to be just another ordinary mum going about her business in London. Then again, she reflected, as she pulled out her mobile phone from her oversized Gucci tote and dialled her driver to come and pick them up, she had a rock-star husband and a life most women could only dream of.
Poppy had fallen asleep in the pusher. Willow gently transferred her into her cot, made Lucian his favourite lunch – a cheese sandwich – and parked him in front of Thomas the Tank Engine while she went upstairs to prepare for her reunion with Kerr.
Kerr had been on the road with the band for months. Since they’d had the children Willow rarely went to visit him on tour, but six weeks ago she’d flown out with Lucian and Poppy to meet Kerr in Italy. She was worried. He had been avoiding her calls, and though he said he was busy and tired, she sensed something more was going on and she needed to see him. Willow was determined not to let her marriage become just another failed celebrity union.
Willow might not be on screen any more, but she was in the gossip magazines regularly and she knew she had a reputation to uphold. She was the perfect stay-at-home mother, always looked amazing, and refused to give up on her marriage or appearance just because she got the rock-star husband.
What the people who read those trashy magazines didn’t understand, Willow thought, was that you had to work harder when you and your husband were famous. Being apart so much of the time, the girls constantly throwing themselves at Kerr, the endless comparisons people made between the wives in the band and which wife was the hottest – it was all so stressful that sometimes Willow wished she could just go away for a while to a place where she didn’t have to worry so much about what people thought.
She had heard the rumours that Kerr was cheating on her, but there was nothing concrete, so Willow tried to ignore the growing slivers of discontent she felt when she was around him. When she remembered that all-consuming passion she and Kerr had felt when they met, how they had declared their love and she had fallen pregnant with Lucian so quickly, it felt like an amazing dream. Like most dreams, though, such passion had proved difficult to sustain in reality.
Willow stood in her huge dressing room with its powder-blue carpet and white walls. So many clothes, she thought as she hung her new items up in the wardrobe. Her hand lingered on the butter yellow sundress she’d bought in Rome with Kerr. It wasn’t a designer piece, but wearing it made her feel sexy, and Kerr had seemed to think so too, pushing her up against the hotel window ledge and fucking her from behind as they gazed out over the city of Rome one long, lazy afternoon.
As Willow peeled off her clothes and unhooked her bra, she noticed the veins on her breasts and how tender they were to touch. She remembered her earlier nausea and her inexplicable desire for a coffee – suddenly she knew. She felt a rush of delight as she pulled the gauzy sundress down over her head. The dress was the perfect thing to wear when she told Kerr the news. Now she was even more excited about him coming home.
Just thinking of him now made her skin tingle and she pulled her immaculate blonde hair out of its sensible ponytail and let it fall loose over her smooth bare shoulders. She stared at herself in the mirror and knew she had never looked better. She smiled at her secret. Even though Kerr had told her he didn’t want any more children, Willow was convinced she could persuade him to change his mind.
Humming, she went into the bathroom to apply make-up to her already flawless face.
Kitty Middlemist sat on a bench in Hyde Park and watched the people passing. She liked to watch things. People, television, movies, the birds in the sky, a spider making a web. Kitty could spend hours sitting back and observing her world.
She was good at watching, she had told her school careers counsellor when asked about her skills. The counsellor had huffed and said that unless Kitty planned to be a movie critic or a peeping Tom, there wasn’t much scope for watching as a job.
Kitty had thought about becoming a film critic, but when she realised she would have