The Perfect Retreat Page 0,121

was pregnant. A wedding night baby, she said, and he cried while she tried not to laugh at the unplugging of his English emotion.

‘I want you to know,’ he said, sitting up and composing himself, ‘I love the children like they are my own – I feel like they are my own – it’s just that I miss having a baby. Jinty told me I was ugly this morning when I asked her to finish her toast.’

Now Willow had allowed herself to laugh. ‘I will have to pull out of the action film,’ she had said, but TG was insistent they hold for her to shoot after the pregnancy.

All she had to do was fulfil her appearance at Cannes, and then she could have the rest of the year off till the baby was born.

And now they were in Cannes. She had arrived with Merritt, Kitty and Ivo. The children were safely in Janis and Alan’s hands at Middlemist, and Willow had no doubt her father would have lost his sarong and Poppy would have stories for days.

She and Merritt had a suite at Hôtel Du Cap with a view over the ocean, and they weren’t planning to leave unless they absolutely had to.

Kitty and Ivo were more excited to be there; they went to most of the parties, where Kitty met directors and producers.

‘They know me from The Romantics,’ she said. She had done as Harold had asked and had overseen the final edit of the film. She hadn’t changed much, just a tweak here and there, but the response was overwhelmingly positive and those who had seen Harold’s last cut knew Kitty had made important and significant changes that worked in the film’s favour.

‘Someone just asked me if I was free to do a documentary on champagne,’ said Kitty. ‘I haven’t even finished my course yet.’ The London Film Academy had taken her onto their editing course and she loved it. Using Harold’s equipment, she spent hours in the ivory tower, as she still called it, and played with the film and the edits.

Ivo had moved quickly into Harold’s house, now Kitty’s, and they were so in love it was sickening, as Kitty said to Willow.

Ivo was happy at Harold’s, writing and musing. He was born to be an academic, he decided, and he had been commissioned to write another art book, this time on J M Turner.

So Kitty was dragged from gallery to private house to gallery searching for paintings, and Ivo, with his incredible nose for a mystery, actually unearthed two supposedly lost Turners.

His new moniker in the art industry was Ivo the Discoverer, and soon he was loaded with requests for books and art projects. He didn’t miss acting – he hadn’t done it enough to miss it, he told Kitty – but he still liked to dress up, mostly at home with Harold’s hilarious costumes. He and Kitty would play like children until Ivo, inevitably, turned it into something more lewd.

Not that Kitty minded. Life with Ivo was fun in and out of bed, and she was practising reading and writing with someone who loved her even when she couldn’t quite manage. What else could she ask for? she thought, as she watched him on the steps with Willow.

Her friend, her sister-in-law, and once upon a time, her boss. Kitty didn’t like to think back to those days; they were all different people back then, she thought.

Ivo waved to her from the steps and she smiled and blew him a kiss. Willow looked for Merritt, and Ivo pointed him out to her. She made a face and then smiled at him and he laughed. He laughed a lot these days; at the children, with Willow, at Willow and her attempts to become the next Nigella Lawson in the kitchen, and mostly at himself.

At the top of the steps Willow and Ivo paused and they both looked for a moment to the sky.

‘Harold would have loved this,’ said Willow with a little tear.

‘He would have indeed,’ said Ivo next to her.

And somewhere up there, Harold, sitting between Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, was loving the red carpet at Cannes.

‘I do love a happy ending,’ Harold said to Alfred, who nodded his agreement.

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if it were all as simple as in the movies?’ said Alfred.

‘Oh, but it is,’ said Stanley mysteriously. ‘It is.’

And the three directors in the big sky laughed together. Perhaps they were directing all along, they thought.

‘And now we have