The Perfect Retreat. Kate Forster

homeschool the children, but Kitty thought she would have resigned before that happened.

      Willow’s impending divorce from Kerr was proving difficult for Poppy to understand, and she pined for her father. When she had first started at the house, before Willow became pregnant with Jinty, Kerr was around more. He gave his attention to Poppy and usually ignored Lucian, although once she had caught him calling Lucian a dumb idiot and demanding he spoke, which only made Lucian wet his pants. Kitty had gently led Lucian from the room, cleaned him up and sat with him on the bed telling him fantastic stories about the boy with magical mind powers until he settled down.

      Kitty’s relationship with Willow was mostly formal. Willow’s aloofness was difficult for Kitty and even the children to penetrate. Lucian didn’t bother Willow; his quietness suited her, although it worried Kitty. Poppy was too much for her mother to handle. She was so like her father that Willow often gave in to all her wants and desires, particularly since she and Kerr had split up. Jinty had no idea who her father was. She clung to Kitty as though she was her mother, which Willow encouraged as she had so many other things to think about.

      The idea of teaching Lucian and Poppy at home was daunting to Kitty. She hadn’t done well at school, leaving as soon as she could, much to her father’s disapproval. Her much older brother, Merritt, had gone all the way through to university and was Kitty’s father’s pride and joy. Merritt was now a garden designer and writer on all manner of gardening subjects, travelling the world and sending her copies of his books whenever a new one was released. Almost twenty years older than Kitty, he was a mysterious brother, whom Kitty shared no similarities with. He was as fair as she was dark, tall and muscular where Kitty was curvy and soft. He could spend hours reading or in the garden, Kitty remembered from her childhood, whereas she didn’t know a weed from a petunia and only knew the plots of books if they’d been adapted into a film she’d watched.

      In the company of children was where Kitty felt the most comfortable. They had no expectations of her, and she had the ability to calm them down with her stories or comfort them when they needed it most. Kitty’s lack of superficiality and her joy in the everyday was what Willow’s children loved most about her and she in turn loved their innocence and lack of judgment.

      Growing up in Merritt’s shadow hadn’t been easy, especially after her beloved mother, Iris, died when Kitty was twelve. She had navigated her way clumsily through puberty, school and boys – not that many of them had been interested in her until her breasts began to show. Kitty avoided boys at school and then men as she became older. Moving to London when her father died just as she was turning eighteen, she had moved into a bedsit, leaving behind the house and attempting to leave her memories too.

      It was only when Merritt’s short-lived first marriage to Eliza failed that she had seen her father angry with her golden brother. She still remembered the shouting coming from downstairs and her father saying how disappointed he was that Merritt didn’t have the tenacity to stand up and be a man. Merritt had shouted back and then left the house, not returning for years till their father had died of a heart attack in the garden.

      Kitty had not heard from Merritt for those years either. She and Merritt had never been close so she hadn’t minded. Kitty had hated Eliza; she thought she was rude and pretentious, always speaking in an affected tone and telling Merritt to get a real job. What did he see in her? she had wondered. When their marriage had lasted for less than a year, Kitty had silently rejoiced.

      Eliza had started measuring up Middlemist House as soon as the emerald engagement ring was on her finger. Eliza had pranced around telling everyone it was a Middlemist family heirloom, as old as the house, but Kitty knew her family hadn’t even kept hold of any jewellery. If they had, their father would have sold it years before for the upkeep of the house. Eliza’s ideas for Middlemist made Kitty feel sick. Working in a modern London gallery, she envisaged Middlemist as a grand modern home. She wanted to get rid of most of the wonderful Gothic features and fill it with giant sculptures of malformed babies and chandeliers made of rubber gloves. Kitty’s father had put his foot down and told Eliza and Merritt in no uncertain terms that there would be no rubber gloves as light fittings, and that until he died and was under the ground then the house would remain as it was.

      Kitty thought Middlemist was fine as it was, filled with hidden rooms, bay windows and turrets. Her favourite memory of the house was of taking the hidden passage from the library to the dining room on the other side of the building, with only a torch to light the way. Kitty knew every flagstone by heart, she had walked it so many times. Her father said he had walked the same route as a child, and his father before him.

      No matter how familiar she became with it, Middlemist House had never bored Kitty. She loved the romance of the balconies and the columns, the dark woods and the sweeping staircases. Her father had told her the house housed many secrets, namely the great treasures his great-grandmother had supposedly spoken of, but the generations that followed had never found them.

      Kitty’s father, Edward, had been a stern man, more concerned with appearance and the family name than caring for his two children. When Kitty’s mother had died, he was caught up in trying to save Middlemist from massive debts and rising running costs. The house was a money pit as far as he was concerned, and eventually he gave up trying to rescue the grand dame. Slowly the house fell into disrepair. Edward managed to sell some land at the back of the property, which paid the debts but that was all. When he finally died he left the house to Merritt and Kitty on the proviso they not sell it for ten years, along with the small amount of cash that he had saved. There were no staff to let go of and Merritt and Kitty had locked the house up after the funeral. Pulling the keys out of the massive iron gates, Merritt had handed them to Kitty.

      ‘Take these,’ he had said on the road outside Middlemist. ‘I don’t want them.’

      ‘What am I going to do with them?’ she had asked.

      ‘Keep them safe. I’ll call you in ten years when it’s time to sell,’ he said, looking down the road.

      Kitty took the keys and tucked them into her backpack. ‘Take care Merritt,’ she said to the brother she hardly knew.

      ‘You too, Kitty Kat.’ He touched her shoulder briefly with his hand, and then turned and walked down the road without a glance back.

      Kitty had got onto the bus at the other end of the road, and when it drove past Merritt walking down towards the village, Kitty had tried to catch his eye. He never looked up, even though he knew she was driving past him.

      Kitty had soon moved out of the bedsit when she landed her job with Willow, courtesy of a nanny agency in London. Although she had no experience or references, she had an innocent charm about her that the owner of the agency liked. When the opening came up to be Willow Carruthers’s nanny, Kitty was sent on a whim – partly because when asked if she knew who Willow was, she said she had no idea, and partly because the nanny agency had no one else suitable. Willow’s brief was for an English country girl, with cooking skills and a liking for children. The woman at the agency had raised an eyebrow at the last request, but Willow was of the opinion that you couldn’t be too careful. Kitty ticked all the boxes, and had been happily ensconced at Willow’s London home ever since. She never thought about Middlemist, never told anyone about it, and she hadn’t heard from Merritt since that morning outside the house. She still had the keys though, in her jewellery box, next to her mother’s locket.

      Things at Willow’s house had become more and more tense over the last two years. Kerr was a shocking father, worse than her own, and Willow was self-absorbed, although she meant well. Kitty ended up taking on all the duties of a nanny and a parent, but she didn’t mind. It was nice to be thought of as smart and clever for once in her life.

      Since Willow had come back from that meeting with her lawyer, she had taken a call and then locked herself up in her bedroom for the past hour. Kitty wondered if she should see if she was alright. She was never sure what to do in these situations. She found it best to stay put when faced with the unknown though, so she stayed with the children till Willow made the first move.

      After Kitty had put Jinty down for a sleep and Poppy and Lucian were watching some bizarre movie about a hotel for pets