Page 14 of The Stranger

Her wry tone makes my heart smile. “Only if you promise not to vomit in his wastepaper basket.”

“That was you!”

“Not the way I remember it.” We were fifteen and I was terrified of being caught, not that Leif is an ogre or anything, but because “drunk teenager” didn’t fit into my family’s expected ole for me, Emmy took the blame and my siblings teased her mercilessly all summer.

In the kitchen, I pull open the door to the huge glass-fronted temperature-controlled wine cellar thing. “Actually, you might need something stronger when I tell you what I got caught up in last night.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”

“No biggie.” Not now that we can pop this cork and get down to the business of celebrating her arrival. Before moving on to dissecting the best and worst experience of my life.

I swing around brandishing a bottle champagne—not one of Whit’s fantastically expensive bottles, but something I picked up myself. A Laurent-Perrier. “You’re here now, and that’s all that… matters.”

It takes me a moment to work out what’s wrong with this picture. Emmy’s expression, obviously. And the fact that she hasn’t any luggage. She doesn’t even have a backpack. My heart plummets, and I know what’s coming before she even opens her mouth.

“Prim.” My name an apology of my name as her eyes turn instantly watery. I’d been so busy yammering away to hide my own emotions, I hadn’t noticed.

“What is it?”

“I can’t stay.”

“Is it that family again? Honestly, Em, they ask too much of you.” My words are terse because all I can think is she’s about to do it again. She’s going to bloody well drop me again when I need her here. “There are other jobs, you know. Leif probably knows loads of families in need of a nanny back in London.”

“Not one that pays me like this one.” She gives her head a tiny, sorrowful shake. “But it’s not the family. It’s my family. My dad. He had a heart attack.”

“Don’t worry. It’s all in hand.”

The entrance to the Gare du Nord station is utter chaos, people bumping into each other without apology, crying children, and wheeled luggage being used like battering rams.

Emmy tightens her hand on her own case, pulling it from the back of the taxi she’d left waiting outside the apartment building earlier. “Yes, but⁠—”

“But nothing.” I take her shoulders in my hands. “Go. Be with your family. I’ll look after things here.” As she glances at the doors to the station, all I can think is poor Em. The news of her dad is bad enough, but this additional job stress seems desperately unfair. The family she works for must be such entitled arseholes. Worse, they’re entitled arseholes I’ve offered to stay with for the weekend. You know, to look after their arsehole offspring. It’s not as if I have anything else planned.

The reasons she’s asked me to cover for her aren’t entirely clear, but this isn’t the time to ask heaps of questions. I just know Emmy is fearing for her job at a time when she needs to be home. And the bottom line is, if I can’t be in Paris with my bestie, the least I can do is help her out.

I mean, how hard can two days nannying be?

“I feel terrible asking you to do this, but it’ll only be until⁠—”

“Monday,” I finish for her. “Honestly, it’s fine.”

“It’s just until they can get someone from an agency.”

Because heaven forbid the rich look after their own kids.

“Sylvie is so sweet,” she says.

Well, she’d better be.

“And she knows you’re my best friend, so she’s really excited to meet you.”

“Fab. That means she’ll be well behaved for me.”

“And Felix is… spirited.”

“Emmy, you know I know that’s code for ‘a little shit’. I do have four of my own brothers, remember?”

“I thought you were about to say Lavender.” She forces a smile.