The Perfect Retreat
Kate Forster
Full of sex, secrets and scandal, this new novel from e-book sensation Kate Forster, will have you hooked.Can you live on love alone?Willow Carruthers – British Oscar winner, style icon and mother of three is facing a crisis: she’s broke, discovery of her partner’s infidelity has left her a single mother and, if the banks have their way, she’s about to be homeless.Meanwhile nanny to Wilow’s children Kitty, is desperate to keep her job and knows just the place they can retreat too – her crumbling ancestral home in the Bristol countryside, Middlemist House.To both women in their hour of need, the idea of leaving LA seems brilliant in theory, until Kitty’s brother Merritt returns home unannounced.From London to L.A, The Perfect Retreat is pure escapism - full of sex, scandal and intrigue.
KATE FORSTER
The Perfect Retreat
Copyright
AVON
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Kate Forster 2013
Kate Forster asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847563095
Ebook Edition © March 2013 ISBN: 9780007494095
Version: 2014-07-25
Dedication
For Tara whose patience, support and guidance means more to me than she knows.
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ud5266549-3661-5a78-9bbb-7d1c7b10ab96)
Copyright (#u8ee7a167-38ca-5433-93ca-2311ffb80413)
Dedication (#u57e25923-0742-5b99-bd6b-8547b38bedba)
Part One (#u8f2ea9cb-9174-5707-a81a-af6a6815f5e7)
Spring (#u2ea0f647-5020-54fb-8557-0f77566df84b)
Chapter One (#u0c535132-6dcc-5781-be82-1cd83ce851c9)
Chapter Two (#uaeff35fd-0c76-5d9e-83b2-2d27447bfd22)
Chapter Three (#u51b744f3-9214-53cd-857e-f41cf63af705)
Chapter Four (#u9ab6f2f7-a3ee-559c-8e9c-358524dd462f)
Chapter Five (#u233488c0-a27b-56c5-8b7d-195e19bdf218)
Chapter Six (#u4f2d0e97-bb7d-5f81-a5b0-3f973d58b03d)
Chapter Seven (#ue2ca7ac3-26c6-5800-aeeb-694d33546552)
Chapter Eight (#u05ad2017-a99e-58f3-9248-827a253d968d)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Autumn (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Winter (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
The Retreat at Home (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE
To Clementina Ferrand, Comtesse de Clermont
Paris,
January 1850
Dearest Clementina,
This small weight of paper does not do justice to the enormity of my task. It is done. I have fulfilled my promise, and now I hope with all my heart that you will keep yours to me. When I lingered at your side in Paris, unwilling to leave you, you asked me to build you a home.
It is done.
My beautiful Clementina, I have included a drawing of our home – if you will let it be such – and I hope it meets with your approval. It is a home for us, and if God is kind, our children.
I cannot imagine life without you here. Every room calls your name and every tree I have planted asks for you to come and witness its transformation over the seasons.
The house is named Middlemist, after me. It is a pretty home, resting on a hill, built in a modern style. I have built a ballroom at its heart. I have taken the liberty of including something I have dreamed of: an orangery, filled entirely with clementines. Should you wish to come and be my wife, you will have all the sweet fruit you desire and I shall have you, the sweetest Clementine in the world.
It may be my misfortune that you have been taken away by another suitor by the time this letter comes to you; and if that is so then I will retire gracefully. I will live with the pain in my heart for evermore.
Although water divides us and some say that time should have lessened our love, you have my heart forever, my darling Clementina. Middlemist is yours and waiting, as am I.
Yours now, for I am no longer my own,
George
Spring
CHAPTER ONE
Willow Carruthers sat in the deep leather chair in her lawyer’s office and wrung her thin hands together, oblivious to the scraping sound her rings made.
‘No money?’ she asked again.
Her lawyer shook her head, the noise of Willow’s rings annoying her. ‘None, I’m afraid.’
Willow felt the pit of her stomach sink away and she rubbed her eyes, hoping the black spots before them would disappear, smearing her perfectly applied eye makeup.
‘How can it be?’ she asked. ‘I had my own money when Kerr and I married.’
‘I know, but you and Kerr never signed a prenuptial agreement. All your money has gone on …’ the polished woman looked down at the list in front of her, ‘… lifestyle. And some poor investments.’
Willow had the strong feeling she was being judged. Her feeling was confirmed when the lawyer started to speak again.
‘Three Aston Martins, two Porches, a house in Vail, a house in London, two castles in Europe, a vineyard in France and an olive grove in Italy, and a luxury yacht which Kerr put the down payment on eighteen months ago. Works of art by Lucian Freud, Damien Hirst, and Tracey Emin. Jewellery …’
‘I know, I know,’ Willow interrupted her.
She knew the castles were too much. She had tried to convince Kerr they didn’t need a house in Vail – she hated skiing – but he insisted. He was a rock star cliché and now she had to pay for it. Although she hadn’t been too stingy with the credit card either. Harvey Nichols practically closed when she was inside; she often had three people serving her at once. And she had recently spent an enormous amount of money on making the house environmentally friendly.
‘Kerr’s lawyer has recommended you both sell everything. That will give you the funds you need to pay the taxes. And naturally Kerr will have to lose the deposit on the yacht.’
Willow nodded. The yacht was news to her; she didn’t even know Kerr had bought it.
‘I … I just want to know how this happened,’ she asked. Her head was pounding and her mouth felt dry.
The woman looked Willow over, taking in her client’s Michael Kors suede skintight trousers and spotless Chloé silk shirt. ‘You haven’t made a film in six years. Kerr’s last album didn’t sell as well as he thought, and he took a loss on it. Your lifestyle simply cost more than you were both bringing in. You had no decent money management advice, and the losses your investments made in the US, to put it bluntly, screwed you.’
Willow looked up at her lawyer. ‘What am I going to do?’
The lawyer started to shuffle the papers on her desk, and putting them back into a folder, signalling that the meeting was coming to a close. She looked Willow squarely in the eye.
‘Get a job.’
Willow left the office in a daze. She looked at her waiting car, her driver ensconced in the front seat. That will have to go, she thought sadly.
As she was driven through the streets of London to her home in Shepherd’s Bush, she tried to swallow the bile coming up into her mouth. When the pictures of Kerr with some leggy wannabe Russian rock star and her sister were posted on TMZ, she knew she had no other choice but to file for divorce. It was shameful. To see him with one woman was tough, but two? And sisters? Willow had spent the morning she had seen them online throwing up. Thankfully Kitty, the nanny, had left her alone and taken the children out for the day.
The thought of Kitty made her want to weep. She had been with them for three years, since she was eighteen, straight out of school. Not the brightest of girls, but the children loved her. Maybe more than their own mother, thought Willow. Not that she minded. The more time they spent with Kitty, the less time they could spend asking her where their shit of a father was.
Kerr had been missing in action since before their third child was born. Now Willow was the single mother of Lucian, who was five and still not talking; Poppy, who was four and talking for herself and for Lucian; and Jinty, who was one. Jinty was conceived on tour and Willow never regretted her for a moment, although she had had to give up the film she was planning to do once she found out she was pregnant. Kerr was less than enthusiastic. Remembering the fight they had had when she told him after he returned home, she shuddered at Kerr’s cruelty.
‘Christ Willow! We don’t need another fucking kid. Jesus, we can’t even get the ones we’ve got right! Lucian’s not right, he’s still pissing his pants and he’s nearly four!’ he shouted across their immaculate bedroom.
Willow hushed him. ‘He can hear you, he’s not deaf!’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just taking his time.’
‘You’re living in dreamland, Willow. I don’t want another fucking baby, you hear me? Get rid of it!’
Willow had been shocked at Kerr’s brutality.
Kerr seemed fond of Poppy, but only because she was always in his face daring him to notice her. He ignored Lucian completely. Willow refused to believe Lucian was anything but perfect. An artist’s temperament, she told people when they asked why he wasn’t speaking yet.
So Kerr had moved out when she started to show with Jinty. For the last year, rumours had circled about the state of their marriage, but Willow refused to acknowledge there was trouble, putting on a brave face and keeping her Jade Jagger wedding ring firmly on her left hand. People loved Willow and Kerr; they were rock star royalty in Britain and Europe.
For a year, she refused to see the separation as more than just a hiccup in the marriage. Kerr would come home, she was sure of it … until the pictures of him and the sisters emerged. Then the media put an end to its speculation about the health of Kerr and Willow’s marriage, declaring him a bastard and a shit. Willow didn’t disagree with their assessment privately, but she maintained a stoic silence in public. Even though she hadn’t made a movie in years, she was still a popular figure back home in the US, and in the UK.
Kitty was her birth partner when she had Jinty, and Kerr never came to see the baby even though she sent him several messages. Willow wondered how she could have been so wrong about the man. How could you be married for years before you found out that your husband was a complete and utter loser, with no real desire for anything but bags of coke and blowjobs?
Willow realised that she was a liability to Kerr. The rock star lifestyle didn’t have much room in it for a wife, three kids and an environmentally friendly home. It didn’t help that Willow was still celebrated as one of the world’s most beautiful women.
Although she hadn’t made a film in six years, Willow’s style had kept her in the public eye. She was considered a classic American beauty: blonde, tall, svelte, with an air of entitlement and intellectual superiority. The glossy magazines revered her for being a stay-at-home mother to her children and applauded her for her grace under fire after Kerr’s indiscretions were made public.
The green and organic movements loved her for her dedication to their causes, and tabloids loved her and Kerr’s constant dramas for helping them to sell millions of copies around the world.
Willow’s celebrity still had currency, but even the thought of hustling again to get the next job made her tired. It wasn’t as easy as people thought to stay famous. There was always someone else on the horizon: the next Julia Roberts; the next Cameron Diaz; the next Willow Carruthers.
Willow emerged from her reverie as the car pulled up outside her house. She strode up to the front door, ignoring the lurking paparazzi.
As she entered the house, she heard Poppy playing SingStar at the top of her lungs. Putting down her keys carefully so as not to alert the house to her homecoming, she made for the stairs so she could run away to her bedroom and get her head together. But Lucian, who made up for his lack of speech with super-hearing, ran towards her and blocked her path. She smiled. ‘Hey Luce. What’s new?’ she asked.
Her beautiful son stared back at her and then turned and ran away. ‘Bye!’ she called after him.
She changed her mind about hiding and walked into her living room, decorated with minimalist chic and muted colours but with a rock and roll vibe with the edgy art on the walls. Poppy was wearing the purple Calvin Klein gown Willow had collected her Oscar in, with a red and black striped turtleneck underneath. The dress was hitched up using a ribbon from her box of hair accessories, and underneath Willow could see she was wearing her favourite Nike kicks that Kerr had sent Poppy from Los Angeles.
‘Hey pop star!’ called Willow. Poppy waved at her and kept singing along to some hideous song that Willow was unfamiliar with.
Willow pressed the intercom to the kitchen. ‘You there, Kit?’
‘Yep,’ came a crackling voice in return.
Willow kicked off her Jimmy Choos and padded downstairs to the kitchen, which was a work of art. Two professional ovens, two fridges, black stone countertops, and French crystal chandeliers over an enormous central bench. The bench was huge and had wonderfully comfortable stools alongside it. The family – Willow, the children and Kitty – sat here to eat their meals.
Kitty was feeding a messy Jinty her lunch and Jinty clapped at the sight of her mother. Willow had felt awful about Kerr and tried to lavish attention on Jinty when she had the time, to try to make up for the lack of her father in her life. Lucian seemed calmer with Kerr gone, Willow had noticed; it was Poppy who suffered. She played her father’s music in her room and always ran to answer the phone as soon as it rang. Her therapist said she was mourning her loss and would get over him eventually, but Willow wondered sometimes if Poppy would ever get over Kerr.
Kerr had been Willow’s big love – or so she thought. They had met just before she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in an arthouse film, and he had just taken the world by storm with his music. They were untouchable as far as the media was concerned.
When Willow got pregnant, they married quietly in Scotland, in the village that Kerr had grown up in. They were happy for a while and when Lucian was born, Willow was content to let Kerr take over everything else in their life, including their finances.
However the marriage turned sour faster than Willow could ever have imagined. Kerr wasn’t interested in Lucian and spent eight months of his first year away on tour. Poppy was conceived during the four months he was home and not holed up in his basement music studio, and Jinty was Willow’s last desperate attempt to try and get their marriage back on course.
When she had seen the photos of Kerr and the sisters she had not been shocked or angry, just scared for her and her family’s future in the public eye. She had known the relationship was over the minute he suggested she abort Jinty. She had spent the nine months of her pregnancy mourning him and their marriage, and now she was alone. Kerr had not applied for access and his lawyer had made no mention of it. Not that Willow missed him, but ‘A child needs its father,’ her psychotherapist mother had insisted over the phone from New York. ‘It’s a pivotal relationship.’
‘Well that depends, Janis,’ said Willow, ‘on whether the father is a complete fuckwit or not.’
‘Yes, Kerr has some problems, but he is still their father after all. They need a significant male in their lives,’ her mother’s nasal voice had protested over the line. Willow knew not to get into an argument with her.
Willow, Janis, and Willow’s father, Alan, also a psychotherapist, were never going to be on the same page. Born and raised in New York, Willow had been homeschooled. Her mother’s belief that Willow was the reincarnated spirit of Sarah Bernhardt meant she was enrolled in every drama class New York had to offer, but it was the only formal schooling she had ever had.
Janis and Alan were passionate activists for anything and everything. They lay in front of bulldozers, climbed trees and held sit-ins.
Janis saved everything. She called herself ‘Betty Budget’ and reused her baking paper. Willow was dressed in vegan shoes long before Stella McCartney had the idea. She was raised on a diet of legumes and literature.
Willow privately thought that growing up with Alan and Janis was almost like being in a cult. Nudity, hand-me-downs and self-proclaimed gurus filled the small apartment. Willow used to escape when she was old enough by saying she had a drama class or a workshop and wander up and down Fifth Avenue window shopping. She loved the clothes and the colours. The leather shoes – how she longed for leather shoes! There were so many shoes she wanted.
Once, she found a Big Brown Bag from Macy’s on the street. She carried her things to drama class in it until it tore from overuse. There was nothing better than shopping, she decided. Once she had enough money, she would spend, and then she would spend some more.
She had been young, rich and fabulous. and her meteoric rise to fame had been helped by her marriage to one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors. Their subsequent split involved rumours not only of affairs, but also of drug addiction, both on his side.
Now at thirty-one, she was a married woman with three children, her Hollywood career behind her. Willow had very definite ideas about raising her family. She felt homeschooling was the best thing for her children and she was planning to work with Kitty on the curriculum for Lucian over the coming winter. Lucian’s development didn’t worry her; used to Janis’s unusual opinions on child raising, she figured Lucian would find his own way when he was ready. She had disagreed violently when Kerr suggested they send him to a specialist.
With the hindsight so many women have after the failure of a marriage, Willow realised she had been more in love with the lifestyle and the crown that went with being Kerr Bannerman’s wife than she had been in love with the man himself. She didn’t miss making films and she didn’t miss Kerr when he was on tour. She liked being photographed out and about in London, with her perfect flazen-haired children. She was on charity boards and worked in the organic food movement; the most recent publicity she had had was letting their London house be photographed for English Vogue, where she spouted the need for people to green their home, no matter the cost.
Looking back, she wished she had perhaps looked at the budgets a little closer. Perhaps ‘Betty Budget’ was a role she needed to learn from her mother, who she knew disapproved of her lifestyle. When she had imagined her child as an actor, she had envisaged Broadway. If she had to be in films, she would be the private, dignified type, like Meryl Streep or Woody Allen.
Janis didn’t like the magazine covers, the gossip and the drama. She stayed away from London and ultimately her own child and grandchildren, much to Willow’s disappointment and relief. She wanted her mother at times, but she knew that with her came the lectures about money and lifestyle and how she raised the children with the nanny.
Watching Kitty as she fed Jinty, she wondered how she would do without her. Kitty had come to her through a nanny agency when she was eighteen years old. She’d had no experience, but Lucian seemed to like her when she came to the house for her interview. That sealed the deal for Willow, as Lucian didn’t seem to like anyone. He refused to meet most people’s eyes when they spoke to him and ignored most instructions. When Kitty had sat down and asked Lucian to bring her his favourite toy, Willow had been surprised when he quietly left the room and came back with his brightly coloured blocks with raised lettering on the sides. Kitty had received the blocks gracefully and acknowledged the reverence that Lucian bestowed upon them, exclaiming over the colours and the smooth texture of the letters, although she never asked him to read them to her, and she never read them to him herself.
Willow had been in wonder at the girl child in front of her and how Lucian had seemed to take an instant liking to her. Soon Kitty was firmly ensconced upstairs in the nanny’s quarters, which she seemed perfectly happy with, refusing Willow’s offer to redecorate to her taste.
‘I’m fine, really. I come from a crazy old house in the country. I don’t need anything else, I swear,’ she had said, and Willow had stepped back – although she did get a few new sets of Cath Kidston linen for her. She seemed like a Cath Kidston sort of a girl.
‘How’s my little Jinty?’ cooed Willow at her youngest.
‘She’s great. Just having lunch and then off for a nap,’ said Kitty as she cleaned Jinty’s dirty face of the organic pumpkin Willow had cooked for her. This was one area where Willow did not let the children down. Her cooking skills were amazing and there was not a recipe she couldn’t master. If she’d had her time again, she often thought, she would have worked in food somewhere. Now she nurtured her children with food, and the two fridges were full to bursting with Willow’s meals and treats.
Willow’s phone rang and she walked out of the kitchen to answer it. It was her lawyer.
‘Willow. Hi,’ she barked down the phone.
‘Hi,’ said Willow bracing herself for more bad news.
‘Listen, I’ve done my best, but the bank are going to court to start proceedings to repossess the house. It’s about to become very public, very messy and very expensive.’
Willow sat on the silk-covered armchair in her bedroom. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ said her lawyer.
‘I’ll have to head back to New York,’ said Willow, wondering if her parents could put her up for a while and whether Alan would wear clothes around the house, at least for her sake.
‘No, you can’t,’ said the lawyer, as though Willow was an idiot. Perhaps I am an idiot, thought Willow, feeling sorry for herself.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘You can’t take the children out of the country until you get Kerr’s consent. They are half his after all,’ she said. ‘And until we find him, you have to stay put.’
‘Fuck,’ said Willow angrily.
‘Call me anytime.’ The woman’s voice softened. She had seen so many women end up like Willow, having given their power and responsibility to shitty husbands.
‘Thanks,’ said Willow and hung up the phone.
Thirty-one years old, unemployed, broke, a single mother and homeless. Willow wondered how much her Oscar would bring her on eBay.
CHAPTER TWO
When Willow had left the house that morning, Kitty surveyed the mess that Poppy had left in the living room. ‘Poppy, come here please!’ she called up the stairs, and Poppy came stumbling down in the purple dress which Willow had tearfully accepted her Oscar in. ‘Should you be wearing that?’
Poppy shrugged. ‘Mummy put it in my dress-ups,’ she said.
Kitty had raised her dark eyebrows. ‘Well, if you say so – but I will check with Mummy. OK?’
‘Whatever,’ said Poppy. It was her new favourite phrase, picked up from the television she watched for hours on end. Willow didn’t mind it being on all the time, but Kitty did.
‘Can you put these things away please, Poppy?’ asked Kitty, gesturing to the clothes, books, dolls and crayons covering almost every surface in the room.
‘No,’ said Poppy, and picked up a crayon. She held it against the wall, daring Kitty to say something.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Kitty.
‘Why? I feel like doing art,’ she said, and she slowly drew a wobbly line down the Colefax and Fowler wallpaper. Kitty held her breath. Poppy stopped and they faced each other, their eyes meeting.
Kitty won the stare-off, and Poppy walked over to a doll and picked it up. ‘What did you say?’ she asked the doll, and then held it up to her ear. She laughed and then looked at Kitty. ‘Yes, Kitty is a fatty,’ she said.
‘Poppy, you must never call anyone fat,’ admonished Kitty. Compared to Poppy’s mother, she must seem huge, she thought. She wasn’t fat, she was curvy, with a tiny waist and large breasts. She had the kind of body men either wanted to paint or fuck, and she refused either offer, although plenty came her way. Her dark hair and eyes, courtesy of a French gene from way back in her family tree, gave her a sleepy exotic quality and immediately made men fall in love with her. Kitty declined most adult attention, endearing her to children and making her misunderstood by her peers.
Being a nanny for Willow and her children was her perfect job, albeit trying at times like this morning.
Lucian was a dream, although it would be better if he spoke; and Poppy had too much to say. She was wise beyond her four years – she watched television that was too old for her and Willow put no boundaries on her. When Kitty told her off, Poppy either ignored her or laughed at her.
Kitty knew the best thing for Poppy would be kindergarten. She was bright and understimulated at home, and Kitty knew she could be no help in this area. Willow had it in her head that she and Kitty would homeschool the children, but Kitty thought she would have resigned before that happened.
Willow’s impending divorce from Kerr was proving difficult for Poppy to understand, and she pined for her father. When she had first started at the house, before Willow became pregnant with Jinty, Kerr was around more. He gave his attention to Poppy and usually ignored Lucian, although once she had caught him calling Lucian a dumb idiot and demanding he spoke, which only made Lucian wet his pants. Kitty had gently led Lucian from the room, cleaned him up and sat with him on the bed telling him fantastic stories about the boy with magical mind powers until he settled down.
Kitty’s relationship with Willow was mostly formal. Willow’s aloofness was difficult for Kitty and even the children to penetrate. Lucian didn’t bother Willow; his quietness suited her, although it worried Kitty. Poppy was too much for her mother to handle. She was so like her father that Willow often gave in to all her wants and desires, particularly since she and Kerr had split up. Jinty had no idea who her father was. She clung to Kitty as though she was her mother, which Willow encouraged as she had so many other things to think about.
The idea of teaching Lucian and Poppy at home was daunting to Kitty. She hadn’t done well at school, leaving as soon as she could, much to her father’s disapproval. Her much older brother, Merritt, had gone all the way through to university and was Kitty’s father’s pride and joy. Merritt was now a garden designer and writer on all manner of gardening subjects, travelling the world and sending her copies of his books whenever a new one was released. Almost twenty years older than Kitty, he was a mysterious brother, whom Kitty shared no similarities with. He was as fair as she was dark, tall and muscular where Kitty was curvy and soft. He could spend hours reading or in the garden, Kitty remembered from her childhood, whereas she didn’t know a weed from a petunia and only knew the plots of books if they’d been adapted into a film she’d watched.
In the company of children was where Kitty felt the most comfortable. They had no expectations of her, and she had the ability to calm them down with her stories or comfort them when they needed it most. Kitty’s lack of superficiality and her joy in the everyday was what Willow’s children loved most about her and she in turn loved their innocence and lack of judgment.
Growing up in Merritt’s shadow hadn’t been easy, especially after her beloved mother, Iris, died when Kitty was twelve. She had navigated her way clumsily through puberty, school and boys – not that many of them had been interested in her until her breasts began to show. Kitty avoided boys at school and then men as she became older. Moving to London when her father died just as she was turning eighteen, she had moved into a bedsit, leaving behind the house and attempting to leave her memories too.
It was only when Merritt’s short-lived first marriage to Eliza failed that she had seen her father angry with her golden brother. She still remembered the shouting coming from downstairs and her father saying how disappointed he was that Merritt didn’t have the tenacity to stand up and be a man. Merritt had shouted back and then left the house, not returning for years till their father had died of a heart attack in the garden.
Kitty had not heard from Merritt for those years either. She and Merritt had never been close so she hadn’t minded. Kitty had hated Eliza; she thought she was rude and pretentious, always speaking in an affected tone and telling Merritt to get a real job. What did he see in her? she had wondered. When their marriage had lasted for less than a year, Kitty had silently rejoiced.
Eliza had started measuring up Middlemist House as soon as the emerald engagement ring was on her finger. Eliza had pranced around telling everyone it was a Middlemist family heirloom, as old as the house, but Kitty knew her family hadn’t even kept hold of any jewellery. If they had, their father would have sold it years before for the upkeep of the house. Eliza’s ideas for Middlemist made Kitty feel sick. Working in a modern London gallery, she envisaged Middlemist as a grand modern home. She wanted to get rid of most of the wonderful Gothic features and fill it with giant sculptures of malformed babies and chandeliers made of rubber gloves. Kitty’s father had put his foot down and told Eliza and Merritt in no uncertain terms that there would be no rubber gloves as light fittings, and that until he died and was under the ground then the house would remain as it was.
Kitty thought Middlemist was fine as it was, filled with hidden rooms, bay windows and turrets. Her favourite memory of the house was of taking the hidden passage from the library to the dining room on the other side of the building, with only a torch to light the way. Kitty knew every flagstone by heart, she had walked it so many times. Her father said he had walked the same route as a child, and his father before him.
No matter how familiar she became with it, Middlemist House had never bored Kitty. She loved the romance of the balconies and the columns, the dark woods and the sweeping staircases. Her father had told her the house housed many secrets, namely the great treasures his great-grandmother had supposedly spoken of, but the generations that followed had never found them.
Kitty’s father, Edward, had been a stern man, more concerned with appearance and the family name than caring for his two children. When Kitty’s mother had died, he was caught up in trying to save Middlemist from massive debts and rising running costs. The house was a money pit as far as he was concerned, and eventually he gave up trying to rescue the grand dame. Slowly the house fell into disrepair. Edward managed to sell some land at the back of the property, which paid the debts but that was all. When he finally died he left the house to Merritt and Kitty on the proviso they not sell it for ten years, along with the small amount of cash that he had saved. There were no staff to let go of and Merritt and Kitty had locked the house up after the funeral. Pulling the keys out of the massive iron gates, Merritt had handed them to Kitty.
‘Take these,’ he had said on the road outside Middlemist. ‘I don’t want them.’
‘What am I going to do with them?’ she had asked.
‘Keep them safe. I’ll call you in ten years when it’s time to sell,’ he said, looking down the road.
Kitty took the keys and tucked them into her backpack. ‘Take care Merritt,’ she said to the brother she hardly knew.
‘You too, Kitty Kat.’ He touched her shoulder briefly with his hand, and then turned and walked down the road without a glance back.
Kitty had got onto the bus at the other end of the road, and when it drove past Merritt walking down towards the village, Kitty had tried to catch his eye. He never looked up, even though he knew she was driving past him.
Kitty had soon moved out of the bedsit when she landed her job with Willow, courtesy of a nanny agency in London. Although she had no experience or references, she had an innocent charm about her that the owner of the agency liked. When the opening came up to be Willow Carruthers’s nanny, Kitty was sent on a whim – partly because when asked if she knew who Willow was, she said she had no idea, and partly because the nanny agency had no one else suitable. Willow’s brief was for an English country girl, with cooking skills and a liking for children. The woman at the agency had raised an eyebrow at the last request, but Willow was of the opinion that you couldn’t be too careful. Kitty ticked all the boxes, and had been happily ensconced at Willow’s London home ever since. She never thought about Middlemist, never told anyone about it, and she hadn’t heard from Merritt since that morning outside the house. She still had the keys though, in her jewellery box, next to her mother’s locket.
Things at Willow’s house had become more and more tense over the last two years. Kerr was a shocking father, worse than her own, and Willow was self-absorbed, although she meant well. Kitty ended up taking on all the duties of a nanny and a parent, but she didn’t mind. It was nice to be thought of as smart and clever for once in her life.
Since Willow had come back from that meeting with her lawyer, she had taken a call and then locked herself up in her bedroom for the past hour. Kitty wondered if she should see if she was alright. She was never sure what to do in these situations. She found it best to stay put when faced with the unknown though, so she stayed with the children till Willow made the first move.
After Kitty had put Jinty down for a sleep and Poppy and Lucian were watching some bizarre movie about a hotel for pets or some such rubbish, Willow crept into the doorway of the playroom where Kitty was tidying up the toys and beckoned to her to follow her to the front room. This room was Willow’s pride and joy – the children were never allowed in. All lavenders and blue silks, the walls were white and a stunning glass cherry-blossom-shaped light fitting hung over the mantelpiece. Kitty thought that this room utterly reflected Willow: icy, perfect and cool. Willow sat on the blue silk couch and motioned for Kitty to sit down on the adjacent lavender wingback chair.
As Kitty approached she noticed Willow’s swollen red eyes. Willow clasped her hands in her lap. ‘So, as you know Kerr and I are divorcing,’ she said uncertainly.
Kitty nodded, unsure what to say or do.
‘Well there is a problem, you see.’ Willow nervously cleared her throat. ‘It seems that Kerr has spent all of our money.’
As Kitty opened her eyes wide in shock. How could you spend that amount of money? she wondered. Still she said nothing.
‘Yes, so it’s a big problem. You see I’ve got two weeks to get out of the house and take what I can and find a new place for the children and me.
‘I can’t return to America with the children until the divorce is settled, and I’ve nowhere else really to take them. I’ve tried to ring my agent to see what work is around, as I will have to get some cash fast.’
Kitty sat still, waiting for the final blow.
‘I am afraid, Kitty,’ Willow paused, as if swallowing tears, her voice breaking, ‘I will have to let you go. I can’t afford to pay you until I start to work, and you won’t be able to live here as the bank are repossessing. I’ve tried calling Kerr but he won’t answer. It’s all a bit of a cock-up I’m afraid. The paparazzi are going to go nuts when they find out. I don’t know where the hell we’re going to go!’
Kitty stared down at the perfect white carpet, the pile vacuumed a certain way to make it look as though no one had ever entered the room.
Willow put her head in her hands and the tears started to flow. ‘I’m so sorry Kitty. I’m so sorry.’
Kitty got off the chair and knelt on the carpet in front of her boss. ‘It’s OK – it will be OK,’ she soothed, unsure if it was the right thing to say. ‘Can I help in any way? Can I do anything?’
Willow looked up at Kitty’s kind face and shrugged. ‘Do you know anywhere we can hide till I get a job?’ she said, sarcasm thick in her voice.
Kitty sat and thought hard. She took Willow’s cold, white hands in her warm, soft ones. ‘Actually, I do.’
CHAPTER THREE
Willow had jumped at Kitty’s idea as soon as she suggested it, and the more Willow thought about it the more she was convinced this was the right idea.
Kitty, however, was regretting mentioning it to Willow; the house hadn’t been opened for three years, and god knows what state it would be in. She had hoped to get up to the house as soon as she could to try and make it respectable for Willow and the children, but Willow had kept her busy with plans for their move. Willow had moved everything that she loved from the London house to a storage place, under Kitty’s name. Everything of Kerr’s, she left in the house, including some of his prized artefacts, such as a letter by J D Salinger that he had paid a huge amount at auction for and a series of artworks that gave Willow the creeps. She hated modern art as much as Kerr loved it, so she left his things on the walls and in the cupboards. She knew from her lawyer that whatever the bank found in the house they would repossess and sell to pay off the debt.
The children’s things and some of Willow’s personal items were to be shipped to Middlemist in Kitty’s name. The plan was that the five of them would sneak out of the house in the night and drive to Middlemist undetected.
On the evening of the planned getaway, Poppy was beside herself with excitement. ‘I saw this on The Sound of Music!’ she said to Kitty, who was packing the Range Rover in the downstairs garage. ‘We are escaping the papanazis,’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ said Kitty, trying not to laugh. ‘The papanazis.’
Willow came downstairs with the last of the food she had packed up from the kitchen, even though Kitty had tried to tell her they had supermarkets in the village. Willow would have none of it. ‘Organic, Kitty – we must be organic. Does Middlemist have solar power or is it powered from the grid?’
Willow thought about the flickering lights and the occasional blackouts that occurred for no apparent reason. ‘It’s a combination,’ she said.
‘Ah, a dual-fuel house. Very good!’ Willow bustled in the car, reorganising Kitty’s packing.
‘OK, well I’ll get Jinty and Lucian and we can head off then,’ said Kitty as she went upstairs.
Willow followed her and they stood in the kitchen together. ‘Is it terrible?’ asked Kitty without thinking. It was a habit she was trying to break.
Willow turned to her. ‘What? Leaving the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not as bad as I thought it would be. Not as bad as Kerr leaving. I just want to start again,’ she said, looking around the once-perfect kitchen, cupboards open and drawers pulled out.
Willow swept up Jinty, and Kitty went to find Lucian. He was sitting in his now empty room. Kitty went and sat next to him. ‘Time to go, Lucian. I’m taking you to my house. OK?’
Lucian said nothing. Kitty continued, used to his lack of response. ‘I have sheep and gardens and exciting things in the house. I think you’ll like it. It’s fun! There’s so much to do,’ she said gently.
She stood up and held her hand out to Lucian. ‘Come on tiger. Let’s go and get dirty in the country!’
Lucian stood up and took her hand. They walked down to the car and found everyone waiting for them inside.
Willow was in the driver’s seat. She knew Kitty couldn’t drive when she hired her and up till now she hadn’t needed to, living within walking distance of everything.
‘Hop in Luce. Time to go!’ She started the car and opened the garage door. There was no one waiting for them at the front of the house. No papanazis. Willow had chosen tonight as she knew Matt Damon and George Clooney were at dinner together at Nobu. Willow and Kerr were invited but she had begged off, claiming the kids were sick. Every pap in town was over at Nobu waiting for their shot and Willow had a free and clear ride to the country.
Once out of London, the children fell asleep in the back seat and Willow and Kitty sat in comfortable silence.
Willow listened to the sat nav give her directions to the house, which was near Bristol. She turned off the motorway and onto smaller and smaller roads, and eventually they were in front of a pair of enormous gates.
Kitty jumped out of the car quietly so as not to wake the children and pulled the keys from her backpack. Heading over, she found the key to the gates’ padlock. She tried to open it but it was stuck, rusted from lack of use over the past three years.
Willow got out, and having watched Kitty’s attempts with the lock, went to the back of the car to rustle through the organic cotton bags. She found what she was looking for, walked up and sprayed the lock. Kitty turned the key and the lock opened.
‘Organic olive oil,’ said Willow as she walked back to the car holding the can.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Kitty as she swung open the gates. Willow steered the car through them and waited for Kitty to get back in. Lucian stirred and rubbed his eyes to try and focus on the darkness outside.
As they arrived at the house, Kitty suddenly remembered she had forgotten to ring the power company to reconnect the electricity. The house looked black and forbidding in the moonlight and Kitty felt slightly sick at the thought of Willow and the children staying in the dark and cold all night. ‘Only for a few weeks,’ Willow had promised her, but now Kitty wondered if they would make it through the night. Kitty prayed there wouldn’t be any dead birds in the entrance hall. Three years was a long time to leave a house locked up.
Kitty alighted from the car, pulled her keys back out and opened the front door. Willow followed her. The door swung open and the smell of dust and old air filled their nostrils. Kitty made a face as she felt for the light switch, silently praying that perhaps the electricity would still be on, although she distinctly remembered getting it switched off before she and Merritt had left three years before.
The power gods were obviously listening; miraculously the light turned on, and Kitty blinked a few times in amazement as her eyes adjusted to the light. Memories of the house flooded her mind and she stood in the large entrance, spellbound.
Willow was entranced. ‘Jesus, it’s amazing Kitty! Why didn’t you tell me you lived here?’ Willow was circling in one spot, looking up at the vaulted ceiling. She stopped and gazed up the magnificent oak staircase that stretched before them.
Kitty was in a trance as she stood by the front door, not hearing Willow. Memories of running up the stairs with Merritt; the sound of her mother in the kitchen. Bach flowing out of the drawing room when her father took to the piano in the evenings. He had stopped playing after Kitty’s mother died. It was as though the music in him died with Iris.
‘Kitty, Kitty!’ Willow’s voice shook Kitty from her daze.
‘Sorry,’ said Kitty. ‘I’ll go and turn the lights on and unpack the car, if you want to get the children.’ Kitty walked towards the kitchen.
‘Great, I’ll meet you back here,’ said Willow, looking happier than Kitty had seen her in months.
Kitty wandered through the house, turning on lights and opening whichever windows would allow her. Some were tightly stuck, but she figured she could get Walker, the local handyman, to get them opened – if he was still working.
As she walked back to the entrance, she could hear Poppy’s voice. ‘I can be a princess here!’ she was yelling. Jinty was crying and Lucian was as silent as ever.
Willow handed Jinty to Kitty, as she usually did when she cried. ‘Show me everything,’ she said, her cheeks flushed.
‘OK, well, this is the entrance. The staircase leads up to the first floor, where there’s an ancient bathroom and sixteen bedrooms of different sizes, plus a nanny’s quarters and two smaller rooms, including a playroom. There’s also another wing, but we never open it as it’s just more to look after.’
She walked with a now settled Jinty, who was going back to sleep on her shoulder, towards large oak double doors to the side of the entrance. ‘This is the drawing room,’ she said as she opened the doors and turned on the light. Willow took a sharp intake of breath. ‘My god! Did a Brideshead Revisited bomb go off in here and time has since stood still?’ she laughed.
Kitty looked at her blankly.
‘You know, Brideshead Revisited, the book? Evelyn Waugh?’ said Willow.
‘I’ve never read any of her work,’ said Kitty.
‘Evelyn was a man, and Brideshead Revisited was the book that made me fall in love with England. I read it when I was fourteen. It’s set in the twenties,’ said Willow as she walked around touching everything that wasn’t covered with a dustsheet.
Kitty felt embarrassed. Willow was so smart. She was forever offering to lend Kitty books, but Kitty always declined – although she devoured the glossy magazines.
Willow walked around the room looking at its contents. There was no television. The only television they had was in the parlour off the kitchen, where Kitty had hidden herself away after Iris had died. Merritt preferred the library.
‘It’s a bit out of date, I know. We didn’t have a lot of money to do it up with. A house like this eats money, I’m afraid,’ she said, rocking Jinty in her arms.
‘It’s not a criticism. It’s wonderful. People go to great lengths to get their houses to look like this nowadays. If it were mine, I wouldn’t change a thing,’ said Willow, picking up a bronze astrolabe off a side table. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘It’s some astronomy thing,’ said Kitty.
‘How do you use it?’
‘No idea. My brother knows,’ said Kitty as she tried to open a window with one hand, careful not to wake Jinty.
‘You have a brother?’ asked Willow. ‘Where’s he? Why doesn’t he live here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Kitty honestly. ‘After my father died we went our separate ways and said we would meet again when we could sell the house. There’s a caveat on it. We can’t sell it for ten years.’
‘Don’t you and your brother get along?’ asked Willow. She had longed for a sibling as a child. The idea of never speaking to one seemed unnatural.
‘We get along but we are very different. He’s almost twenty years older than me,’ said Kitty, feeling the cool night air on her face now the window was open.
‘Oh,’ said Willow. ‘Show me more of the house,’ she demanded, and Kitty sighed softly and did what her boss asked.
Kitty pushed open another set of doors and they stood watching Poppy as she climbed the steps and ran around the library mezzanine.
‘Careful,’ said Willow, as she looked up at the stone vaulted ceiling and the rows and rows of old books. The large reading table in the centre of the room was big enough to seat twelve for dinner and the battered Chesterfield faced a huge and ornate stone fireplace.
‘Now this is wonderful. You must have loved this room when you were little,’ said Willow, craning her neck to take in the room. The iron spiral staircase had metal serpents winding their way up to the mezzanine. Kitty watched as Poppy flitted about like a hummingbird in her favourite tutu and a purple feather boa.
‘No, I didn’t like it much,’ said Kitty quietly. She had hated the library, with its smell of books and air of seriousness.
‘Let’s keep going,’ said Willow, and Kitty showed her the dining room and the billiard room, where the billiard table was covered in a white dustsheet.
Every room they went into Willow went into raptures over it, exclaiming over the furniture; the carpets; the chandeliers. She even managed to get excited about the small powder room downstairs.
‘I’ll find it hard to leave,’ said Willow.
‘Well, you haven’t seen the kitchen yet,’ muttered Kitty as they walked through to it. It had lain untouched since 1960, when Iris had insisted Edward do it up for her as a wedding present. The old Aga stove had been left, but everything else was avocado laminate and white cane furniture.
Willow laughed as she entered the room. ‘This is very Austin Powers.’
Kitty laughed, not because it was particularly funny but because she was relieved to get the joke. She was still ashamed for having thought Evelyn Waugh was a girl in the drawing room.
Kitty walked into the small parlour to the side of the kitchen and set the sleeping Jinty carefully down on the old Laura Ashley sofa. She covered her with the throw that lay along the back of it. ‘Alright, well let’s unpack then shall we?’ she asked Poppy and Lucian cheerfully.
‘Why don’t I unpack and you go and get the children ready for bed? You can go and choose their bedrooms if you like,’ said Willow.
Kitty took her small charges upstairs and put them in a room together in twin beds. The bedrooms were sparsely furnished. Most of the good furniture had been sold over the years to pay for bills or repairs to the house. Kitty found clean linen in the hall cupboard, although it was a little musty. She reminded herself to air it in the morning.
Willow brought the first lot of cases upstairs, which were carefully labelled with each of the children’s names in Kitty’s childish writing. ‘Crazy,’ said Willow, looking down the wide hallway with all its paintings and the doors leading off it.
Kitty unpacked the children’s clothes and put them into a large cedar dresser, and then she changed the children into their pyjamas. Lucian was silent as she led him through the motions, but Poppy was high on the smell of dust and circumstance.
‘I love it here. I don’t think we’ll ever leave. I am sure I’ve been here before!’ Poppy rattled on, and Kitty nodded and agreed as she wrestled Poppy into her organic cotton pyjamas.
Taking them to the ancient bathroom, she watched as Poppy and Lucian cleaned their teeth and then took them back inside to tuck them up in bed. ‘Willow,’ she called down the stairs.
Willow came up with more cases and walked into the bedroom. ‘Night changelings,’ she said as she bent down to kiss them.
‘I’ll go and make us some tea, OK?’ Willow said as she went downstairs again, leaving Kitty humming the children to sleep. Kitty stayed with them until they’d drifted off.
As she walked down the grand staircase Willow touched the worn balustrade. She wondered what it would be like to own this house, to have all the history that Kitty had. Not that Kitty had ever shown it; she had made a huge effort to downplay her ancestral home, although Willow didn’t remember ever asking Kitty anything personal since her employment.
As she crossed the landing and continued down towards the entrance she looked down and was shocked to find a man standing in the entrance. ‘Who are you?’ she asked imperiously, taking on the tone of the lady of the house.
‘I might ask you the same thing. What the fuck are you doing in my house?’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘It’s a plant sample,’ explained Merritt to the customs official at Heathrow.
‘Right. Got a certificate for it then?’ asked the man, shaking the bag. It had a small cutting inside it wrapped in cotton soaked in water and Rescue Remedy.
‘Please be careful,’ said Merritt.
‘Sure, sure,’ said the official absently as he glanced at the certificate that Merritt handed over. ‘Effilum oxypetalsum,’ he read carefully.
‘Epiphyllum oxypetalum,’ corrected Merritt, trying not to let the disdain creep into his voice.
The man picked up the bag again. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, shaking it vigorously.
‘It’s a type of cactus,’ said Merritt, careful not to upset the officious man, who smelt of Vicks and cigarettes. He was tired and wanted to get out of the loud airport and have a shower and drink.
‘I hate cactus plants. When the wife and I bought our house there were so many, and we had them all pulled out,’ he said as he stamped Merritt’s certificate for approval.
Merritt grabbed the paper from the man, put his plant into his worn leather satchel and walked through to collect his luggage. He had hunted for this sample, a night-blooming Cereus known as ‘Queen of the Night’. It bloomed only one or two nights a year, around the full moon in May. The blooms only lasted for twelve hours or so and then it would take a full year for it to bloom again. He wasn’t about to have some tit at Heathrow who was high on the power of his job ruin his dreams of having one back at Middlemist again.
Since he had said goodbye to Kitty three years ago at the elaborate gates outside Middlemist, he had travelled constantly, designing gardens for a sheikh in Jordan, a sneaker entrepreneur in the Hamptons, and a luxury hotel chain in Bali, India and Mexico, which is where he picked up his precious plant sample. In between this he had written three books and filmed a television special for PBS in America.
Then one day, he woke up and wanted to go home. He was exhausted. Whatever he was looking for eluded him, and the thing he was trying to escape from had followed him from place to place. Middlemist had been calling him. The gardens cried for him, and he finally listened.
Returning home, he planned to head straight to Middlemist and then call Kitty. He had thought about her a lot over the past three years. She worried him, but he was not equipped to help her with what she needed. While he was still at home it had been painful to watch her struggle at school, with their father so proud of him but ignoring his daughter.
His marriage and fast divorce from Eliza had rocked his father’s world, although he had no idea why it had been so shattering to Edward. In hindsight, he saw that he and Eliza had never been a good match. He was swept away by her vivacity and ability to make small talk, both skills he severely lacked. But Eliza, it emerged, was actually a shameless social climber who wanted to be the lady of the house. She had assumed that Merritt’s family had more money than they actually showed off.
The separation from Eliza was swift, partly because he found out she had gone through not only the estate’s private accounts but his personal accounts too, but mainly after he had found her astride his best friend from school, Johnny Wimple-Jones, a gadabout and heir to an enormous property and large trust fund.
He had left Eliza and Johnny to each other, facing the disappointment of his father and the gossip of his friends. Such was his pride and shame, Merritt had refused to divulge what had happened in the marriage; not even to his father. It was only Kitty who he had told what had happened after he came back for the funeral. He still remembered her coming into his room in the middle of the night. She had sat on the end of his bed, held his hand and listened as he told her what he had discovered about Eliza. He wasn’t sure why he spilled his heart, but she was so unprejudiced about his and Eliza’s relationship that he felt himself able to tell her everything.
Kitty had said nothing. She had made soothing noises, which is what she reverted to when she didn’t know what to say. Her own memories rendered her silent. She was afraid that should she speak, Merritt might find more out about Johnny than he would care to know, and she would make things worse for him.
The ten-year caveat on Middlemist had always seemed tiresome. Merritt could have done with the money, as he was sure Kitty could have, but now he understood why Edward had created this stipulation in his will. Grief makes people commit impulsive deeds. Deeds like his – heading off around the world in search of something he still hadn’t found.
Three years later he could see that Middlemist House was bewitching, but while the Middlemist family name came with great history and once with great wealth, all of that had gone over the years. Now all he and Kitty had were the house and what they earned from their jobs.
Even though the house seemed stuck in time, and the gardens were probably overrun and perhaps even beyond repair, he figured he at least had to try to do what he could. If it proved too much then he would sell at the end of the ten years.
The only preparation he had made for his arrival was to have the power switched on again at Middlemist.
When he arrived at the house he was alarmed to find the gates wide open, and as he drove up the driveway in his rental car he was even more concerned to see a large black Range Rover parked on the gravel.
He got out of his car and peered through the windows of the Range Rover with his penlight torch. He could make out a packet of nappies, a doll and some bags of food. Perhaps Kitty had rented the house out without his knowledge, he thought crossly, striding towards the front doors.
As he stepped through the entrance he saw a very slender, beautiful blonde woman coming down the stairs, looking around in wonder. Maybe she was a squatter, on drugs, he thought. Then he wondered how many squatters drove top-of-the-line Range Rovers.
It was only after she rudely asked who he was that he felt his hackles rise. His retaliation alarmed her enough that she ran back up the stairs, calling out his sister’s name.
Kitty came to stand at the top of the stairs. ‘Merritt!’ she cried, and ran down to him where he caught her in a warm embrace.
Willow stood and watched the family reunion with interest. So, here’s the long-lost, astronomy-expert, green-fingered brother, she thought. Hopefully he won’t ruin my plans. She needed to stay at Middlemist for as long as she could, or at least until she could work out what she was going to do next.
The older brother was handsome. And so tall, she thought, watching him embrace his sister. He had a mop of brown curls with slight greying at the temples, a brown face, and brown arms in his white shirt with its sleeves rolled up. In his worn jeans and work boots, he had an air of the outdoors about him.
Merritt and Kitty pulled away from each other. ‘How are you, Miss Kitty?’ he asked kindly.
‘I’m OK,’ she said, grinning.
Willow walked down the stairs, but stopped before she reached the end. Standing on the bottom step, she was nearly as tall as Merritt. He looked at her, and Kitty shook her head. ‘Sorry – Willow Carruthers, this is my brother Merritt Middlemist.’
Willow held out her hand for Merritt to take it and plastered a careful smile on her face.
Merritt took her hand and smiled. ‘Hello. Sorry about the language. I thought you were a homeless person who had taken over my house.’
‘I am,’ said Willow simply, and Merritt laughed. He glanced at her, and realised she reminded him of a flower. Which one? he wondered. Her pale face bore a false smile and she was tired; it was as though her bloom had faded. Thin and tall, elegant but brittle. He searched his mind for the plant he was looking for.
Kitty looked at Willow, unsure of what to say next. Willow had told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to let anyone know about her financial situation until she had it worked out. Willow had paid her wages for the next eight weeks, but couldn’t promise any more after that until she got back to work.
‘Are you a friend of Kitty’s then?’ he asked.
Kitty laughed nervously. ‘No, Willow’s my boss. I’m her nanny.’
‘Oh great. Good for you,’ said Merritt cheerfully. ‘Is your husband here?’ he inquired politely.
‘No,’ said Willow. ‘I don’t have a husband.’
‘Right then,’ said Merritt, not knowing where to look.
‘I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry,’ said Willow, her face red.
‘Well it’s better to talk about it, I’ve found,’ said Merritt kindly, and he looked at Kitty who smiled gently at him in return.
‘What are you doing back here?’ asked Kitty. ‘I haven’t heard from you in three years!’ she admonished. ‘I would have written to you, but you know …’ her voice trailed off.
‘I know. I didn’t have an address anyway,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a drink. I’m desperate. I stopped at the off-licence and got some tonic and gin and a lemon. I wasn’t sure whether the lemon tree would be kind enough to give me anything after all these years. You up for a G&T?’
‘Yes please,’ said Kitty.
‘Sure,’ said Willow, not sure at all of the giant man with worn hands and curly brown hair in desperate need of a cut.
Willow and Kitty followed Merritt into the kitchen, where he set about making them all drinks. Willow sat in silence as she listened to Kitty and Merritt talk. Their familiar tone with each other, their joking and laughing, was something she had never experienced. She found it captivating.
He set the drinks down in front of them and sat down at the kitchen table. He looked huge on the delicate cane chair, and Willow tried not to stare.
‘So, Willow. What do you do?’ he asked genuinely.
Willow looked at him to see if he was joking but she couldn’t see any amusement in his eyes. ‘I’m an actor,’ she said.
‘Oh great. I love the theatre,’ said Merritt as he sipped his strong G&T.
‘More films actually,’ she said, with an edge to her voice.
‘Right. I don’t see many films. Sometimes I see them on the planes but I never pay much attention. Those headphone things are too small for my head,’ he said ruefully, rubbing his mop of hair.
Kitty laughed. ‘Silly. Willow’s won an Oscar,’ she declared, proud of her boss.
Willow shrugged. She wasn’t proud of her award.
‘Wow, an Oscar. Well done you,’ said Merritt, looking at her carefully. He knew what flower she was now. A Japanese windflower. Tall, fair, elegant. Liable to snap at any minute, he thought, looking at the dark circles under her eyes.
‘You still haven’t told me why you’re back?’ asked Kitty to Merritt.
Merritt turned the glass in his hand. ‘I just thought I should check up on the house. And you, of course.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re back,’ Kitty said happily. ‘How long will you stay?’
‘Not sure yet,’ he said vaguely, ‘I want to get an idea of how things are here, and if the house can be saved or if we should sell.’
‘What do you mean “saved”?’ asked Kitty.
‘Well, it’s in pretty bad shape,’ he said, looking around the old kitchen.
‘I know,’ said Kitty sadly.
The kitchen door opened slightly and the three turned to look. A small face peered through the crack at them. ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ asked Willow.
Poppy walked through the door shyly and looked at Merritt. ‘Who’s him?’ she asked.
‘Who’s that?’ corrected Willow.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Poppy again, more confidently.
‘Hello, I’m Merritt. I’m Kitty’s big brother.’
‘I’m Poppy,’ she said, and stood next to Kitty.
‘Poppy – the flower of magic, beauty and imagination,’ said Merritt.
‘Your name is silly,’ said Poppy, and put her thumb in her mouth.
‘Poppy!’ exclaimed Willow. ‘That’s rude.’
‘No, she speaks the truth,’ laughed Merritt. ‘It’s terrible, I agree, Poppy. It’s a family name. Has Kitty told you her full name yet?’
Willow and Poppy turned expectantly to Kitty. She looked down at the table.
‘Tell us,’ said Willow, not quite believing Kitty had worked for her for three years and she had never known her nanny’s full name.
‘Katinka Iris Clementina Ceres Middlemist,’ she sighed. It was such an awful lot of letters to spell out. It always took her ages to fill in forms, and she had begun to hate it over the years.
Willow looked at her, eyes wide. ‘That’s quite a name,’ she said.
‘I know, I hate it.’
‘So where’s Kitty from?’ asked Willow, as Poppy crawled onto her lap.
‘My mother called me Kitty-Kat as a baby and the Kitty stuck. I much prefer it.’
‘They are all beautiful names though. Katinka Iris Clementina Ceres Middlemist,’ she repeated to herself. ‘How did your parents come to choose those names?’
‘Katinka is a family name – some mad aunt I think. Iris is my mother’s name. Clementina is after my great-great-grandmother and Ceres is the goddess of agriculture and the harvest. Merritt’s full name is Merritt Edward Oswald Middlemist. It sounds like a name for a duck,’ said Kitty.
‘Thanks so much. I shall walk about quacking now.’ He looked at Poppy and gave an almighty quack.
Poppy laughed hysterically and Willow smiled. ‘You have children, Merritt?’
‘No.’
‘You’re so good with them,’ said Willow, watching the adoration in Poppy’s eyes for her new friend. For a brief moment sadness swept over her and she wished Kerr had been able to have fun with the children, with her.
‘Perhaps. Kitty’s the one who children love,’ he said, and Kitty smiled at him. ‘What about your name, Willow?’
‘Ah, I was named after Willa Cather.’
Kitty looked at her, puzzled.
‘Willa Cather the author – you know, Prairie Trilogy and all that? Perhaps she’s not known in the UK.’
Merritt nodded. ‘I know of Willa Cather.’
‘No middle names?’ asked Kitty swiftly, moving the conversation along.
‘Nope.’
‘Lucky thing,’ said Kitty, thinking of all the letters in her long name.
Willow looked down at a tired Poppy in her arms. ‘Kitty, would you?’
‘Sure.’ Kitty stood up and took Poppy from Willow.
‘So, just Poppy?’ asked Merritt as Kitty left the room with the sleepy little girl in her arms.
‘No. Two more. Lucian, who’s five, and Jinty, who’s eighteen months.’
‘Wow, and no husband to help?’ Merritt shook his head.
‘No, but then who needs a husband when you have Kitty?’ said Willow.
Merritt looked to see if she was joking and saw she was serious. ‘Fair enough,’ he said.
Kitty came back into the kitchen. ‘She was asleep by the time I was at the top of the stairs.’
Willow stood up. ‘I think I might be also. I might head off to bed. What room should I take, Kitty?’
‘The one at the furthest end of the corridor on the left. There are clean sheets in the linen closet as you walk by. Bathroom opposite,’ said Kitty.
‘Great. Nice to meet you, Merritt. Sorry about the misunderstanding on the stairs,’ said Willow.
‘Lovely to meet you too, and I apologise for the language,’ said Merritt, laughing.
Willow smiled at him. For a moment their eyes met and she felt like she was about to say something, but then it was gone from her mind. Merritt stood waiting for her to speak. She’d looked as though she was going to say something, but then she’d stayed silent. Strange woman, he thought as she walked from the kitchen.
After she had left, Merritt turned to Kitty. ‘So what’s the story?’
‘Well I can’t tell you everything – it’s all a bit awful – but she needs to escape for a while and so I offered her the house until she works out what she’s doing with the divorce and all. If I had known you were coming back …’ Kitty trailed off.
‘No, no, I should have called you. It’s fine. I’m just going to do some assessing of the house and the gardens and try and work out a plan as to whether the house will ever be habitable, or whether we’ll have to sell to the National Trust.’
‘It looks shabbier than ever,’ admitted Kitty. ‘I hate to think what it looks like during the day.’
‘Well, we’ll see in the morning,’ said Merritt, standing up and stretching. ‘What’s she like? Your Oscar-winning boss?’
‘She’s nice. A little bit crazy at times, but she’s had a rough time over the years I’ve been with her. Did you really not know who she was?’ asked Kitty, as she stood opposite her brother.
‘Of course I knew who she was – I haven’t been in a coma – but I wasn’t going to let her know that. She has that look of haughty expectation. Way too high maintenance. I wanted her to keep it real.’ He laughed.
Upstairs, Willow lay on the flannel sheets she had found in the hall cupboard. They smelt of mildew and violets. Merritt’s face crossed her mind. It felt nice that he didn’t know who she was. Anyway, she had no idea who she was any more, so why should anyone else claim to know her? Rolling over, she faced the large window with only one curtain drawn. She could see the crescent moon outside.
Now was the time to find out who she was, and there was no better place to do it than here, she thought. She drifted off to sleep, dreaming of staircases and tunnels and violets.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning when Willow was still asleep and Kitty was up with the children, Merritt came stomping into the kitchen, his boots caked with mud.
‘Fuck a duck, it’s a shithole out there!’ he exclaimed, and he heard a child laugh.
Looking up he saw three faces staring at him. ‘Whoops … sorry about the language.’
Kitty frowned at him. ‘Be careful what you say. Poppy repeats everything.’
‘And what about you? Do you know that swearing is the sign of a low vocabulary?’ he said to Lucian as he poured himself a mug of tea from the brown pot on the table.
‘Lucian doesn’t talk. If you want to tell him anything you have to go through me,’ said Poppy with her little arms crossed. This morning she was wearing her pyjamas with a dressing gown that he was sure had once belonged to his father; navy silk with stains and moth holes.
‘OK, roger that,’ said Merritt, and he raised his eyebrows at Kitty. She met his gaze and shook her head imperceptibly. ‘Well, you’d better introduce me then.’
Poppy turned importantly to Lucian. ‘This is Merritt Edward Oswald. He’s Kitty’s brother.’
Kitty laughed. ‘She has a mind like a steel trap,’ she said to Merritt.
‘And who’s this seedling?’ he asked, looking at Jinty, who was shoving toast into her mouth.
‘This is Jinty. She can’t talk either. I’m the only one who can talk.’
‘Well done you,’ said Merritt. ‘So, what’s on this morning?’ he asked.
‘Not sure yet,’ said Kitty. ‘Mummy’s still asleep isn’t she?’
‘Mummy sleeps in every morning,’ said Poppy.
‘Lucky her,’ said Merritt. ‘I’ve been up since five o’clock.’
‘Why?’ asked Poppy as she peeled the cheese off her toast and ate it first.
‘Best time, the morning. Quiet. No one to disturb you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because no one is up yet.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they are all asleep.’
‘Why?’
Kitty looked at Merritt. ‘This is her new thing. Enjoy.’
Merritt laughed.
‘Well, I’m heading off on a tour of the other gardens. Anyone want to come?’ he asked.
‘Me!’ cried Poppy.
‘What about Lucian?’ he asked the small boy, who stared straight ahead.
‘He wants to come too,’ said Poppy with authority.
‘Do they have some sort of secret language, like twins?’ he said quietly in Kitty’s ear.
She shrugged. The truth was she had no idea about Lucian and Poppy’s bond, and even less idea about Lucian’s reluctance to speak. His fascination with his blocks and Thomas the Tank Engine hadn’t waned since she had started working for Willow, and she figured if he was happy then she shouldn’t interfere.
‘Well go and get dressed,’ he said to Poppy and Lucian. ‘Quickly. I’ll meet you out the front.’
‘I’ll leave you here with Jinty for a moment, OK?’ Kitty said as she hustled the two children upstairs.
Jinty and Merritt eyed each other, and Jinty promptly burst into tears. ‘Oh dear. What a roar,’ he said, undoing the straps on her highchair. He picked her up and she stopped crying, looked at him and smiled.
‘Hello Jinty,’ he said seriously.
She blew a raspberry at him and covered him in bits of soggy toast. He laughed and looked up to see Willow watching him.
‘Morning,’ he said, and held Jinty out towards her mother.
‘Hi,’ she said, and took Jinty in her arms. Jinty started to cry again and reached out for Merritt.
‘It seems she likes you,’ said Willow tiredly.
Merritt was surprised. He had little experience with children and Jinty and Poppy’s enthusiasm for him was unusual, and flattering. Taking Jinty back into his arms she settled with her blonde head against his shoulder and Willow smiled.
‘You have a fan.’
Merritt snorted but was secretly pleased. Jinty was warm and soft and her little wisps of breath on his neck tickled him.
‘I’m about to take your other two for a tour. I hope that’s OK,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ said Willow. She didn’t mind as long as she could have a coffee and time to make her phone calls.
Willow started opening random cupboards and Merritt watched her. She was dressed in leggings and a t-shirt with a long cardigan over the top. Her legs were so thin he thought they might snap.
‘Have you lost something?’ he asked.
‘The coffee pot,’ she said. ‘I was sure Kitty had packed it.’
Kitty walked back into the kitchen with the children dressed for outside, although Poppy had added her purple feather boa. ‘Kitty, where’s the coffee pot?’ snapped Willow.
Kitty thought of the coffee pot and remembered she had left it sitting on the bench back in London. ‘Oh no, I knew I forgot something!’ she cried.
‘Christ Kitty, do I have to remember everything?’ Willow glared at her and thumped out of the kitchen.
‘She’s lovely in the morning,’ said Merritt under his breath.
Kitty looked crestfallen and took Jinty from his arms. ‘Don’t let them near the lake,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ said Merritt and he took one of the children’s hands in each of his. ‘Alright explorers. Let’s go!’ he said and Kitty watched as they headed down the gravel driveway together.
As she took Jinty upstairs for her sleep she heard Willow on the phone in the drawing room.
‘Of course I will. Thanks Simon. No, I haven’t heard,’ Kitty overheard as she walked past the room towards the stairs. ‘He’s a shit, I know.’
Simon was Willow’s agent. Kitty had only seen him in the flesh once in three years, at a party Willow hosted at her home, which had gone well until Lucian had come downstairs and set up his Thomas the Tank Engine train set in amidst the feet of the guests.
Lucian had been so engrossed in his trains that he had refused to move, and Kitty had been called to try and shift him back upstairs. She had sat next to him in the centre of the room and talked quietly to him for over fifteen minutes until Lucian finally let her pack up the tracks and the trains and take him back to his room. Willow had laughed nervously to Simon, who she was chatting to, and Kerr had shaken his head and gone outside onto the balcony for a joint. Most of the guests had tried to ignore the scene, except for a young man who had observed from across the room. He had watched Kitty’s face as she talked to the child, whose face was absent of expression, and saw how gently she spoke to him. He noticed her wet hair and long fingers and how they touched his little face to turn it towards her, and how the child’s eyes never met her wide brown ones. He saw how the room full of London’s glitterati didn’t faze her, and how her intention was solely to help the small, lost boy.
Kitty had had no idea she was being watched. The party was just after she had started with Willow and Kerr and all she wanted was for Lucian not to make a scene. She had been in the bath when Willow had banged on the door telling her to come and get him.
She had put Lucian back to bed and made sure he was asleep. Then she snuck down the back stairs to the kitchen to see if there were any of those crèmes brûlées in tiny teacups left that she had seen the waiters handing around.
As she walked into the kitchen there were a few waiters and a guest. Kitty ignored them and walked over to the bench, which was filled with leftover delights from the party.
‘Hello,’ said the guest.
Kitty looked up and saw a handsome man, maybe a few years older than her. He was wearing a dinner suit with the tie casually undone and hanging around his neck.
‘Hi,’ said Kitty shyly.
‘You did very well with your little friend in there,’ he said, sipping from a highball glass.
‘Thanks,’ said Kitty and wondered if he would think her greedy if she got a tray and piled it high with tasty morsels to take back to her bedroom.
‘You the nanny then?’ he asked, eyeing her over and noticing her tiny waist and large breasts in her tracksuit bottoms and long-sleeved thermal top. Kitty wished she had put on a bra when she had jumped out of the bath.
‘Yes,’ said Kitty, trying to cover her breasts with her arms.
‘I had a nanny when I was small. Never looked like you though.’ He raised one dark eyebrow at her.
Kitty didn’t know what to say, so she stood silently.
‘You’re a bit of a kiddie whisperer then?’ he asked.
‘That sounds terrible when you say it like that,’ she said, startled.
‘No, no, no tawdry intention; just commenting on your brilliance with the kiddies,’ he laughed.
‘Are you a friend of Willow and Kerr’s?’ she asked, wanting the conversation with the handsome man to continue.
‘Me? No. I don’t think they have any friends here. I don’t think they have any friends at all actually. No, I’m sleeping with one of the guests, who’s here with her husband,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Kitty, shocked and disappointed. Of course a man like this would be with the fabulous people; she had forgotten her place.
‘Are you shocked?’ he asked her, liking the flash of disappointment that had fleetingly crossed her face.
‘Yes,’ she answered honestly. ‘It’s not very nice for the husband.’
‘I suppose not,’ said the man, clearly not caring.
Kitty stood waiting for him to say something else, but the room was silent except for the sound of glasses and plates being packed up by the catering staff.
‘Well I’m off to bed,’ she said finally.
‘Alone?’
‘Yes!’ she said, shocked again.
‘Shame. What’s your name then?’
‘Kitty,’ she said shyly.
‘Goodnight little pussy,’ he said sexily, and Kitty felt herself go weak at the knees.
‘Night then.’ Kitty left the kitchen without anything that she had come for.
Boys had always pursued Kitty, but this one was different, she had thought. The last boy she had slept with she had met at a pub nearby when she was exploring the nightlife in her new city. He was a funny New Zealander who had plied her with vodka and taken her back to his hostel. They’d had quick fumbling sex and she’d passed out on his bunk bed, to awake to him packing his rucksack and telling her he was off to Prague that day and to look after herself.
Kitty had done the walk of shame home to Willow’s, where she had snuck upstairs before the rest of the house had awoken.
After her recent bad experience she was trying to stay away from the opposite sex. She always seemed to choose the wrong ones. She had lost her virginity to Merritt’s friend Johnny Wimple-Jones, which she would never be telling Merritt about. It had been a mistake, she realised in hindsight, but Johnny had been so nice when he had turned up at Middlemist claiming he needed to speak to Merritt urgently. Merritt had already left the country and her father was in London for the night. Brandy and flattery had got Kitty into bed, and Johnny had taken her in a haze of drunkenness and a small amount of pain. Truthfully, she was happy to get rid of her virginity. It sat in the corner of her adolescence, in turn berating her and scaring her until she finally laid the ghost to rest – or Johnny did, so to speak.
After Merritt told her about Eliza cheating on him with Johnny, Kitty was shattered and had vowed to keep her tryst with Johnny secret forever.
The young man at Willow’s party unnerved her. His grace and casual elegance was something she had never seen in a man. Her own father and Merritt were men of the land, all dirty fingernails and work boots. There was a feline quality about this man in his dinner suit, and his upper-crust, lazy accent reminded her of Alan Rickman and Jude Law rolled into one.
She had never seen him since, but she thought about him sometimes, never daring to ask Willow who he was. Instead, when she was lonely in her bed, she would make up her own fantasies about him. It was easier than actually having to have a real conversation with a man; small talk and secrets. Kitty preferred the world in her head to the world outside. She knew why Lucian kept to himself.
Kitty left Jinty sleeping and found Willow waiting for her in the hallway.
‘I have to go back to London. You going to be alright here for a few days with the children?’ Willow didn’t give Kitty time to answer; she started walking towards her bedroom expecting Kitty to follow, which she dutifully did.
‘I’m seeing a new PR girl. Some young gun apparently; Simon recommended her. If I need money quickly then I have to get back to work. Simon believes – and I agree with him – that my re-entry into the public eye needs to be managed carefully.’
Kitty nodded. It all seemed so hard, this celebrity life of Willow’s. Nothing was ever done honestly, she thought, her mind on the hair and makeup artists who would spend hours on Willow to get her looking like she was naturally fabulous. If they could see her now, thought Kitty as she looked at Willow in her leggings and odd socks.
‘I’m pleased this woman will take me on as a client actually. She set up the deal for Gwyneth to work for Estée Lauder. And Simon has a film he’s putting me up for that Kate Winslet’s just dropped out of because of her divorce, so that’s good.’
Kitty was silent, although she wasn’t sure Kate Winslet thought her divorce was good. She wondered if Willow had any empathy for the woman, who was only in the same situation she was in herself.
‘I’m going to shower and head off now. I’ll be staying at the Dorchester until I get things sorted.’
Kitty wondered how she was going to pay for the Dorchester if she was running low on cash. Willow, as if reading her mind, spoke up. ‘Simon set it up. I’m going to be photo-graphed coming and going – they’ll give me a suite for as long as I need.’
‘That’s nice of them,’ said Kitty.
‘Nice? No it’s business, Kitty,’ said Willow. ‘So call me, OK?’
‘Are you going to wait for the children to return?’ asked Kitty.
‘No, no time. You can say my goodbyes. They’ll be fine,’ she said, taking her large Louis Vuitton toiletry bag and walking towards the bathroom, with Kitty following her out down the corridor. As she was about to go through the bathroom door she stopped and turned. ‘Kitty?’
Kitty turned and looked at her employer.
‘Thanks.’ Willow looked uncomfortable as she spoke the word.
‘It’s OK,’ said Kitty, and she smiled at Willow. For a brief moment the women looked at each other as equals. Then Willow shut the bathroom door on her, and Kitty was outside again.
CHAPTER SIX
Eliza slammed down the phone and screamed from her white wood and glass desk. ‘Lucy! Lucy!’
A harassed girl with thick ankles and premature worry lines ran into Eliza’s office. ‘Yes Mrs Wimple-Jones?’ Lucy felt ridiculous calling her boss by her surname. The last place she had worked at, she had known all three of the directors by their first names.
When Eliza had personally headhunted her and wooed her Lucy had felt flattered. Eliza made all the noises of a woman who wanted to share her vision with Lucy, dangling the possibility of a partnership with her in the new PR firm she was setting up, and speaking at length about her belief in a well-run business that didn’t require the crazy hours Lucy was putting in as an account manager at her current firm. Lucy had taken the job with Eliza even though her old bosses had pleaded with her to stay and offered her a higher salary. Times were tight; they’d already let go of all the juniors and Lucy was scared that she might end up as one of the unemployed if she stayed there, however much they liked her. She had been heady on Eliza’s dream.
It didn’t take long for the dream to turn into a nightmare. Every night, Lucy dreamed of walking into the office and stabbing Eliza with her silver Asprey letter-opener. Instead she sucked up Eliza’s demands and her constant bitching and dreamed of a day when she would open her own place.
Lucy imagined a PR company where people rang and had their queries answered. Where they were billed for actual work, not for Eliza’s dry cleaning and lunch bills, which padded out clients’ invoices as ‘project disbursements’. Eliza had forced Lucy to include the costs of her most recent art installation on a client’s bill, much to Lucy’s horror.
Eliza had come from the most successful modern art gallery in London, and through her network she had turned herself into a PR maven. Her clients in the art industry and her marriage to Johnny Wimple-Jones meant she had in her BlackBerry some of London’s best-known people, whom Eliza always referred to as friends. She always said to anyone who would listen that her agency wasn’t a job, it was just catching up with friends every night of the week.
Lucy groaned internally whenever she heard this catchphrase. True, it wasn’t work for Eliza; it was left up to Lucy to ensure the guests had drinks and the photo shoot was set up and the reputation of the latest art enfant terrible was saved.
Eliza had the network, but Lucy had the smarts. She was sure that one day karma would assert itself and she would be at the top of the PR game.
The truth was that most of Eliza’s clients only stayed at EWJ Agency because of Lucy. Her calmness and sensible advice had saved the day on many an occasion. Whether she was talking down a waiter high on coke and threatening to set fire to the hostess’s hairpiece with the chef’s blowtorch, or consoling a WAG whose husband’s philandering had just been made public, Lucy was in control.
Eliza was looking at Lucy shrewdly. ‘You’ve lost me the Piper Esprit Champagne account.’
Lucy looked at her boss confused. ‘I don’t think we ever had that account,’ she said.
‘Well we could have, but now I’ve just found out that they are launching with Karin Burchill.’ Eliza spat out the name of her biggest competition, as though it left a bitter taste in her mouth just to speak it.
‘I didn’t know they were looking,’ said Lucy.
‘You should have known. That’s your job,’ snapped Eliza.
Lucy felt a myriad of things rise to the surface that threatened to fall out of her mouth, so she closed it firmly, thinking of her small flat in Islington that she was paying off.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said instead.
‘You should be,’ snapped Eliza.
Lucy looked down at the diary in her hands.
‘You have two appointments back to back. Willow Carruthers first. She’ll be here in ten minutes,’ placated Lucy.
If there was one thing Eliza loved more than herself, it was celebrity. Eliza raised her eyebrows as if in disdain, but she was wondering if what she was wearing was impressive enough for the most stylish woman in the world. When she had got ready that morning, Eliza hadn’t known Willow would be coming; if she had she would have pulled out all the stops. Instead she looked down at her black silk Burberry dress, worn with the double strand of Wimple-Jones family pearls and her towering black patent leather Jimmy Choos, and figured it would have to do.
Eliza had decided that she would only dress in black and white once she started the agency. ‘Like the news,’ she told people when they asked. Lucy was always tempted to remind her that more and more people were reading their news online and that perhaps she should wear a Google logo dress, but she knew to keep her mouth shut.
Lucy left Eliza’s office and went back to her small desk, where she also acted as a receptionist and did whatever else Eliza decided to throw her way.
Sitting down, she opened JobSearch on her computer, typed in ‘PR’ and started to trawl through the results. She was either overqualified or underqualified for everything. No middle-entry positions, she thought. So fucking depressing.
The bell sounding Willow’s arrival startled Lucy from her gloom. She pressed the buzzer to let Willow into the upstairs office.
Eliza had made the EWJ offices look like a small gallery. Modern art covered the walls, changing constantly as Eliza rotated her sizeable collection between her three houses in London, the country estate and the house in Ibiza.
Today Willow was greeted by a giant installation of latex fried eggs hanging at different heights up the stairs. She pushed open the heavy glass doors. Lucy walked forward to greet her, but Eliza had pushed past and stretched out her long thin hand towards Willow before Lucy had had time to even open her mouth.
‘Hello, I’m Eliza Wimple-Jones,’ she said, with her most welcoming smile plastered on her face. ‘Please come in and we’ll have a chat, OK?’ She guided Willow to the small boardroom and tossed a look at Lucy over her shoulder. ’Coffee and mineral water please, Lucy.’
Willow smiled at Lucy almost apologetically and Lucy smiled back. Lucy was used to Eliza’s rudeness and dismissive tone. She knew that eventually Eliza would tire of her new client and then all the work would fall to her. She took a tray into the boardroom, notebook and pencil under her arm, and placed it down quietly on the glass table. A giant sculpture of a woman in pieces was strung above their heads. While it was ugly, it was better than the baby in utero talking on a mobile phone that had hung there a few months ago.
Willow sat nervously as Eliza talked about her boutique agency. ‘I don’t publicise. My job is to ensure you are in the media for the right reasons, and seen with the right brands and the right people. Your comeback, if you want to call it that, needs to be carefully orchestrated; by not only me but also your agent and manager, both here in London and back in LA.’
Willow nodded.
Eliza went on, liking the sound of her own voice. She was great at the pitch and she knew it; this was where she did well. She just wasn’t so great at doing the work.
‘This could take several months actually, so we need to be careful about how quickly we push you out into the marketplace. Slowly, slowly is the key.’
Willow thought about her dwindling current account and felt sick. ‘Actually I was hoping to move faster than that.’
Eliza nodded, ‘I understand. Want to show the world you’re fierce and fabulous, huh?’ She smiled conspiratorially. ‘I get it, I did the same after my first marriage went down the gurgler. OK, well then to launch you sooner – that’s a different plan altogether.’
Willow smiled her most winning celebrity smile. ‘Great. So what’s the plan?’
Eliza preened under the gaze of Willow and looked at Lucy. ‘This is Lucy Faulkner; she’s my assistant and planner. She has fabulous ideas, and she’s already run a few past me this morning after Simon called telling us of your interest in our agency.’
Willow looked at the pale girl, who seemed about twenty-five years old. She was wearing a brown cashmere sweater that made her bust look like a single bolster pillow and a horrible black skirt that sat at an unflattering length on her thick legs.
Lucy panicked. She hadn’t run any ideas past Eliza at all. This was typical Eliza form: all icing, no cake. Lucy took a breath and looked at Willow. She was going to have to wing it and hope it was enough for her to sign them on.
‘I think that if you want to relaunch yourself quickly the best way is to get you a cosmetics contract. It’s a great way for people to see you in a different light and for the industry to see you’re ready to work again. You don’t have any projects lined up yet?’ asked Lucy briskly.
Willow sat back. She had underestimated the smart tweedy-looking girl. ‘No. I have a meeting this afternoon for a film though,’ she said.
‘OK, so I suggest we start shopping for a contract. Anyone would be happy to have you, either in fashion or in cosmetics as I said. Then I think we do a big interview: a tell-all with a magazine of substance. Vogue, Vanity Fair, nothing less than that, otherwise it cheapens the whole thing. I suggest you make no comment in public about your husband or your children either. Take the high road.’
The buzzer went in the office and Eliza looked at Lucy, expecting her to stop mid pitch and answer the door. Willow looked at Eliza, and then back at Lucy. ‘Perhaps you can get it. I’m interested in what Lucy is saying,’ she said almost imperiously. Eliza smiled graciously but was fuming inside. How dare that washed-up bitch tell me to answer my own door, she thought.
As the door to the boardroom shut Lucy looked directly at Willow. There was a fragility about her that she found interesting, as though there existed something more behind the brittle veneer she used to mask her feelings.
‘Listen, can I be straight with you?’ she asked suddenly and not even believing she was saying it.
‘I guess,’ said Willow warily.
‘There are rumours that you and Kerr are in the shit financially, big time. I don’t know if that’s true – and unless you’re my client it’s none of my business – but if it is true then Eliza’s not the agent you want. She’s indiscreet and a social climber. Your sorrows are her gains and she will use it against you. I suggest you look for another agency if it’s true. It’s not me, I could solve this for you – but don’t trust Eliza.’
Willow looked at the sensible, plain girl with the golden advice and nodded.
Eliza came back into the room. ‘Sorry, bloody couriers,’ she said and sat down again. ‘Now where were we?’
Willow stood up. ‘I’m sorry to waste your time. I’m afraid this isn’t really the agency for me; perhaps it’s a little premature,’ she said, smiling at Eliza.
Eliza glared at Lucy. What had she said to her? The stupid dumb clodhopper of a girl was useless. ‘Are you sure? I think we could work well together,’ pleaded Eliza.
‘No, I’m afraid not; but thank you for your time, I really appreciate it,’ said Willow. She backed out of the room, ignoring Lucy, ran down the stairs under the giant hanging eggs, and didn’t stop to take her first breath until she was on the street outside. A few people passed her, doing double takes at the glamorous star looking as though she had seen a ghost. Willow pulled herself together and thought about her options. If word got out about her financial woes then she would never be taken seriously. No one could know about this, she thought; she needed to act as though she hadn’t a care in the world except for her beloved children. The last thing she wanted was to do cheap media for money; she might as well light some hoops in Trafalgar Square and jump through them for small change.
Eliza was horrible, she thought: so instantly see-through and a definite social climber. Willow shuddered. She would never associate with someone like Eliza; why on earth had Simon recommended her? Lucy, on the other hand … Well, she had definitely underestimated the girl, who reminded her of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle from the story that Poppy liked so much. Round, comforting, sensible. That’s what I need more of in my life: sense. And dollars, she thought as she pulled out her phone.
After Willow left EWJ, Eliza screamed at Lucy for ten minutes, demanding she tell her what she had said when she left the room, but Lucy played dumb. The truth was she had found out about Willow and Kerr’s finances from her friend who worked in PR at Kerr’s record label. As soon as Lucy overheard Eliza taking the call about Willow, she had rung around her mates in PR to get the lowdown.
Eliza’s tirade only stopped when the phone rang and she stomped off to her office, slamming the door. Lucy picked up the phone. ‘EWJ Agency, Lucy speaking,’ she said efficiently, although she felt like crying after Eliza’s onslaught.
‘Hi Lucy, it’s Willow again.’
‘Hello,’ said Lucy, surprised.
‘I just wanted to thank you for your honesty and advice. Suffice it to say there are a few things happening in my world at the moment which are less than appealing,’ said Willow wryly.
‘I figured,’ said Lucy.
‘Listen, this may seem odd, but is there any chance you would consider working for me as my private PR person? I don’t have any money yet but I think I can get back in front, and I really need people I can trust at the moment,’ said Willow down the phone.
Lucy was silent, thinking.
Willow continued, ‘I know it’s a big risk for you but you were amazing in that room, and I honestly think you could help me. And I could help you, I hope.’
‘I would need to think about it,’ she said quietly, looking down at her desk.
‘No private calls!’ hissed Eliza and Lucy looked up to see Eliza’s reptilian face peering at her.
At that moment Lucy realised she had had enough of Eliza and her bullshit and she smiled down the phone. ‘Actually that sounds lovely. I’ll text you from my mobile and we can meet in a minute,’ she said.
Eliza looked at her as she hung up the phone. ‘You’ve had lunch; you don’t get time off to meet people. I need you here,’ she barked.
‘Actually Eliza, I’m leaving.’
Lucy stood up and took her handbag from the filing cabinet.
‘When will you be back?’ asked Eliza, unnerved by Lucy’s calmness.
‘On the first of never, Eliza. I can’t work for you any longer and I was too well raised to tell you what I think of you, so please consider my notice immediate and final,’ she said, and with that she walked out of the door.
Eliza started to follow her down the stairs, screaming her name. ‘Lucy, Lucy! Come back here!’ she called, and then the phone rang and Eliza turned on the stairs to go and answer it and lost her balance and reached out to grab something. The only thing her desperate arms could find was one of the hanging fried eggs. She yanked it and fell down the stairs to land on her bony bottom, a giant latex egg on top of her.
And that was Lucy’s last vision of her ex-boss: at the bottom on her bottom with egg on her face. Perhaps karma did exist after all, she thought.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Merritt was back from his tour of the grounds with Lucian and Poppy. Kitty watched them as they rounded the side of the house and thought for a moment what a shame it was he’d never had any children, but she pushed the thought from her mind. That would mean Eliza would be their mother, and that was a fate she would not wish on anyone.
‘We’re back!’ called Merritt from the foyer, and Poppy echoed him. ‘We’re back!’ her little voice rang out.
‘How was that?’ asked Kitty as she took their muddy boots off.
‘Awesome,’ said Poppy, using her favourite word of the week.
‘Depressing,’ mumbled Merritt. He followed the little party into the kitchen where Kitty had set up a morning tea of pikelets and milk and a pot of strong tea for Merritt.
‘Really?’ asked Kitty as she sorted out the children.
‘Oh Kits. It’s in such bad shape. I don’t even know if it’s worth saving. Perhaps we should just let the National Trust have it,’ he said, slumping in his chair.
Kitty sat opposite him not knowing what to say.
‘The gardens are overgrown – hideously overgrown in fact. The fences are falling down, some of the trees are in bad shape, will need to be looked at as soon as possible. And that’s just outside,’ he said sadly.
Kitty frowned. This was not her area of expertise. In fact, she thought, she didn’t even have an area of expertise.
‘I am going to write a big list this week of everything, inside and out. I could use a hand when you have a moment,’ he said.
Kitty thought about the children and all she had to do for them and was about to speak up when she saw Merritt’s forlorn face and decided against it. ‘Of course,’ she said, although she wondered what help she could be.
‘We have the money Dad left us but that’s about it,’ he said, thinking aloud.
‘We could turn it into a hotel?’ suggested Kitty, having seen it done on TV before.
‘What the hell do we know about that, Kit? It would be worse than Fawlty Towers I think,’ he said.
Kitty laughed. ‘Yes well, I suppose you’re right.’
‘I wish there was buried treasure somewhere. Dad always said that his great-great-great-grandmother had said there was something of worth in the house, but I have no idea what he meant. He spent his life searching for it, but who knows what she was talking about?’ he said.
Poppy looked at Merritt, her eyes wide. ‘Treasure? I’ll find it!’ she said.
Kitty smiled at her indulgently. ‘Well if you do then you can have some of it,’ she said to the small girl, whose cheeks were flushed from the country air.
Merritt stuffed two pikelets into his mouth at once. ‘I wonder what the hell she meant,’ he pondered.
‘I have no idea. There aren’t even any paintings left of George’s,’ said Kitty as she refilled her chipped mug, referring to their ancestor who had built the house. His paintings, once worthless, were now well regarded by the art community. Their father had watched with painful fascination every time a new painting went up for sale at one of the major auction houses.
‘Should be our money,’ he used to say to the children when he saw the rising prices of George Middlemist’s works in the marketplace.
Family legend was that once George and his wife Clementina had separated, she sold all his works to keep herself and her children in the lifestyle they were accustomed to. Divorce was not an option in Victorian England, Edward’s father had told Merritt and Kitty, and once George had had the affair with his life model Clementina threw him out of Middlemist, where she stayed until she died of old age.
Clementina had been an artist too, but not of the same calibre as George, and the only paintings left in the house were hers. They weren’t likely to get the same price as George’s art and so the family had them stacked away in the eaves, in what was once George’s studio.
Merritt stood up and bowed to Kitty and Lucian. ‘Well, Lady Poppy and Lord Lucian, it was my pleasure to escort you today. Please feel free to see me at any time and let me know if I can be of assistance. No matter is too small or too big; I am at your service.’
Poppy giggled and Lucian looked straight ahead. Merritt walked over to the phone on the bench and took the pen and pad that lay next to it.
‘I’m off to see what work lies ahead of me,’ he said, and he walked out the door. Lucian got out of his seat and watched as Merritt walked away.
‘He’ll come back,’ said Kitty to Lucian, who was peering through the dirty glass. He turned to Kitty and then looked back out of the window again. That’s odd, she thought, he never notices anyone.
Kitty forgot about Lucian quickly as Jinty’s wails came crackling through the kitchen on the baby monitor. ‘Your sister’s awake. How about I get her up and we see what she’s up to?’ said Kitty cheerfully, and she took the two other children upstairs to see their sister.
Merritt walked around the Lady’s Garden, as it was known, taking notes and thinking about Willow’s children. He hadn’t spent much time with children at all, but Lucian reminded him of a client’s child he had seen in Florida. He was the eight-year-old son of a wealthy polo player from South America. They were a lovely family, he remembered, enthusiastic about Merritt’s ideas, and they included their child in everything. Merritt had stayed nearby the house for six weeks to ensure the proper placement of their large collection of rare trees, and he had spoken at length with the wife about her son. He tried to remember what she had said her child’s condition was. She had asked Merritt to design a sensory garden for him and he had had much delight in working with the boy, getting him to choose plants and flowers that would stimulate him.
A few times a week a special teacher would come and work with him and mostly they worked outside on the green lawn, playing games and rolling on sports equipment, even crawling together. Merritt had watched with interest and he even saw small improvements by the time he left. Merritt reminded himself to email the woman to ask for more information so he could give it to Kitty for Willow.
Inside the house Kitty was fighting with Poppy, who was insisting on using her crayons on the wooden oak panels in the hallway. ‘No,’ said Kitty. ‘These are not for drawing on.’
‘Well I want to draw. I want my art things and you didn’t bring them,’ moaned Poppy accusingly.
‘Well I’m sure we have some paper somewhere,’ said Kitty, licking her thumb and trying to get the green crayon off the wall.
‘I want real art things,’ said Poppy, making a face that Kitty knew from experience would turn into a giant wail.
Kitty thought of the eaves, where all of Clementina’s paintings were housed. Perhaps there were things up there. She remembered her mother and her father had dabbled in art, and they had also encouraged Merritt and Kitty to paint, hoping that their ancestor’s genes would come through – but to no avail. Eventually it had all been packed away. Kitty wondered if it was all still stored up there in the eaves.
‘Alright, come on then,’ she said impatiently, and picking up Jinty and gently pushing Lucian ahead of her she led the way for Poppy to follow her up to the eaves. The stairs got smaller as they climbed and it became darker, the air mustier. Jinty started to cry and squirm in Kitty’s arms. ‘Hang on, nearly there,’ she said, and they came to a small wooden door. Kitty hadn’t been up here in years, and she pushed open the door wondering what she would find.
The room was dank and smelt of stale air and oil paints. Kitty held Jinty as she drew back one of the blinds and sunlight flooded the room. All of Clementina’s paintings leant against the far wall and there were many easels and canvases with half-finished paintings. A red chaise longue in tattered velvet was the only piece of real furniture in the room apart from a small table with a tarnished bowl sitting on top of it. There were shelves of books and art supplies and a small sink in the corner of the room.
There were trunks stacked on top of each other and a few boxes marked ‘Iris’. No doubt her mother’s things that her father had hidden away after her death, thought Kitty sadly. She remembered how desolate her father had been. That’s when he forgot me, she thought, trying to hold back the tears that pricked her eyes.
Kitty’s father had been so enveloped in his own grief that he’d let Kitty do as she pleased. He had ignored her failing at school, her lack of confidence and her sadness. She had lost her mother, but that was not enough to pierce his veil of desolation, and so they had lived in the same house, sometimes not speaking for days. She felt like her mother had abandoned her first by dying, then Merritt had abandoned her when he and Eliza split up, and then her own father had abandoned her in her own house.
Kitty sat on the sagging chaise longue. The emotion threatened to overwhelm her and she wondered at the strange turn of events that had brought her here, back at Middlemist with Willow’s children and Merritt, sitting in the eaves.
Poppy danced around the room. ‘Look at all the things! Can I have them?’ she asked, expecting the answer to be yes, as it usually was. ‘No, but you may borrow them,’ said Kitty firmly.
‘OK,’ said Poppy, turning up her little nose. ‘This will be my playhouse,’ she said decidedly, ‘and you two cannot come in unless you ask,’ she said to Jinty and Lucian. Lucian was standing by the window staring ahead over the grounds, watching Merritt in the garden. Jinty was sitting on Kitty’s lap, playing with a long strand of torn velvet.
‘Can I come up here whenever I want?’ asked Poppy.
‘You must ask me first, and I will have to do a scout around to see you can’t get hurt on anything.’
‘OK,’ said Poppy happily.
Kitty placed Jinty on the floor and she promptly pulled herself up to a standing position to continue playing with the velvet strand. Kitty looked around; there was nothing major Poppy could hurt herself with. The windows were too large to lift, so she couldn’t fall out the window. She pushed the easels against the walls so they wouldn’t topple over and lifted one of the trunks down onto the floor to ensure that it too would not fall on Poppy. Looking through the shelves of art supplies, she found some watercolours and paper. She took out a brush and filled up a glass jar with water. ‘Here you go,’ she said to Poppy. She placed the paper on the table and put the bowl next to it. ‘You use them like this,’ and she painted a few strokes for Poppy to see what she was doing.
Poppy snatched the brush out of Kitty’s hand. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and Kitty looked at her. ‘Don’t snatch, Poppy. And say thank you.’
Poppy turned her head towards Lucian. ‘Lucian needs to go to the toilet,’ she said, and Kitty jumped up. ‘You need to do a wee, Lucian?’ she asked. She took him by the hand, lifted Jinty expertly with one arm, and started down the stairs. ‘Stay there. Don’t paint on anything but the paper and don’t hurt yourself. I’ll be back in a minute,’ she called up.
Poppy smiled as they left. She had no idea if Lucian wanted to go to the toilet, but she always found this the best way to get rid of Kitty or her mother. Poppy looked around the room and sighed with delight. Although she didn’t know the word for it, it felt good to be alone. To have a place where Jinty and Lucian couldn’t come.
She walked over to the trunk that Kitty had moved and examined the strap that was holding it together. It was worn leather, fraying in parts. Poppy wasn’t strong enough to pull it open, so she picked at the leather until it fell apart. Straining at the large lid, she struggled till it fell backwards with a thud. She waited for Kitty to yell out to her, but heard nothing from downstairs.
Peering into the trunk, she saw layers of yellow paper with fabric underneath. Pulling off the paper, Poppy lifted up a hat covered in roses, faded but still pretty. Poppy put it on her head. Digging deeper into the trunk, she found old fans, some broken but some still in good condition. Small shoes and coats. A large petticoat and huge cream dress with lots and lots of buttons and lace.
Poppy pulled everything out of the trunk into the middle of the floor and climbed into the empty space, wearing a pair of the tiny shoes. I could lie down in here, she thought, and she jumped on the box’s floor until she heard a crack. Looking down she saw her foot had gone through the bottom of the trunk, but when she lifted her leg out carefully she couldn’t see the floor below it. She squatted to the side of the hole and picked at the old, splintering wood, lifting up small pieces. Worried about a splinter, which she had had once before, she pulled on one of the kid gloves lying in the heap on the floor and noticed her hand nearly fitted it perfectly.
Once she had both gloves on, Poppy worked furiously until she had made a large hole in the base of the trunk. She slipped her hand in to see if there were any other items underneath. Maybe this is the treasure that Merritt and Kitty talked about, she thought excitedly.
Her gloved hand brushed against something and she gasped as she pulled it out. It was a bundle of letters bound by a pale blue ribbon. Poppy was disappointed; she couldn’t even read yet. She threw them on the floor and continued searching the cavity in the trunk. Next she pulled out a few small leather-bound books. She threw them over with the letters – they were no good either. She put her arm back into the trunk’s false base one last time and stretched her hand as far into the corner as she could. She drew out a small box. Opening it, she found a beautiful ring. It was a large square-cut emerald with small diamonds around it set in silver on a gold band. Next to it lay a gold wedding ring.
Poppy knew she had found the treasure. Not waiting a minute longer, she stood in the doorway and screamed for Kitty in her loudest, most piercing voice.
Kitty, who was still in the bathroom with Jinty and Lucian, heard the cry and panicked. Merritt, who heard from the garden, ran inside in alarm. He and Kitty met on the stairs. ‘Where is she?’ he cried.
‘In the eaves,’ she said breathlessly, trying to run up the stairs with Jinty on her hip and dragging Lucian along behind.
‘The eaves? For fuck’s sake Kitty, that’s not safe!’
‘I thought it was,’ said Kitty crossly as she mounted the top step, and together they reached the door. Poppy greeted them in a Victorian bonnet, kid gloves and beaded dancing shoes.
‘I’ve found the treasure,’ she said proudly, and held out the box to Merritt and Kitty.
Merritt took the box and opened it. ‘Fuck a duck, Kit. She’s found Clementina’s engagement ring.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Willow was nervous. It had been too long since she had spoken to anyone about a film role, and now she had to meet with the director and have a ‘chat’. After her Oscar she could have chosen anyone she wanted to work with, but that didn’t last. Nothing lasts, she thought, thinking of Kerr.
Sitting in her suite at the Dorchester, she decided that if she landed this part then today would be a good day. She had bought clothes specially for the meeting, with Lucy’s approval. Funny how such a dowdy girl could have such good ideas about fashion, she had thought as Lucy had assessed the choices laid out on the bed.
‘Yes to the Yves Saint Laurent. No to the jeans and Chloé top,’ said Lucy knowingly.
‘But the top is so pretty,’ said Willow, touching the delicate lace.
‘I don’t think Harold Gaumont has ever worn jeans in his life, nor have I ever seen any of his actors wear jeans in his films,’ said Lucy, raising her eyebrows at Willow. ‘The dress is perfect,’ she said, holding up a finely pleated silk chiffon number with a print of autumnal flowers on it. ‘Wear it with those shoes you have on now,’ she said, pointing to her soft suede brown kitten heels, ‘and pull your hair up in a messy bun.’
‘Well, it would help if I knew what the film was about. Simon had no idea. He’s very mysterious, this Harold,’ said Willow.
‘You have to assume that with Kate Winslet being cast before it will be a period piece of some sort. I can’t see her in jeans,’ laughed Lucy.
After meeting with that awful Eliza woman, the best thing Willow could have done was to ring back and convince Lucy to leave to work solely for her. They had spent the afternoon drinking tea in Willow’s suite and exchanging stories.
Willow had admitted to Lucy that she was indeed broke and would need to get to work as soon as possible. Lucy hadn’t been surprised; she knew so many of her clients’ secrets that they filled her dreams at night.
‘So you have no money, only assets?’ Lucy had asked.
‘Do shoes count as assets?’ asked Willow, almost seriously.
Lucy’s laugh had given Willow her answer. ‘Don’t worry too much. As long as you have a roof over your head you’ll be OK. I’ll have you earning in no time.’
‘Jesus, you sound like a pimp.’
Taking the Yves Saint Laurent dress from Lucy, Willow’s mind turned to the terrible story she had just been telling her about Eliza. It was meant to be funny but had ended up making Lucy sad she had put up with her for as long as she did. ‘How did you stand working for her for so long?’ Willow had asked.
‘I didn’t really have a choice. I have a flat with a mortgage and there isn’t a lot of work out there for people in my industry. The first thing companies do is slash marketing and PR budgets when times are hard.’
Willow felt the weight of Lucy’s mortgage as if it were her own. ‘Well, you better get me to work soon so I can help you pay for your flat,’ she had said, half joking, half seriously.
‘Oh don’t worry, I will. I already have many, many ideas – but first we need to get you ready for your audition.’
‘Oh it’s not an audition, it’s a “chat”,’ laughed Willow.
‘It’s an audition,’ said Lucy firmly.
Lucy was astute, but she deliberately underplayed herself; it made the clients feel better about themselves, she thought. She took an academic approach to her work: learn, offer advice when asked, and dress to underwhelm. That way when brilliance came out of her mouth, people would always be surprised. The biggest perk of being dowdy was that people told you their secrets more readily when faced with lace-up shoes rather than stilettos.
‘Now I’ll head off home and get started on your re-entry into the world of bullshit. You ring me straight after, OK?’ Lucy had said, as she gathered up her plain black bag and coat.
Willow laughed. There was something about Lucy that was so practical and sensible; she reminded her of someone. She thought about it. Yes – she reminded her of Kitty, only smarter. What was it about the two English girls that made them so likeable? Although Willow had been in England for years, she had yet to make close girlfriends with anyone. Most women were either jealous or in awe of Willow, and her homeschooling experience hadn’t helped her socially. She didn’t know how to make friends, but she decided as she gossiped with Lucy and talked about everything from fashion to interior design that this felt good. Sometimes she and Kitty talked, but Kitty seemed afraid of her and they didn’t have anything in common besides the children.
Lucy was not as she seemed, Willow had learned. She knew everything about fashion, parties, and people, and how the machinations of reputation worked, yet she refused to be a personal part of it. ‘I know my side of the room,’ she had said to Willow. ‘Besides, as my uncle used to say, you should never shit where you eat.’
Willow had laughed and laughed. ‘Good point.’
‘Right, now I know a bit about this director. He’s a bit mad,’ said Lucy.
‘I had heard that. In what way, do you think?’ asked Willow.
‘Well, he’s a visionary. Only makes a film every few years, when the creative urge strikes him. Always epic and huge. Total creative control freak,’ Lucy had said.
‘I must admit I’ve only seen one of his works; the one about the geisha. It looked amazing,’ said Willow, remembering the lush art direction but not much about the story.
‘Yes, I saw that too. No idea what the hell was going on, but I loved the costumes,’ Lucy had agreed.
And now Willow sat waiting for the legendary director to come to her suite for their ‘chat’.
She had offered to meet him but he was averse to the public in general, Simon had told her. Instead he was driven from place to place in a black Bentley with darkened windows. Reclusive, brilliant and married four times without any children, he was a fascinating and influential director whom the critics adored and the general public treated as an artist.
The doorbell to Willow’s suite rang. She wiped her clammy hands on the cream sofa, flipped her hair and answered the door with a smile.
‘Hello,’ she said.
A small man of about sixty, maybe older, stood on the other side of the door, wearing a silk smoking jacket, velvet slippers and a large pair of dark sunglasses. ‘Willow,’ he said in a transatlantic accent. ‘Harold Gaumont.’ He gave the briefest flicker of a smile and Willow threw her most charming one back.
‘Please come in.’ She stepped back to let Harold through into the living room. ‘I was about to order afternoon tea. Is that OK?’ she asked.
‘Can I ask you something before I make my decision about the tea?’
‘Of course,’ she said casually but racked with nerves.
Willow stood in the centre of the room waiting for the question, aware of his reputation for odd requests during auditions. She had once heard that he had put an actor through a secret audition: he had hired actors to push the man to breaking point while waiting in line at a railway station, all the while secretly filming him.
‘Can you please speak in a British accent while I visit with you?’ asked Harold.
‘Any particular region?’ asked Willow, more confidently than she felt. Please don’t ask me to do a Welsh accent, she thought desperately.
‘Think well bred, country house. Yes to the tea,’ he said.
Willow thought for a moment and Kitty jumped into her head. Channel Kitty, she thought, and she walked over to the phone, dialled the number for room service and gave the order for tea in a perfect English accent.
Harold sat down, smiled, took off his glasses and laid them on the table between them. ‘Excellent start, Willow. Now why do you want to be in my film?’ he asked, and sat back in his chair, resting the tips of his fingers together and placing them in front of his face.
Willow looked at him closely. He was quite handsome without the glasses, sort of like David Niven crossed with Willy Wonka, she thought.
‘Well, I would love to be in one of your films. Your work is legendary,’ answered Willow honestly, in an accent that could have cut glass.
‘Naturally,’ he said, with no arrogance at all. ‘But why do you want to be in my film personally? You haven’t worked in what? Five or six years? You won an Oscar for a film that really wasn’t worth an Oscar nomination. You must have been surprised when you won?’ he said, not unkindly.
Willow paused for a moment.
‘I was surprised to win,’ Willow said, still speaking in a perfect accent. She looked down at the table and straightened his sunglasses. ‘Honestly? I need the work. I need it more than you will ever understand. I want to work, I need to work, and I want to do something that I can actually be proud of, not like that silly film I won the Oscar for.’ As she spoke her eyes filled with tears and she realised it was all true. She was unworthy of the Oscar and she did want to work. She had three children and a fuckwit of a husband. It was time to get real, even in a faux English accent.
Harold lowered his hands and rubbed them together. ‘Good answer. Now where’s my tea that you promised me?’
Just as he spoke the doorbell rang again and Willow let the waiter in with their afternoon tea. ‘Thank you. I’ll take it from here,’ said Willow to the waiter, still in her accent.
The waiter recognised Willow. He tried not to roll his eyes. Those bloody Americans who spent a few years here and then ended up speaking like the Princess of Wales, he thought as he left her suite.
Willow set up the tea in front of her and Harold. ‘Shall I be mother?’ she asked as she turned the teapot.
‘Yes please,’ he said. Willow poured the tea and set the tiny sandwiches and cakes out in front of them both.
‘Milk? Sugar?’ she asked.
‘Both please,’ he answered, as he watched her carefully pour the tea into the fine china cups.
‘Are you married, Willow?’
‘I was,’ she said. ‘Now separated.’
‘Ah; very modern thing, divorce. I’ve done it many times. You get used to it,’ he said.
‘I suppose I will. I have to,’ she said.
‘Yes, nothing to do but to get on with it, I’ve found.’
‘I’m trying,’ she said, and smiled as she handed him a small plate.
‘You’re from New York originally?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered, unsure whether he wanted her to continue with her English accent.
‘And how have you found England?’ he asked.
‘It’s very much to my liking.’ She decided to stay with the accent. ‘I even like the weather.’
‘Well then, you must have an English soul.’ He laughed. ‘Will you stay here in England, once you’re divorced?’
Willow realised she hadn’t thought about geography. Moving to Middlemist was the only plan she had made, and she knew she couldn’t stay there forever.
‘I don’t know, to be honest with you. Perhaps. There’s not much in the US for me now. My parents work in New York but my children like it here; it’s all they know.’
Willow was still speaking in her English accent, but she was speaking from the heart. Harold watched her closely.
‘It must be hard to be the responsible one now. To have to make all the decisions.’
Willow felt her eyes filling with tears and looked down at her lap, trying to focus on the flowers on her dress as they became increasingly blurred. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled.
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