else in their life, including their finances.
However the marriage turned sour faster than Willow could ever have imagined. Kerr wasn’t interested in Lucian and spent eight months of his first year away on tour. Poppy was conceived during the four months he was home and not holed up in his basement music studio, and Jinty was Willow’s last desperate attempt to try and get their marriage back on course.
When she had seen the photos of Kerr and the sisters she had not been shocked or angry, just scared for her and her family’s future in the public eye. She had known the relationship was over the minute he suggested she abort Jinty. She had spent the nine months of her pregnancy mourning him and their marriage, and now she was alone. Kerr had not applied for access and his lawyer had made no mention of it. Not that Willow missed him, but ‘A child needs its father,’ her psychotherapist mother had insisted over the phone from New York. ‘It’s a pivotal relationship.’
‘Well that depends, Janis,’ said Willow, ‘on whether the father is a complete fuckwit or not.’
‘Yes, Kerr has some problems, but he is still their father after all. They need a significant male in their lives,’ her mother’s nasal voice had protested over the line. Willow knew not to get into an argument with her.
Willow, Janis, and Willow’s father, Alan, also a psychotherapist, were never going to be on the same page. Born and raised in New York, Willow had been homeschooled. Her mother’s belief that Willow was the reincarnated spirit of Sarah Bernhardt meant she was enrolled in every drama class New York had to offer, but it was the only formal schooling she had ever had.
Janis and Alan were passionate activists for anything and everything. They lay in front of bulldozers, climbed trees and held sit-ins.
Janis saved everything. She called herself ‘Betty Budget’ and reused her baking paper. Willow was dressed in vegan shoes long before Stella McCartney had the idea. She was raised on a diet of legumes and literature.
Willow privately thought that growing up with Alan and Janis was almost like being in a cult. Nudity, hand-me-downs and self-proclaimed gurus filled the small apartment. Willow used to escape when she was old enough by saying she had a drama class or a workshop and wander up and down Fifth Avenue window shopping. She loved the clothes and the colours. The leather shoes – how she longed for leather shoes! There were so many shoes she wanted.
Once, she found a Big Brown Bag from Macy’s on the street. She carried her things to drama class in it until it tore from overuse. There was nothing better than shopping, she decided. Once she had enough money, she would spend, and then she would spend some more.
She had been young, rich and fabulous. and her meteoric rise to fame had been helped by her marriage to one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors. Their subsequent split involved rumours not only of affairs, but also of drug addiction, both on his side.
Now at thirty-one, she was a married woman with three children, her Hollywood career behind her. Willow had very definite ideas about raising her family. She felt homeschooling was the best thing for her children and she was planning to work with Kitty on the curriculum for Lucian over the coming winter. Lucian’s development didn’t worry her; used to Janis’s unusual opinions on child raising, she figured Lucian would find his own way when he was ready. She had disagreed violently when Kerr suggested they send him to a specialist.
With the hindsight so many women have after the failure of a marriage, Willow realised she had been more in love with the lifestyle and the crown that went with being Kerr Bannerman’s wife than she had been in love with the man himself. She didn’t miss making films and she didn’t miss Kerr when he was on tour. She liked being photographed out and about in London, with her perfect flazen-haired children. She was on charity boards and worked in the organic food movement; the most recent publicity she had had was letting their London house be photographed for English Vogue, where she spouted the need for people to green their home, no matter the cost.
Looking back, she wished she had perhaps looked at the budgets a little closer. Perhaps ‘Betty Budget’ was a role she needed to learn from her mother, who she knew disapproved of her lifestyle. When she had imagined her child as an actor, she had envisaged Broadway. If she had to be in films, she would be the private, dignified type, like Meryl Streep or Woody Allen.
Janis didn’t like the magazine covers, the gossip and the drama. She stayed away from London and ultimately her own child and grandchildren, much to Willow’s disappointment and relief. She wanted her mother at times, but she knew that with her came the lectures about money and lifestyle and how she raised the children with the nanny.
Watching Kitty as she fed Jinty, she wondered how she would do without her. Kitty had come to her through a nanny agency when she was eighteen years old. She’d had no experience, but Lucian seemed to like her when she came to the house for her interview. That sealed the deal for Willow, as Lucian didn’t seem to like anyone. He refused to meet most people’s eyes when they spoke to him and ignored most instructions. When Kitty had sat down and asked Lucian to bring her his favourite toy, Willow had been surprised when he quietly left the room and came back with his brightly coloured blocks with raised lettering on the sides. Kitty had received the blocks gracefully and acknowledged the reverence that Lucian bestowed upon them, exclaiming over the colours and the smooth texture of the letters, although she never asked him to read them to her, and she never read them to him herself.
Willow had been in wonder at the girl child in front of her and how Lucian had seemed to take an instant liking to her. Soon Kitty was firmly ensconced upstairs in the nanny’s quarters, which she seemed perfectly happy with, refusing Willow’s offer to redecorate to her taste.
‘I’m fine, really. I come from a crazy old house in the country. I don’t need anything else, I swear,’ she had said, and Willow had stepped back – although she did get a few new sets of Cath Kidston linen for her. She seemed like a Cath Kidston sort of a girl.
‘How’s my little Jinty?’ cooed Willow at her youngest.
‘She’s great. Just having lunch and then off for a nap,’ said Kitty as she cleaned Jinty’s dirty face of the organic pumpkin Willow had cooked for her. This was one area where Willow did not let the children down. Her cooking skills were amazing and there was not a recipe she couldn’t master. If she’d had her time again, she often thought, she would have worked in food somewhere. Now she nurtured her children with food, and the two fridges were full to bursting with Willow’s meals and treats.
Willow’s phone rang and she walked out of the kitchen to answer it. It was her lawyer.
‘Willow. Hi,’ she barked down the phone.
‘Hi,’ said Willow bracing herself for more bad news.
‘Listen, I’ve done my best, but the bank are going to court to start proceedings to repossess the house. It’s about to become very public, very messy and very expensive.’
Willow sat on the silk-covered armchair in her bedroom. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ said her lawyer.
‘I’ll have to head back to New York,’ said Willow, wondering if her parents could put her up for a while and whether Alan would wear clothes around the house, at least for her sake.
‘No, you can’t,’ said the lawyer, as though Willow was an idiot. Perhaps I am an idiot, thought Willow, feeling sorry for herself.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘You
