The Perfect Retreat Page 0,28

get used to it,’ he said.

‘I suppose I will. I have to,’ she said.

‘Yes, nothing to do but to get on with it, I’ve found.’

‘I’m trying,’ she said, and smiled as she handed him a small plate.

‘You’re from New York originally?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she answered, unsure whether he wanted her to continue with her English accent.

‘And how have you found England?’ he asked.

‘It’s very much to my liking.’ She decided to stay with the accent. ‘I even like the weather.’

‘Well then, you must have an English soul.’ He laughed. ‘Will you stay here in England, once you’re divorced?’

Willow realised she hadn’t thought about geography. Moving to Middlemist was the only plan she had made, and she knew she couldn’t stay there forever.

‘I don’t know, to be honest with you. Perhaps. There’s not much in the US for me now. My parents work in New York but my children like it here; it’s all they know.’

Willow was still speaking in her English accent, but she was speaking from the heart. Harold watched her closely.

‘It must be hard to be the responsible one now. To have to make all the decisions.’

Willow felt her eyes filling with tears and looked down at her lap, trying to focus on the flowers on her dress as they became increasingly blurred. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled.

‘And to have to plan ahead while their father gallivants across the world,’ he said, pushing her, ‘worrying about their futures and the gossip – what will happen to you, will you ever be happy again?’ Harold spoke in low tones; it seemed like he was hypnotising her.

Willow saw a tear drop onto one of the flowers on her dress, and her throat felt as though it was closing over. She had refused to cry when Kerr had left her when she was pregnant with Jinty; when she had laboured with only Kitty at her side; when she had held her darling daughter for the first time. She hadn’t shed a tear when she saw the photos of Kerr on the yacht with another woman’s nipple in his mouth and that woman’s sister with her hands down his shorts. She hadn’t wept when she had learned about her precarious financial position, or when she had moved into Kitty’s ramshackle family home; but now, in this suite, which she couldn’t pay for and which she would be allowing herself to be photographed in front of for the next few days like a fame whore, she felt the tears come. Not now, she screamed inside as she felt them flow, not in the goddamn audition! Lucy was right: it was an audition. And she was failing miserably.

Harold sat still, watching her shaking shoulders, and she looked up at him, her carefully applied makeup running down her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t be sorry. It’s still hard to be a woman, no matter what that Oprah woman says,’ he said.

‘It’s so hard – and I’ve made so many mistakes,’ she cried.

‘Well that’s what helps us learn. Mistakes are lovely actually. I’ve made so many, and from them I pushed myself to be better. You must do the same, my dear.’ He picked up his cup and sipped elegantly from it.

‘I want to,’ she said sadly.

‘You will. Now dry your eyes and I will tell you about the part, if you want it,’ he said brusquely.

Willow looked at him surprised. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly.’

Willow went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eye makeup was everywhere and she had a red nose from crying. Her lipstick was coming off and she thought she looked a fright. Cleaning herself up, she walked back out to Harold.

‘Was that an audition?’ she asked as she stood by her chair.

‘No, my dear. You had the part before I rang the doorbell. Anyone who stays at the Dorchester has my vote. I don’t like those modern hotels with their glass edges and ugly sculptures. You showed class by being here.’

Willow pushed back a hysterical urge to laugh and sat down again.

Harold sat forward. ‘The film is a period piece set in Victorian England about a woman who wants to speak to her dead husband. She is so overwhelmed with grief that she starts to dabble in black magic and starts an occult group at her home. She has an affair with a younger man who joins the group, whom she is convinced is her husband returned, and the audience thinks so also. But then we find out he is