Margot only disentangled herself when Will came back with their drinks. He’d expected her to look blissed out because she’d got her girl back, but instead her face was concerned but resolute, as if she’d come to a decision.
He couldn’t take a repeat of the argument they’d just had. There were a lot of things Will couldn’t take but he was just going to have to somehow. He sat down in the armchair opposite.
‘You can have Blossom,’ he said. Margot smiled, but it was a tenth generation copy of her usual smile.
‘No, you’re going to have Blossom,’ she said, and she gently pushed Blossom off her lap. Blossom wasn’t going to sit on the floor when she could sit on a chair or, even better, someone’s lap. She was already hoisting herself up Will’s legs without any assistance, and he instinctively hooked his arm under her back legs so she didn’t slide off. ‘It’s best that you have her.’
‘I watched you when I was at the bar, like I’ve watched you all these months,’ Will said in a throaty voice. He’d been on the verge of tears this evening at least three times. ‘I’ve always said that you deserve to love someone and be loved back. You deserve it more than anyone I know.’
Margot raised her glass in acknowledgment of this truth, but she still had that grimly determined expression on her face. ‘I can’t do it, Will. Outside of your family, Blossom is the only being you’ve allowed yourself to love, so how can I deprive you of that? At least I’m open to love . . . to the possibility of it . . . whereas you’ve closed yourself off.’
Even if he didn’t have such heavy emotional baggage to lug around, even if he’d devoted his life to battling climate change and eradicating world hunger, Will still wasn’t sure that he’d be worthy of the woman sitting opposite him.
‘I haven’t closed myself off from love, but I’ve always been afraid to love someone in case I ended up hurting them.’ Will kissed the top of Blossom’s silken head as she settled herself in his arms. ‘My dad wielded love like it was a weapon. When he was feeling sorry for himself, some small part of him ashamed of what he’d done, he’d cry and say to my mum, “But I love you”, as if that made everything all right. Or he’d say, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t dress like a slut. If you loved me, you wouldn’t want to leave me on own when you go out with your friends. If you loved me, you wouldn’t make me so angry”.’ Just remembering it, the threats, the excuses, made him cling a little tighter to Blossom. ‘Love can be such a destructive thing.’
43
Margot
‘And love can also be the most wonderful thing in the world,’ Margot said simply. ‘You are not your father.’
‘I’m starting to realise that . . . or I hope that it’s true, but it’s taking such a long time to fix myself.’ They were back in that tired old groove that they kept getting stuck in.
‘But I don’t have time,’ she said wearily as Will shook his head.
‘You do have time, Margs. We have time. Mary didn’t have Sage until she was forty-two.’
‘By rights, I’m allowed to smack you for that remark,’ Margot said, but she didn’t move her hands from where they were curled around her gigantic G&T. ‘After years of trying, of being told that she was infertile and to just stop trying, my mother had me at forty-five.’
Her voice wobbled. She looked up to the ceiling and blinked a couple of times.
‘But you’re not your mother.’ Will turned the tables on her.
‘It doesn’t work like that. There can be genetic factors to infertility, I don’t know yet whether I am lush and fertile or if having a baby, starting a family, might take years, thousands of pounds, intrusive procedures and even then, there’s no guarantee. And I lost both my parents before I was twenty . . .’ Her face was still tilted upward, so the tears rolled straight down her cheeks.
‘Margot. Oh, Margs . . .’
She managed a tearful smile. ‘I’d have sworn I’d already cried this month’s quota of tears.’
‘You’re allowed to cry but I wish you wouldn’t, because I hate seeing you so upset, so does Blossom,’ Will said, though Blossom was now asleep in his lap.
‘The last year of my mother’s life was the worst year of my life. Instead of focusing on her treatment or even enjoying what time she had left, she spent those last precious months fretting and worrying and buried in admin, all for my benefit, and I will never stop feeling guilty about that. Never.’
‘She did it because she loved you. Any decent parent would do the same,’ Will reminded Margot.
‘To have to put my child through that . . .’ Margot looked at Will with troubled eyes, her face tensed as if she was in pain. ‘You think I’m a good person, don’t you? People, my friends, do. That I’m caring, thoughtful, generous, the sort of person who would do anything for anybody, but actually I’m a selfish, shallow monster.’
‘You’re not, Margot. You’re absolutely not. You are the kindest person I’ve ever met,’ Will said swiftly, automatically. As if her alleged goodness was absolute, unequivocal.
But Will would say that because he didn’t know about those nights when Margot had laid in her bed, in her childhood home, in her room that smelt of Angel by Thierry Mugler, covered with posters of Kate Moss, and listened to her mother crying through the wall.
Whether it was in pain or fear, Margot didn’t know, because she was too scared, too cowardly to find out. She didn’t want to see Judy’s lovely face contorted, her elegant fingers clawed with agony. Didn’t have the courage to listen to her mother’s confession. She wasn’t brave enough to push back her quilt, get out of bed and offer what little comfort she could.
‘I would pull the pillow over my head so I wouldn’t have to hear her,’ Margot told Will, though she’d never told anyone this. Not even her therapist. Instead she kept going back for top-up appointments to heal the hurt, without ever being able to articulate that the hurt was actually shame that she’d wear like a crown of thorns for the rest of her life. ‘You’ve never heard anyone cry like that. As if she was so scared, felt so alone, and I wanted to go in and comfort her, but I didn’t know how because I felt so scared and alone too. I’m sickened when I think about it and I think about it all the time.’
‘You were eighteen, you were a child,’ Will pointed out, and instead of rearing back from her, his face screwed up in contempt, his voice and his eyes were soft with concern. ‘What is clear is that your mother loved you and you loved her . . .’
Margot swallowed down another sob. ‘I think this is why I can’t find someone to love me. Maybe I’m unloveable. I don’t deserve to be loved. I’m being punished for what I did – what I didn’t do.’
‘No! Sorry, Margs, but that’s absolute rubbish,’ Will said with such force that Blossom stirred in his arms. ‘You can’t really think that.’
But she did. How could she not? ‘And what if history repeats itself? What if my family medical history repeats itself too and I’m in the exact same situation?’ she demanded with a despairing shrug. ‘Knowing that I’m leaving the child I so desperately wanted on their own with no family, no one to love them.’