The Perfect Retreat

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.’