Page 17 of The Riviera House Swap

‘Then, my crazy, lovelorn and seriously risk-taking friend, I suppose I have to give you my blessing.’

‘Thank you,’ Nina smiled. ‘I’ll be OK, you know. It’s the adventure, the experience I’m after. The thing with Pierre… I just want to see. Close the chapter properly.’

Bess nodded. ‘Well, you’re a brave woman,’ she said, lifting her latte and clinking it with Nina’s. ‘But I salute you. To bravery!’

‘To love,’ Nina said clinking back.

‘Yes. Let’s raise a toast to love.’

9

THEN

The coach was practically new and had air conditioning – a league above the usual standard of school bus they were accustomed to. The whole year group from the Lycée were coming in addition to the exchange pupils. Bess had already told her she’d noticed some seriously buff boys in the other coach, and spent most of the journey tending to her fringe in a tiny mirror to make sure it was ‘just so.’

Nina wasn’t especially interested in boys. Her experiences so far hadn’t made her feel particularly disposed to seeking out romance. A random snog at a fairground with a boy from Year 12, a date to the cinema to watch a movie that had given her nightmares for weeks, a couple of trips to Pizza Express. So far almost completely cons and not a pro in sight. But she smiled along and tried to catch Bess’s enthusiasm nonetheless. ‘Give us that,’ she said, taking the mirror and pouting into it. ‘Ooh, I’m Bess, I’msoobeautiful!’ she said.

‘Hey!’ Bess objected, wrenching it back. Then they both dissolved into giggles.

10

NOW

QUITTING JOB

Pros:

Get away from depressing office

Find something I enjoy doing!

Go to France and find Pierre!

I can take a year off, if I use my ‘savings’

Cons:

What if nobody employs me EVER again?

What if I don’t find anything I want to do?

Pierre is probably off the market or will think I’m mad.

Have to face the wrath of Jemima

The next morning, she felt a little less brave. A little less like throwing caution to the wind.

She’d written her resignation letter, then redrafted it and printed it out four times before feeling it fully expressed what she wanted to say. That she appreciated her time at the firm and the opportunities they’d given her (and the money, she didn’tadd), but that it was time for something new. Still, when she knocked on Jemima’s office door the following morning, she was a bundle of nerves.

Hopefully, she could hand the letter to her boss, leave her office, wait a bit and then go back in for a chat, once Jemima had ingested all her words, all her reasoning. It wasn’t as if she was a big financial player in the firm, or irreplaceable. Just an office manager, keeping the admin flowing, managing a few staff issues, holiday leave, that kind of thing. Something a virtual PA could probably do – saving the company a fortune in the process. In many ways, she told herself, she was doing them all a favour.

‘Come in,’ said the lofty voice and Nina pushed open the door and walked into the small, glass-fronted space with its ultra-clean desk and small, white monitor. Jemima looked up, her skin highlighted by the light from her screen. A flicker of annoyance seemed to pass across her face before she broke into an artificial-looking smile. ‘Nina,’ she said, in what some might describe as a warm tone, but which Nina – having been familiar with it over the years – knew was only skating on the surface of a sneer. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I just wanted to give you this,’ Nina said, holding out the white envelope for Jemima to take. Her boss didn’t stretch out a receiving hand so instead, she put it on the white surface of her desk where it sat, menacingly, between them.

‘You’re leaving?’ Jemima said, having not even touched the envelope.

At first, Nina was nonplussed – was Jemima psychic? – but she came to realise that – of course – nobody wrote letters within an office any more. There would be few other reasons she’d hand a white envelope to her boss. In fact, when she thought about it, all of this could have been put into anemail, removing the need for face-to-face at all. Damn her old-fashioned, face-up-to-things method. So 1990s.

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