The Perfect Retreat

‘Night then.’ Kitty left the kitchen without anything that she had come for.

Boys had always pursued Kitty, but this one was different, she had thought. The last boy she had slept with she had met at a pub nearby when she was exploring the nightlife in her new city. He was a funny New Zealander who had plied her with vodka and taken her back to his hostel. They’d had quick fumbling sex and she’d passed out on his bunk bed, to awake to him packing his rucksack and telling her he was off to Prague that day and to look after herself.

Kitty had done the walk of shame home to Willow’s, where she had snuck upstairs before the rest of the house had awoken.

After her recent bad experience she was trying to stay away from the opposite sex. She always seemed to choose the wrong ones. She had lost her virginity to Merritt’s friend Johnny Wimple-Jones, which she would never be telling Merritt about. It had been a mistake, she realised in hindsight, but Johnny had been so nice when he had turned up at Middlemist claiming he needed to speak to Merritt urgently. Merritt had already left the country and her father was in London for the night. Brandy and flattery had got Kitty into bed, and Johnny had taken her in a haze of drunkenness and a small amount of pain. Truthfully, she was happy to get rid of her virginity. It sat in the corner of her adolescence, in turn berating her and scaring her until she finally laid the ghost to rest – or Johnny did, so to speak.

After Merritt told her about Eliza cheating on him with Johnny, Kitty was shattered and had vowed to keep her tryst with Johnny secret forever.

The young man at Willow’s party unnerved her. His grace and casual elegance was something she had never seen in a man. Her own father and Merritt were men of the land, all dirty fingernails and work boots. There was a feline quality about this man in his dinner suit, and his upper-crust, lazy accent reminded her of Alan Rickman and Jude Law rolled into one.

She had never seen him since, but she thought about him sometimes, never daring to ask Willow who he was. Instead, when she was lonely in her bed, she would make up her own fantasies about him. It was easier than actually having to have a real conversation with a man; small talk and secrets. Kitty preferred the world in her head to the world outside. She knew why Lucian kept to himself.

Kitty left Jinty sleeping and found Willow waiting for her in the hallway.

‘I have to go back to London. You going to be alright here for a few days with the children?’ Willow didn’t give Kitty time to answer; she started walking towards her bedroom expecting Kitty to follow, which she dutifully did.

‘I’m seeing a new PR girl. Some young gun apparently; Simon recommended her. If I need money quickly then I have to get back to work. Simon believes – and I agree with him – that my re-entry into the public eye needs to be managed carefully.’

Kitty nodded. It all seemed so hard, this celebrity life of Willow’s. Nothing was ever done honestly, she thought, her mind on the hair and makeup artists who would spend hours on Willow to get her looking like she was naturally fabulous. If they could see her now, thought Kitty as she looked at Willow in her leggings and odd socks.

‘I’m pleased this woman will take me on as a client actually. She set up the deal for Gwyneth to work for Estée Lauder. And Simon has a film he’s putting me up for that Kate Winslet’s just dropped out of because of her divorce, so that’s good.’

Kitty was silent, although she wasn’t sure Kate Winslet thought her divorce was good. She wondered if Willow had any empathy for the woman, who was only in the same situation she was in herself.

‘I’m going to shower and head off now. I’ll be staying at the Dorchester until I get things sorted.’

Kitty wondered how she was going to pay for the Dorchester if she was running low on cash. Willow, as if reading her mind, spoke up. ‘Simon set it up. I’m going to be photo-graphed coming and going – they’ll give me a suite for as long as I need.’

‘That’s nice of them,’ said Kitty.

‘Nice? No it’s business, Kitty,’ said Willow. ‘So call me, OK?’

‘Are you going to wait for the children to return?’ asked Kitty.

‘No, no time. You can say my goodbyes. They’ll be fine,’ she said, taking her large Louis Vuitton toiletry bag and walking towards the bathroom, with Kitty following her out down the corridor. As she was about to go through the bathroom door she stopped and turned. ‘Kitty?’

Kitty turned and looked at her employer.

‘Thanks.’ Willow looked uncomfortable as she spoke the word.

‘It’s OK,’ said Kitty, and she smiled at Willow. For a brief moment the women looked at each other as equals. Then Willow shut the bathroom door on her, and Kitty was outside again.

CHAPTER SIX

Eliza slammed down the phone and screamed from her white wood and glass desk. ‘Lucy! Lucy!’

A harassed girl with thick ankles and premature worry lines ran into Eliza’s office. ‘Yes Mrs Wimple-Jones?’ Lucy felt ridiculous calling her boss by her surname. The last place she had worked at, she had known all three of the directors by their first names.

When Eliza had personally headhunted her and wooed her Lucy had felt flattered. Eliza made all the noises of a woman who wanted to share her vision with Lucy, dangling the possibility of a partnership with her in the new PR firm she was setting up, and speaking at length about her belief in a well-run business that didn’t require the crazy hours Lucy was putting in as an account manager at her current firm. Lucy had taken the job with Eliza even though her old bosses had pleaded with her to stay and offered her a higher salary. Times were tight; they’d already let go of all the juniors and Lucy was scared that she might end up as one of the unemployed if she stayed there, however much they liked her. She had been heady on Eliza’s dream.

It didn’t take long for the dream to turn into a nightmare. Every night, Lucy dreamed of walking into the office and stabbing Eliza with her silver Asprey letter-opener. Instead she sucked up Eliza’s demands and her constant bitching and dreamed of a day when she would open her own place.

Lucy imagined a PR company where people rang and had their queries answered. Where they were billed for actual work, not for Eliza’s dry cleaning and lunch bills, which padded out clients’ invoices as ‘project disbursements’. Eliza had forced Lucy to include the costs of her most recent art installation on a client’s bill, much to Lucy’s horror.

Eliza had come from the most successful modern art gallery in London, and through her network she had turned herself into a PR maven. Her clients in the art industry and her marriage to Johnny Wimple-Jones meant she had in her BlackBerry some of London’s best-known people, whom Eliza always referred to as friends. She always said to anyone who would listen that her agency wasn’t a job, it was just catching up with friends every night of the week.

Lucy groaned internally whenever she heard this catchphrase. True, it wasn’t work for Eliza; it was left up to Lucy to ensure the guests had drinks and the photo shoot was set up and the reputation of the latest art enfant terrible was saved.

Eliza had the network, but Lucy had the smarts. She was sure that one day karma would assert itself and she would be at the top of the PR game.

The truth was that most of Eliza’s clients only stayed at EWJ Agency because of Lucy. Her calmness and sensible advice had saved the day on many an occasion. Whether she was talking down a waiter high on coke and threatening to set fire to the hostess’s hairpiece with the chef’s blowtorch, or consoling a WAG whose husband’s philandering had just been made public, Lucy was in control.

Eliza was looking at Lucy shrewdly. ‘You’ve lost me the Piper Esprit Champagne account.’

Lucy looked at her boss confused. ‘I don’t think we ever had that account,’ she said.

‘Well we could have, but now I’ve just found out that they are launching with Karin Burchill.’ Eliza spat out the name of her biggest competition, as though it left a bitter taste in her mouth just to speak it.

‘I didn’t know they were looking,’ said Lucy.

‘You should have known. That’s your job,’ snapped Eliza.

Lucy felt a myriad of things rise to the surface that threatened to fall out of her mouth, so she closed it firmly, thinking of her small flat in Islington that she was paying off.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said instead.

‘You should be,’ snapped Eliza.

Lucy looked down at the diary in her hands.

‘You have two appointments back to back. Willow Carruthers first. She’ll be here in ten minutes,’ placated Lucy.

If there was one thing Eliza loved more than herself, it was celebrity. Eliza raised her eyebrows as if in disdain, but she was wondering if what she was wearing was impressive enough for the most stylish woman in the world. When she had got ready that morning, Eliza hadn’t known Willow would be coming; if she had she would have pulled out all the stops. Instead she looked down at her black silk Burberry dress, worn with the double strand of Wimple-Jones family pearls and her towering black patent leather Jimmy Choos, and figured it would have to do.

Eliza had decided that she would only dress in black and white once she started the agency. ‘Like the news,’ she told people when they asked. Lucy was always tempted to remind her that more and more people were reading their news online and that perhaps she should wear a Google logo dress, but she knew to keep her mouth shut.

Lucy left Eliza’s office and went back to her small desk, where she also acted as a receptionist and did whatever else Eliza decided to throw her way.

Sitting down, she opened JobSearch on her computer, typed in ‘PR’ and started to trawl through the results. She was either overqualified or underqualified for everything. No middle-entry positions, she thought. So fucking depressing.

The bell sounding Willow’s arrival startled Lucy from her gloom. She pressed the buzzer to let Willow into the upstairs office.

Eliza had made the EWJ offices look like a small gallery. Modern art covered the walls, changing constantly as Eliza rotated her sizeable collection between her three houses in London, the country estate and the house in Ibiza.

Today Willow was greeted by a giant installation of latex fried eggs hanging at different heights up the stairs. She pushed open the heavy glass doors. Lucy walked forward to greet her, but Eliza had pushed past and stretched out her long thin hand towards Willow before Lucy had had time to even open her mouth.

‘Hello, I’m Eliza Wimple-Jones,’ she said, with her most welcoming smile plastered on her face. ‘Please come in and we’ll have a chat, OK?’ She guided Willow to the small boardroom and tossed a look at Lucy over her shoulder. ’Coffee and mineral water please, Lucy.’