Rescue Me

by Sarra Manning

Genres: Humor & Satire; Clean & Wholesome Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Even when you've given up on love, it will still rescue you...

Margot and Will cross paths at the local dog rescue centre where - after a series of misunderstandings and a lot of consternation - they agree to foster Blossom (a gentle Staffy with a giant head, soft, floppy ears and kohl-rimmed brown eyes) together: one week on, one week off.

Margot and Will don't get off to the best of starts: he thinks Margot is demanding and needy and Just So Much. And she thinks Will is emotionally unavailable, slightly brittle and very mistrustful. They're both right. But the more they bicker, the worse Blossom behaves, and they realise they have to form some sort of truce in order to "co-pawrent" her together.

It's almost as if Blossom has plans of her own . . .

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Release date: January 21, 2021

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 416

Sample

1

Margot

Margot Millwood was a cat person. Unfortunately, no one had explained this to Percy, her cat.

It also seemed that no one had explained to Margot’s ex-boyfriend George that after two months apart, they were getting back together.

George had asked to meet for early drinks after work. Margot had imagined that early drinks would lead to dinner then a declaration that, like her, George had seen what was on offer on the dating apps and realised that what they’d had together hadn’t been so bad.

Wrong!

‘I found a few of your things knocking about my place,’ George said, handing over a bulging bag for life, before Margot could take even one sip of her gin and tonic. ‘I can only stay for a quick drink. I have plans.’

‘Plans?’ Margot echoed as she cast a cursory glance inside the bag and saw an almost empty tube of bb cream and a pair of red lacy knickers that absolutely did not belong to her. She was tempted to hand them back to George with a scathing remark, but she didn’t know if they’d been washed or not. ‘These knic—’

‘Yeah, sorry this is so rushed, but I’m sure neither of us want to rehash the details of why we broke up,’ George continued, then downed half his bottle of fancy, locally brewed lager with almost indecent haste.

Margot could never back down from a challenge. ‘We broke up because, after two years together, you decided that you weren’t ready to even have a conversation about when we were going to start a family and you decided to break this to me on my thirty- sixth birthday.’ Nope, she still wasn’t over it.

‘Only because when I took you out for your birthday meal, you told me, no, demanded, that we start trying for a baby that very night. I hadn’t even looked at the menu,’ George recalled with an aggrieved tone as Margot’s phone rang. She ignored it.

‘I didn’t demand that you impregnate me that very night, I just pointed out that at thirty-six, I couldn’t continue to take my fertility for granted,’ Margot reminded George. Her phone beeped with a voicemail message at the same time as George sighed long and loud.

‘Anyway, it’s water under the bridge now. We’ve both moved on,’ he said. ‘Really, there’s no use in holding a post-mortem, Margs.’

There really wasn’t. Margot steepled her hands together so she wouldn’t make any threatening gestures. She didn’t want a post-mortem either, but still, George could benefit from a little advice.

‘Talking of moving on, can I just say that the next woman you get involved with . . . well, it would be better to tell her right from the start that you’re categorically not interested in having kids. Better to be up front than stringing her along for two years on false promises and maybes,’ Margot said coolly and not at all bitterly as, once more, her phone started to ring.

Again, she ignored it, because she was far more interested in the way that suddenly George wouldn’t meet her gaze.

‘You’re already in another relationship.’ It wasn’t a question. Didn’t need to be.

George nodded. ‘There’s no law says that I can’t be,’ he said a little defensively. ‘Are you going to answer your phone?’

‘Never mind my phone,’ Margot said. ‘Like I said, please don’t lead her on if you’re not serious. By the time a woman is thirty-five, her—’ 

‘ – fertility could be halved,’ George finished for her. ‘Yeah, you did mention that about a few hundred times when we were together.’

But still, it hadn’t been enough to spur George into action apart from vague platitudes about how Margot would make a great mother. Or how it would be best to wait a year or so and a couple of promotions down the line, so they could buy a house for this hypothetical family that it turned out George hadn’t really wanted.

‘I’m just saying. For the sake of your new girlfriend.’ No one could ever accuse Margot of being unsisterly.

‘Not something you need to worry about and neither does Cassie,’ George said, probably not even realising that he was puffing out his chest, proud as the plumpest pigeon.

‘I take it that Cassie isn’t in her thirties.’ It was obvious that she wasn’t, but George’s faux bashful smile confirmed it.

‘She’s twenty-six,’ George confirmed. He didn’t look even a little embarrassed to be dating a woman fifteen years younger than him. On the contrary, he looked pretty bloody chipper about it.

Margot’s phone started ringing for the third time. By now it was a welcome relief. ‘I really must get this, it sounds like someone is trying to contact me urgently,’ Margot said, getting to her feet and quickly gathering up cardigan, handbag and the bag for life full of mouldy crap that probably wasn’t hers. ‘Lovely to catch up. Must go!’

Of course her handbag strap was caught on the arm of her chair, so in the time it took to extricate herself, her phone stopped ringing and George had the chance to not only have the last word but deliver a pretty damning character assessment while he was at it.

‘The thing is, Margs, I always hoped we might go the distance, but you’re just too much.’

Margot was completely blindsided. Also completely furious. A younger Margot might have sworn that in the future she wouldn’t be so much. But older Margot refused to make herself something less than she was.

‘No, you’re just too much,’ she hissed under her breath, as she fled the chichi little bar in King’s Cross, her hand digging into her bag for her phone, which was ringing and vibrating yet again. When Richard Burton had met Elizabeth Burton for the first time, he’d said that she was ‘just too bloody much’, but that was because Elizabeth Taylor was too much of all the good things that womanhood had to offer: wit, intelligence, killer curves and a pair of violet eyes. But when George, who had a very weak chin and a weak grasp of current affairs to match (there! She could finally admit it), said that Margot was too much he meant that she was needy, demanding and desperate. Margot didn’t think that she was any of those things, but she was thirty-six and time was marching on even if her prospects of being in a committed relationship weren’t.

‘Yes?’ she snapped as she answered the phone to a withheld number – probably someone in a call centre on another continent wanting to know if she’d recently been in an accident.

‘Hello?’ the caller, a woman, queried back uncertainly. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last half hour. I’m calling about your cat. I believe you call him Percy.’

‘I call him Percy because that’s his name,’ Margot said evenly, though she felt very far from even. ‘Are you the person who’s stolen him?’

Margot was used to Percy keeping his distance. In fact, he barely tolerated her presence. After a long night of catting, he’d come home and scream at Margot until she fed him. How she longed for an occasional dead bird or half-alive mouse – the tokens of love that her friends received from their cats. But just because loving someone, or a cat, was difficult, it didn’t mean that one should just give up. He was still her Percy. Though Margot’s friends called him Shitbag on account of his habit of luring Margot in with big eyes and floppy limbs as if he wanted to snuggle. He’d even begin to purr as she tickled him under his chin. Then, just as Margot dared to relax, he’d either scratch or bite her. If she were really unlucky, he’d do both. To love Percy was to always make sure that your tetanus shots were up to date.

Over the last few months, Percy’s absences had been getting longer and longer and he was getting fatter and fatter. It was obvious that Percy was tarting himself around the neighbourhood, and Margot had had to resort to desperate measures. She’d been dripping with blood by the time she’d managed to secure a note around Percy’s collar.

 

To whom it may concern,

Percy is a very well loved, well-fed cat. Do NOT let him come into your house and do not feed him.

My number is on his collar tag, if you need me to come and fetch him.

 

‘We haven’t stolen him, he happens to prefer it round here,’ the woman now said indignantly. Then she must have realised that technically she had catnapped him if he was on her premises, because she sighed. ‘Look, I don’t suppose you could come round?’

Margot would have liked nothing more than to go home, change into her cosies and brood over what had gone wrong with George. She might even have cried. Not for George and his ripely fertile twenty-six-year-old new girlfriend, but because finding a man, just an average, ordinary man without commitment issues, continued to elude her.

Not tonight, Satan. Tonight, Margot was only home long enough to grab Percy’s pet carrier, a pouch of Dreamies and a thick towel so she could retrieve her sociopathic cat from one of the beautiful big Victorian villas that Highgate was famous for.

Margot was ushered into a double-aspect, open-plan living room with not one but two wood-burning stoves, a Warhol print of Chairman Mao on the wall above one of them, and a huge sectional sofa, which would have taken up her entire flat. On that sectional sofa were two little girls – they couldn’t be more than four and six and should absolutely have been in bed at eight o’clock on a school night – and nestled in between them, wearing a baby bonnet was Percy. He pointedly ignored her.

‘The thing is, you have to stop letting him in,’ Margot said to the harassed-looking woman who had answered the door and said her name was Fay and her equally harassed-looking husband, Benji. As Margot had entered, their nanny was just leaving for the day, so Margot didn’t know why either of them was quite so harassed looking. ‘He’s a cat. He’s an opportunist. But Percy is my cat and my opportunist.’

‘His name isn’t Percy, it’s Pudding,’ the smaller of the two girls piped up. Her chubby arm held Percy/Pudding round the neck in a vice-like grip. Soon there would be bloodshed.

‘If he was happy with you, then he wouldn’t keep coming here,’ her older sister said with an opaque stare, which was similar to the venomous expression on Percy’s face as he now gave Margot the full weight of his attention.

Margot’s boss, Tansy, had told her not to get a tortoiseshell cat. ‘All cats have a tendency to be bastards but torties are the worst,’ she’d advised when Margot had been scanning cat rescue websites during kitten season a few years before. There were many times that Margot had wished that she’d listened to Tansy but now, she wasn’t giving up on her cat without a fight.

There was bloodshed. Margot’s blood that Percy shed as she tried to herd him into his carrier, an exercise that necessitated throwing the thick towel over Percy to incapacitate him which also ensured that he couldn’t do much harm. Unfortunately, he managed to work a paw free and inflict considerable damage on Margot’s right hand, which already bore many Percy-inflicted scars.

The little girls were crying. Fay had disappeared with the words, ‘God, I need a drink’ and Benji kept saying, ‘Are you sure he’s your cat?’

Oh yes, he was Margot’s cat all right. The latest in a long line of men who thought that the grass was much, much greener somewhere else.

‘Fine,’ Margot said, when Fay returned with a first-aid box. ‘Fine. You know what? You can have him.’

Fay and Benji were very gracious in victory and the youngest girl, Elise, came over to give Margot a consolatory hug as Fay carefully dabbed antiseptic cream on Margot’s hand while Benji wondered aloud if she needed stitches.

They kept calling her Marge until at last Margot pointed out that it was ‘Margot, Mar-go. Marge is a butter substitute and I’m not a substitute’, even though her substitution status had been a recurring theme that evening.

Benji gave Margot a lift home, but that was only so he could pick up Percy’s things. The cat scratching tower, the countless toys, the very expensive cat food which was all he would eat. Margot boxed it all up, refused to take payment for any of it and came to a momentous decision after she’d shut the door.

‘That is it! From now on, I’m a dog person.’

10

Will

Will managed to get Margot out of the door and round the corner into the mews without anyone from the shop seeing them, thank God. Ian was still insisting that Blossom was a he. His mother had been absolutely bereft this morning when she realised there’d be no Blossom hanging out under the flower arranging table and Sage had already offered to speak to Margot on his behalf and ‘tell her to go and get her own dog’.

‘How are you going to manage with Blossom if you don’t have your own car?’ Will asked Margot as they left the mews.

‘There’s this thing, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it: walking,’ Margot said tartly, which was fair enough. ‘Also, buses and tubes, though you have to carry dogs on escalators and Blossom doesn’t seem to like being picked up. There are pet-friendly taxis too but I’m ready to lose my five-star Uber rating and argue with any driver who won’t take Blossom.’

Will already pitied those poor Uber drivers, but for now Blossom looked quite content curled up in the footwell. She had such a soft nature that she’d be no match for Margot’s unique blend of suggestion and complete lack of compromise, Will thought as they reached Highgate Village with its quaint high street full of independent shops: greengrocer, butcher, pharmacy, bakery, but also a Tesco Metro and the numerous coffee chains and estate agents that proliferated on every London high street.

‘It’s just round the corner on the Square,’ Margot said, indicating right with one hand. ‘The parking’s not great, I’m afraid.’

The Square, just a whisker away from the famous Flask pub, was quite the address. Such a Highgate affectation to name it the Square like it was a cut above any other squares that London might have to offer. The houses on the north side of the Square where Margot lived weren’t as large as the grand Victorian villas on the other side, and looked quite ramshackle by comparison, but still came with a hefty price tag.

Will was surprised that Margot had decided that the dog for her was a rescue Staffy and not some pampered Pekinese or Pomeranian with a pedigree.

He found a parking spot not too far from the ‘poor end’ of the Square and hadn’t even switched off the engine before Margot had the door open and was scrambling out. ‘Just pile everything up on the pavement and I’ll do the rest. I only have four steps down to my front door,’ she added, and Will stiffened with annoyance.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll help you. And anyway, I want to see where Blossom is going to spend her time when she isn’t with me.’

Margot was hoist with her own petard. ‘Fine,’ she said thinly, and Will proceeded to purposely ignore her system of putting everything they could in the dog bed, so it took several trips to ferry everything from the car and down the four steps that led to her basement flat.

‘My garden flat,’ Margot said as she unlocked her front door, which was painted a fashionable sage green. ‘Welcome to your new home, Blossom.’ She unclipped Blossom’s lead and left her free to explore while she and Will brought everything in. ‘I’ll just quickly unpack so you can have your bags back,’ she called over her shoulder as Will followed her into a tiny hall.

‘No rush,’ he said vaguely as he looked around. ‘You could give them back when we hand over.’

The hall walls were painted teal, the doors off it a dark, smoky grey colour. Two of them were ajar. ‘Sitting room and next door is my office. We can put everything in there for now and I’ll sort it out later,’ Margot said, then nodded her head at the door at the end of the hall. ‘Kitchen, which leads through to the garden. Actually, I should probably let Blossom out.’

The kitchen was so small that Will stayed in the doorway as Margot took the three steps to the back door. ‘Blossom!’ she called. Blossom trotted in immediately. Blossom didn’t come when Will called her, because she obviously didn’t respect his authority. But Margot’s wish was Blossom’s command. She came to where Margot stood by the open back door and gazed out.

There wasn’t much to gaze at. The garden was more of a backyard, mostly paved over, though a climbing rose was doing its best to trail up the back wall. There was a small wrought-iron table and two chairs and a number of planter pots, but it was the beginning of October and whatever had flowered in them was now long gone.

‘Do you want to do a wee, Blossom? Preferably not on my plant pots,’ Margot said, but Blossom stayed where she was. Will hated to be the bearer of bad news, but in this case, he allowed himself a small moment of blissful Schadenfreude.

‘Blossom will only go on grass,’ he explained. ‘For, um, both things.’ So, it served Margot right for being so smug about her ‘garden’.

Margot turned to look at him. For a split second the clouds shifted so she was sunlit with nowhere to hide, and her cheery expression seemed more like a mask than a representation of how she really felt. Then she shrugged, almost as if she was physically shaking off the sadness, and smiled her bright, chipper smile.

‘That’s a bit annoying,’ she decided. ‘I was hoping to fudge the last walk by just sticking her outside, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to nipping into the Square in my pyjamas and a thick coat.’

‘That five-minute walk at ten thirty is the worst of all the walks. You’re all settled in for the night and then you have to force yourself out,’ Will confessed, because he hadn’t had anyone else to share these aspects of dog ownership with.

‘So, how many times a day have you been walking her?’ Blossom had backed away from the door now, so Margot shut it, locked it and turned back to him.

‘Three times a day. Depends on my schedule but—’

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

Why couldn’t she just let him finish a sentence?

‘Sorry,’ she said immediately, as if Will had said the words out loud. ‘It’s my worst habit. Cutting people off. As soon as I think things, they come spilling out of my mouth. But do you want a cup of something? I know you have to go back to work but we need to talk about walks and feeding times and how we’re going to manage the handover.’

‘That makes sense,’ Will said, slightly mollified, though wary that she was about to issue him with a whole new raft of edicts masked as suggestions. ‘I was going to ping you over my spreadsheet, but tea would be great.’

Margot looked up at one of the shelves above the hob, where there were various blue-and-white striped Cornishware china caddies.

‘I can do you herbal. Camomile, peppermint, chai, green . . .’

‘Just ordinary tea,’ Will said. He should have known that even tea would be more complicated that it needed to be.

‘Earl Grey or Lapsang . . .?’

‘Builder’s if you’ve got it.’

Margot reached for one of the jars. ‘Head into the sitting room. I’ll bring it through.’

He retraced his steps back to the hall then into the sitting room. Although the flat seemed tiny, the ceilings were high enough that Will, who was six foot in his socks, could stand at full height, but he still felt like he had to duck his head. Maybe it was because Margot had colonised every spare centimetre of space that she had.

The walls in here were painted a rich, French navy though one was completely obscured by a gallery wall; a collection of pictures in different sized frames, ranging from saucy vintage postcards to retro fashion illustrations and an old-fashioned embroidery sampler with the words ‘Nevertheless, she persisted’ cross-stitched on it. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace were all kinds of bits: candles in various stages of use, a nun in a snowstorm dome, a collection of china owls ranging in size from big to absolutely minuscule. There was also a photograph in a silver frame of a tiny girl who, judging from her mop of dark curls and the determined look on her face, had to be Margot. She was sitting on the lap of an older woman while her chubby hands clutched the fingers of an older man who was gazing at the two of them with a tender expression. Probably grandparents. Above the mantelpiece was a large painting of a woman reading that looked as if it were from the 1930s, though Will couldn’t be sure because he knew very little about art or the 1930s. There were built-in cupboards on either side of the fire, a small TV resting on top of one of them and above that were shelves, crammed with books.

There was a sofa, its colour unknown as it was heaped with cushions (how many cushions did one woman need?) and a throw and a knitted blanket that reminded Will of an ancient poncho Rowan had worn when she was in her boho phase as a teenager.

There was just enough room for an armchair covered in egg-yolk yellow velvet, again piled high with cushions, so that when Will gingerly sat down, he had to dislodge most of them. He barely had time to view the room from a seated angle before Margot came in with a tea tray and Blossom at her heels.

‘She hasn’t left my side,’ Margot informed Will cheerfully, as she placed the tray on a low table in front of the sofa. ‘Wasn’t sure of the sugar situation with your tea.’

‘Just milk is great,’ Will assured her, reaching out to take a mug, which was brewed to just the right colour and consistency.

‘Do you want a biscuit? I have some very posh ones,’ Margot said, proffering a plate. ‘Pistachio nut and clotted cream shortbreads from Fortnum & Mason. I got sent a hamper from the people who stole my cat.’

‘What?’ Will refused the biscuits with a wave of his hand. ‘You have a cat?’

‘Not anymore I don’t,’ Margot said, taking a biscuit and biting into it with satisfaction. Will decided that it was probably best not to ask for clarification.

He felt very uncomfortable sitting there. It was such a feminine space. But it wasn’t just that. Being in Margot’s sitting room, her flat, felt like an intensely personal experience – as if her possessions weren’t just chosen for functionality, but were imbued with meaning and significance. This was more than just a place where Margot lived. More than a home. Like Blossom’s spot under his table, this was Margot’s safe space and Will felt like an intruder.

Also, if he were to make any sudden movements, he’d send several of her belongings crashing to the floor, its weathered floorboards covered with an ancient Persian rug.

Blossom had been doing a perimeter sweep of the room, as much as she could given the circumstances, but when that was done, she paused in the centre of the room. She looked once to Will, then to Margot who was eating her posh biscuit like it was the greatest thing she’d ever tasted, then jumped on to the sofa next to her.

It wasn’t so much a jump as an ungainly scramble and then she sat there looking longingly at Margot. Or rather, it seemed, the biscuit, because she reached out with her right paw, that she always used to such devastating effect, and placed it on Margot’s arm.

‘Oh! What do you think?’ Margot asked as if she were genuinely soliciting Will’s opinion and wasn’t just going to do what the hell she wanted.

Still, Will would give it the old college try. ‘Best not to. Human food can contain ingredients that are toxic to dogs.’

‘Really? Like what?’ Margot sounded sceptical as if this was just another way for Will to one up her.

‘Chocolate; very poisonous. She’d have to have her stomach pumped if she got into a packet of chocolate buttons.’

‘Not chocolate!’ Margot gasped, taking Blossom’s paw and stroking it. ‘Oh, Blossom, a life without chocolate is like a day without sunshine.’

‘Also grapes, raisins, onions, I’ll add an addendum to the spreadsheet.’ Will was painfully aware that he was coming across like a stuffy buzzkill intent on depriving Blossom of all manner of culinary delights. ‘She can have dog treats though, but only as very specific training rewards. And those chews to keep her teeth clean.’

‘You were going to tell me about the walk schedule,’ Margot prompted, as she gently pushed Blossom’s paw down. ‘No, darling, you can’t have the posh biscuits. Only dog biscuits and only when it’s feeding time.’

Will had already said that he’d send her the spreadsheet he’d painstakingly compiled so that Blossom could optimise her best life, but he still explained the walk schedule. Out in the morning, out in the afternoon, one of these walks being at least an hour, and then the infamous five-minute late night wee walk. ‘I haven’t let her off the lead at all. I didn’t dare. Especially as I was only fostering.’

‘Should we let her off the lead?’ Margot wondered. ‘She certainly comes when I call her.’

That was because Blossom thought that Margot was the best thing ever and Will was merely OK for a man.

‘Her recall isn’t brilliant,’ Will insisted. ‘And she’s still getting to know us – neither of us have bonded with her yet – so maybe we should wait a bit.’

‘Perhaps we should see a trainer. Do you want to be trained?’ she asked Blossom who was now recumbent on the sofa, her head in Margot’s lap. ‘Oh, you just want to sleep, don’t you? Because you’re such a tired girl.’

When Margot spoke to Blossom it was with a cutesy growl that had the same effect on Will’s nerves as someone running their nails down a blackboard.

‘Talking of which, she’s to sleep in her bed,’ he said firmly, because Blossom was a dog, even if she was a particularly forlorn, cute one, and they really needed to establish some boundaries.

‘Really?’ Margot looked crestfallen. ‘But she’s too cuddly to sleep on her own, aren’t you, my precious, precious girlie?’

Yes. Boundaries needed to be established early on, otherwise who knows what horrors Margot would visit on Blossom? Will would turn up for the handover next week only to find that Margot had dressed Blossom up in something pink and frilly and was pushing her around in a pram.

‘Your precious, precious girlie snores so loudly that I really thought we were having an earthquake,’ Will said, and this time Margot looked absolutely outraged at his slanderous remarks. ‘That’s nothing compared to the smells that come out of her other end.’

‘I don’t believe that.’ But Margot wasn’t looking quite so delighted to have Blossom in such close proximity. ‘Although that is good information to have. This rule-setting has been fairly painless.’

Will nodded. It was. He didn’t mind rules, as long as he felt that he had some control over them. ‘So, shall we circle back when we handover? I was thinking Sunday mornings in Highgate Woods. It’s a good halfway point between us.’

‘It is,’ Margot agreed. She had the tip of Blossom’s ear between finger and thumb and was softly rubbing it as the dog made contented, snuffly noises. ‘Not too early. About eleven thirty and then we can still have our lie-in, can’t we, Blossom?’

When she said that, Will was certain that despite establishing all these sensible rules, Margot was going to do exactly what she liked and spoil Blossom so much that she’d be absolutely ruined.

‘Right, well, I’ll be going then,’ Will said, draining his last drop of tea, but he wasn’t sure that Margot had even heard him, because she’d lowered her head so she could kiss Margot’s snout again.

‘You’re so stinky. I think you’re going to have to have a bath with the special lavender shampoo we’ve just bought and then I’ll shower you in love,’ she cooed.

Will was done with being the third wheel. He stood up. Margot managed to tear her besotted gaze away from Blossom for just one second. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll let myself out,’ Will said kindly. ‘I can see that you two want to be alone.’

11

Margot

It was a glorious week for a puppymoon. That delicious slide into autumn; the days still warm but with a crispness to them, the evenings chilly enough that Margot had transitioned from her summer-weight duvet to her mid-season one.

Nature was showing off its best colours. The Square now had a carpet of vivid red and gold leaves. There were vibrant orange pumpkins stacked up outside the greengrocer and rich glossy brown conkers lining Margot’s path each time she stepped outside. Margot had taken her pawrental leave as three days’ holiday and two days working from home on the colour palette and themes for next year’s autumn/winter collection. Instead of visiting museums and art galleries or closeting herself indoors with vintage fashion magazines and fabric swatches, Margot found herself inspired by the world around her. She was turning into one of those outdoorsy people.

In the mornings, she and Blossom would head for Hampstead Heath, an ancient expanse of lush, open fields, rich woodland and countless ponds, that was the glossy green jewel in North London’s crown. Margot had grown up in Gospel Oak, a brisk twenty-minute walk from where she lived now. The Heath had been an extension of her back garden. She’d spent long summer days at Parliament Hill Lido. On Sunday afternoons, the three of them, her mother, father and Margot, would go for a post-lunch stroll. One of Margot’s happiest, most vivid childhood memories was being carried on her father?