Margot was on time for once, but Will was already there, his eyes fixed on the spot where she emerged through the trees. Her body gave a joyful jerk in his direction, but Margot forced herself not to hurry but to take her time.
She hadn’t seen Will since that hurried morning when she’d felt wrong in her own skin. Margot had often known the frustration of being with a man who refused to commit, no matter how many hints she’d drop about moving in together or the narrowing of her fertility window. She hadn’t done that with Will, but then she hadn’t fallen in love with any of the other men. She might have wanted a family with them, but they’d never felt like family. And Will did. He felt like home.
But he wasn’t home. He was a short-term let. So Margot had done the responsible, adult thing, and instead of talking to Will then mutually agreeing to end things in a civilised manner, she’d avoided Will for the rest of the week. When he’d asked to come over, she’d invented a sudden case of food poisoning (‘It might not even be food poisoning, it might be something gastro-intestinal and horribly contagious’) and had strung it out over several days.
It would have been at least a little validating if Will had looked a little wretched about his Margot-free week, but he didn’t. Far from it. He was wearing jeans and a navy polo shirt, so Margot could appreciate that his skin was tanned light golden, even his hair was blonder, and for someone who didn’t do CrossFit anymore, his arms were nicely muscled. Though Margot already knew that, she’d clung onto them often enough when Will had been driving her to dizzy heights of passion.
‘Hi,’ Will called when Margot was within distance and Blossom, who was a few metres away chewing ten shades of hell out of a tennis ball, eyes rolling back in ecstasy, decided that Margot was worthy of a greeting. She dropped her ball, got up, looked at Margot, looked back at the half-dismembered, soggy ball, then realised she could take it with her.
No matter how much Margot was hurting, Blossom could always make her smile. She came running towards Margot now, tail going like the clappers, and dropped the ball at her feet.
‘I’m not touching that disgusting thing,’ Margot told her, crouching down so she could kiss Blossom and gently tug at her ears.
‘How are you? You look good,’ Will said when Margot reached him. ‘Are you fully recovered now? I wish you’d have let me come over with some soup at least.’
Margot was wearing a lot of make-up and the biggest, darkest sunglasses she owned, which obscured half her face and, in particular, the area that was swollen and red from the crying and the not-sleeping.
‘I’m fine. Well, a little bit shaky still,’ Margot said, which wasn’t a lie though the hand she was stroking Blossom with was tremor-free. ‘How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing you, of course.’ Will squatted down to rub Blossom’s belly so their hands collided before Margot snatched hers back. He froze for a second, then quickly recovered, a bland smile on his face. ‘Well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About the future and about—’
‘Me too,’ Margot said, because they needed to find a way back to being co-pawrents and nothing else. Margot would just have to make her peace with that. Until that peace had been achieved, she couldn’t bear listen to Will pontificating about a future that didn’t have her in it. ‘We’ve been seeing a bit too much of each other for two people who are simply having a little summer fling. Don’t you think?’ she added, her voice cracking slightly.
‘Oh . . .’ Will packed the entire works of Shakespeare into the exclamation. ‘Is this about the other night? Because I thought that was what you needed.’
‘That’s the problem, isn’t it,’ Margot said, straightening up. A week of not sleeping properly had played havoc with her back. ‘We need and want very different things, and even though we knew that, we still did what we did and now here we are.’
‘If you give me some time, then maybe we’ll discover that we do actually want the same thing,’ Will persisted, which was sweet and conciliatory of him but if Margot had a pound for every time she’d heard a variation on this theme, she’d have an off-shore bank account in the Cayman Islands.
Margot was off her game. In the normal way, she’d launch into one of her trademark impassioned, forthright speeches. But nothing about this felt normal. She could tell Will that their affair was now derailed because she was pretty sure that she’d fallen in love with him, but she wasn’t strong enough to hear that he didn’t love her. And yes, he had good reasons for finding it hard to let people in, to love them, but Margot had good reasons to want to let people in, to be loved and love in return. Again, she couldn’t believe that she’d deluded herself that love didn’t matter at all.
‘You’re right. We both need some time to think.’ Margot wanted this over because this was torture, but still she didn’t have the courage to end things here and now. She hadn’t managed to entirely snuff out that little flickering flame of hope. ‘I mean, we can’t go on as we are so let’s see how we feel in a week or two.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Anyway, let’s talk about our blessed Blossom.’ Margot thanked her god-given and annoying ability to ride roughshod over what anybody else was saying. Particularly when she didn’t want to hear it. ‘Has she been a perfect angel, as per usual?’
‘She took a dump in one of my shoes,’ Will said, red staining his cheeks, but that might have been because Margot couldn’t help her very unattractive snort of laughter, even though her heart was currently fractured. ‘It’s just as well I discovered it before I put my foot in it. She’s never had any accidents before.’
It was no accident. It was Blossom picking up on the stress in her co-pawrent’s current relationship, Margot was sure of it.
‘I think all this toing and froing with no proper routine must be unsettling her,’ Margot said, seizing this damning bit of evidence like it was the last lifebelt on the Titanic. Will reddened even further. ‘So it really does make sense to cool things for a little bit, doesn’t it?’
‘How long is a little bit?’ Will asked, running a hand through his hair. ‘I’ve missed you this last week.’
‘I missed you too, but you were the one who just said you needed time . . .’
‘But I thought we could spend that time together as we figure things out,’ Will said.
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t,’ Margot said, and she didn’t have the emotional strength to look at Will any longer, to be so close to him but to feel as if there were continents between them. There was no point in prolonging this agony any longer. ‘Let’s catch up in the week, yeah? Come on, Blossom, time to go home!’
Margot thought that she heard Will say something, but she was already walking away, until she realised that Blossom wasn’t walking with her. She turned round to see the dog standing at the halfway point between Margot and Will, hesitating as if she wasn’t sure whose side she was on. Margot didn’t want Blossom to take sides because she knew how much Blossom loved Will, and Blossom was about the only being that Will voluntarily loved. Margot wasn’t going to deprive either of them of that.