The Perfect Retreat by Kate Forster Page B

afternoon tea. ‘Thank you. I’ll take it from here,’ said Willow to the waiter, still in her accent.
    The waiter recognised Willow. He tried not to roll his eyes. Those bloody Americans who spent a few years here and then ended up speaking like the Princess of Wales, he thought as he left her suite.
    Willow set up the tea in front of her and Harold. ‘Shall I be mother?’ she asked as she turned the teapot.
    ‘Yes please,’ he said. Willow poured the tea and set the tiny sandwiches and cakes out in front of them both.
    ‘Milk? Sugar?’ she asked.
    ‘Both please,’ he answered, as he watched her carefully pour the tea into the fine china cups.
    ‘Are you married, Willow?’
    ‘I was,’ she said. ‘Now separated.’
    ‘Ah; very modern thing, divorce. I’ve done it many times. You 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