The Perfect Retreat

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 f*ck are you doing in my house?’