot was invited on a girls’ night out with Rowan and Sage.
Of course, it had been fine. Rowan insisted that she ‘already liked Margs because she makes you happy,’ and even Sage, who had the brutality of youth, had given Margot a seal of approval. ‘She’s all right,’ Sage had said. ‘Just don’t fuck it up like you usually do.’
‘I don’t usually fuck up things.’
‘Well, you must have fucked up all the relationships you had when you were abroad or else we would have met them,’ Sage pointed out, because she was nineteen and absolutely bloody relentless.
But none of those relationships that he’d had when he was abroad had left a vast array of beauty products in his bathroom. Nor met his family. Or had any idea about the man he really was, as opposed to the man he pretended to be.
It was still hard to believe that he had felt safe enough to unburden his soul to Margot, and it wasn’t a quid-pro-quo deal, but still Will had often glimpsed a sadness in Margot. A bone-deep sorrow that was to do with losing her parents, especially her mother, but despite his gentle prodding, she’d shied away from telling him what lay beneath the ‘big, scary feelings’ she’d mentioned.
Not that Will could blame Margot for holding back. They both knew that this wouldn’t and couldn’t last forever. So, although Rowan and Sage had declared their love for Margot, they were only eight weeks in. It was far too soon to be thinking about love, let alone talking about it, when there were so many words still unspoken between them. It played on Will’s mind as he stood in the kitchen talking to Den about his impending emigration to New Zealand, and watching Margot through the window.
She was in a group with Tracy and her two other best friends (Will still wasn’t sure how many best friends one person could have). Huddling together because, now night had fallen, it was cold, but also huddling together because the conversation seemed intense, and at one point Margot ran a careful finger under one eye as if she were brushing away a tear.
Immediately, Will felt guilty. As if he was responsible for that tear, for the intensity of the conversation. ‘He’s scared of commitment like I’m scared of spiders,’ he could imagine Margot saying.
‘Tracy is really going to miss Margs. Keeps threatening to smuggle her into our hand luggage,’ Den said, and Will realised that he’d been standing there, saying nothing, slack-jawed as he gazed at Margot.
‘Margot feels the same way,’ he replied. ‘But please don’t smuggle her into your hand luggage, because I’d miss her.’
It was the truth. But Will didn’t have to miss Margot because she wasn’t going anywhere. She was staying right there with him for however long this lasted. Will had always liked a plan. A strategy. A roadmap for where his life, his career, was heading. These past sixteen months, he’d been drifting, and that couldn’t last forever either, but the drifting had brought Blossom and then Margot into his life, so there was something to be said for not always having a plan.
Will’s phone chimed. When Mary Blossom-sat, she liked to provide her son with updates every half an hour.
She’s farting and snoring. The stench and the volume is like nothing else but I don’t have the heart to wake her and kick her off the sofa.
Will smiled and looked up to catch Margot’s eye through the rather smeared window. ‘I miss you,’ Will mouthed and she smiled. Will couldn’t help smiling back. There were so many reasons why Margot shouldn’t be with him, but he was bloody glad that she was.
The huddle broke up and its four members dispersed. He expected Margot to reach him first, but it was actually Jess, who looked about twelve but wagged her finger at Will in a way that was alarmingly similar to how Mo used to tell him off.
‘You’d better not be a wrong ’un,’ she warned Will. ‘Our Margot doesn’t deserve a wrong ’un.’
‘I’m absolutely not a wrong ’un,’ Will said to Jess’s back as she rummaged in the fridge for another bottle of wine, though she’d clearly had enough to drink.
‘That’s what a wrong ’un would say,’ she told him sorrowfully, so he couldn’t win either way and decided that he’d be better off looking for Margot.
He’d only got as far as the kitchen doorway when he was hemmed in by Sarah, a blond-haired Valkyrie who looked as if she should be riding a chariot into battle. Especially as she greeted Will with the words, ‘If you do anything to hurt Margot, then I will hunt you down and hurt you back, like, tenfold. All right, mate?’
‘I’m not going to hurt Margot,’ Will insisted, though he had a horrible feeling that if Margot got so much as a paper cut on Will’s watch then Sarah would be exacting retribution.
He finally found Margot in the lean-to with Tracy, making plans to go to the airport with her and Den. ‘There’s no way that you’re going to leave the country without me waving you off.’
‘You’ll cry, Margs. You know you will.’
‘I’ll try really hard not to,’ Margot said, but her fingers were crossed behind her back when Will touched her arm.
‘Been looking for you everywhere,’ he said. Margot turned to him with a relieved smile, like he’d come to rescue her.
‘Now you’ve found me,’ she said with some satisfaction, curving into him as Will put his arm around her waist.
Tracy looked at both of them and frowned. She opened her mouth then closed it again with an audible huff. Will held up his hand.
‘If I may?’
Tracy nodded. ‘Go on then.’
‘I’m not a wrong ’un. I’m not going to hurt Margot. Margot is absolutely the best woman I’ve met in a long, long time . . .’
‘Apart from Blossom,’ Margot murmured.
‘The best human woman I’ve met, and we’re good, and you don’t need to worry about her or me or us. Right, Margot?’
‘Damn right!’ Margot snuggled a little closer to Will as Tracy nodded.
‘OK, then,’ she said. Tracy didn’t sound exactly OK, but that was on her.
Will had managed to articulate his emotions in a way that had made Margot happy and didn’t leave him feeling as if he was being swept into deeper waters than he could safely navigate on his own.
If Roland could only see him now!
Relief and optimism made Will pick Margot up and twirl her when they got home, after stopping en route to pick up Blossom from Mary’s. She hit him and said that she’d give him a hernia, as she always did, and Blossom jumped up at both of them, excited at this new game and wanting to be a part of it.
‘You’re very smiley,’ Margot noted, once she’d managed to free herself from Will’s arms. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘I’m always very smiley,’ Will insisted, as he wound his arms round her again and kissed her neck in a way guaranteed to make Margot squirm.