The Perfect Retreat

The Perfect Retreat - By Kate Forster



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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*ckwit 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 f*cking 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.’

‘F*ck,’ 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.