The Perfect Retreat

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR




Willow flipped the pages of the magazine as she sat by the pool. LA was boring, she had decided. Everything was done for her, and she was actually surprised to find herself missing her kitchen and her little garden back in London. I hope the snow hasn’t ruined my bulbs, she thought, and she laughed to herself at her changed priorities. She had asked Lucy to FedEx some English magazines because she was homesick, and now she sat with the children reading House & Garden.

‘Poppy no!’ yelled Lucian from the side of the pool as Poppy swam underneath him pretending to be a shark. ‘No shark!’

Willow looked up from the magazine.

‘Good talking Luce! Poppy, no sharks OK?’ she said, and went back to her reading. Kerr had dropped the children off again after a successful overnight visit. He had changed also, which would never cease to amaze her.

Eliza was long gone. Once she had found out he was almost penniless, she had headed to New York. Kerr was now dating his yoga teacher, something Willow found hilarious. He had only joined because he heard this was the place that people in LA did business, but he soon found himself in a downward dog lusting after the teacher. She was a vegan Kabbalist with her own cable TV show. She called Kerr on his shit, and Willow was grateful to her for enlightening her ex-husband.

Kerr’s new job as a celebrity judge on a talent show was going well. It wasn’t quite the stardom he had hoped for, but he was happy, and Willow was free. But free to do what?

She had signed onto the action film and could do anything she pleased. She was wealthy again, and yet all she wanted was to tend to her bulbs and make pikelets for the children.

She turned the page absently and then looked down. She gasped. There was Merritt in front of her, looking rugged and indecently handsome, she noticed, and behind him was Middlemist looking divinely beautiful. She looked closely at him, and then turned the page over. She gasped again.

There was the drawing room, exactly as she had pictured it. Light and airy and welcoming in blues and greens; silk walls and books everywhere. She felt tears in her eyes as she looked at the next room. The dining room in red, Chinese art around the mahogany table, and chairs for eighteen. The kitchen was her dream room, filled with cupboards, with the Aga, reconditioned, within a warm, cream-toned hearth.

Her eyes travelled across the page and she saw one of the bedrooms decked out in blue, with patchwork quilts and new carpet. Books from the nursery lined the shelves, and on top of the chest of drawers she saw Lucian’s Thomas the Tank Engine.

The next room was in pink and cream, with Cath Kidston wallpaper and linen. It was deliciously girly, and Willow laughed at the idea of Merritt stepping into it. On the door handle of the French armoire was a tulle skirt, which Willow recognised as Poppy’s. She must have left it there, she thought.

A smaller picture of a baby’s room enthralled Willow. It was decorated in cream, with a perfect cot that turned into a bed. A beautifully stuffed armchair in red toile sat in the corner and Willow felt the tears fall as she saw Sophie the Giraffe on top of the tiny, cream bedside table.

She turned to the bathroom. It was the bathroom she had designed in her book, with the done-up clawfoot bath and a chaise longue. It was decadent and sexy and Willow felt proud of her work. She turned to the last page. A double spread of the most perfect bedroom she had ever seen. She hadn’t finished the bedroom design, and Merritt must have done what he thought she would do.

He had knocked down the wall into the next room. The bedroom was enormous, with a reading area and a king-sized bed covered in white linen and pale yellow silk cushions. Merritt hated cushions, always took them off any chair when he sat down, she remembered, but he knew she loved them and that buttery yellow was her favourite colour. Above the bed was the George Middlemist of Clementina and three of her children. The pale yellow lampshades set off the citrus trees in the painting and Willow clutched the magazine to her chest. She scanned the article, speed reading for comments from Merritt, and she felt her heart beat faster as she reached the last paragraph.

‘I believe this is a house for a family. I had hoped that would be mine one day, but it was not to be. So I will be putting it up for rent, sadly; that’s how it must be, I’m afraid, unless some woman with three children waltzes into my life and wants to take me and my house on and can put up with my terrible temper and funny ways.’

Willow picked up the cell phone next to her and dialled. ‘Lucy, I’m coming back,’ she said, and she closed the magazine.

‘Out of the pool,’ she ordered.

‘Why?’ complained Lucian.

‘Because I said so. Good talking by the way,’ she said as she lifted Jinty out of the iced donut ring.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Poppy, shivering, as Willow wrapped a towel around her.

‘Home,’ said Willow. ‘We’re going home.’