Nicola has a minion!

Chelsea the Butterbunny

Nicola Eaton was just a child during the second world war, but she remembers the air raids, the newspaper headlines and Mother's gut-wrenching sobs when the twins didn't come home. Father, a prominent city banker, dodged the draft due to respiratory problems following a nasty bout of pneumonia; he claimed he was in no condition to enlist. Mother was never able to forgive him for staying home while her sons were bombed and shot at, and the once happy marriage dissipated in to a haze of whiskey, fistfights, and prescription pills.
No longer being able to bear his guilt (or his wife's cold shoulder) Father locked himself in his study and blew his brains out with a revolver. With only a slowly deteriorating mother to look after her, Nicola stopped attending school and confined herself to the family's sprawling London estate.

The closets became her havens, the pantry a refuge. Any place where she could curl up, shut the door, and dream about a faraway world where there were no tears. Where Mother still wore lipstick and baked cookies on Saturdays, and Robert and Freddie would come home from University with a present in each hand (soft pink erasers or candied plums!). Where Father would wait by the door, looking handsome in his three-piece suit and wait for her to run down and hug him goodbye before he left for work. "I'll miss you all day", he'd whisper in her ear. Where they'd pile in to the car and drive to the country and stop for mince pies and visit the antiques shops, singing silly songs along the way. Where the streets of England were green and gay, and there were no men with missing limbs standing on street corners, and the perpetual stink of smoke and decay was replaced by blooming daffodils and freshly cut grass.
Nicola closes her eyes and sees everything in pretty pinks and blues, her thoughts are jellybeans and buttered toast. Her tears are gum drops, slowly melting in the sun. "I won't come out", she says defiantly. "I like it so much better here".