The Perfect Retreat (2 page)

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.

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.