I turned the page.

While on board The Songbird, the assistant is considered to be on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Well, shut my mouth.

The list went on.

The assistant will refrain from asking Juliette any personal questions. The assistant will answer any and all of Juliette’s questions to the best of their ability. The assistant will join Juliette for all activities Juliette deems fit, including but not limited to eating meals, exercise, shopping trips, entertainment, professional obligations, personal care appointments and sleeping—

Sleeping? I had to sleep with her? I looked up from the ring binder and swallowed hard at the sight of my shocked reflection.

Flipping randomly through the binder, I landed on a section labelled ‘exercise’.

Assistant will walk Juliette for one hour per day and administer post-walk stretches (instructions and diagrams below). Juliette is not to engage in high impact exercise that could damage her voice. Please consult with her trainer for a further list of allowed activities.

‘Why do these feel like things that should have been mentioned before I flew to Italy?’ I whispered, running my finger down the page in search of Juliette’s trainer’s contact details, but the nine-digit US number had been crossed out, one thick black line.

Turning the pages, I scanned the instructions in the other sections and at the bottom of each was the name and number of someone else to contact for further information, three hairdressers, a stylist, personal chef, Pilates instructor, vocal coach, dietician, driver, four different kinds of doctor, an aesthetician, a nurse practitioner, a holistic practitioner, a tarot card reader, and a witch.

Every single phone number had been crossed out.

‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation,’ I told myself, closing the ring binder and ignoring my racing pulse. ‘Maybe she’s downsizing and realized an on-call witch doesn’t spark that much joy.’

Staring out the window at the sea, I took a deep breath in. I’d been so busy losing my mind over The Songbird’s incredible amenities, I’d forgotten the facts. I was one of those amenities.

Lenny wasn’t wrong. Juliette wasn’t like most people, she was a megastar. Even someone as useless with music as I was knew most of her songs off by heart, because they were always playing somewhere. But beyond that I really didn’t know anything about her. Was there a brief Hollywood marriage that ended badly, or was that someone else? A scandal with a prince? I knew it wasn’t Juliette who had hit the car with the umbrella, but there was definitely something I was forgetting. Jess, a living pop culture encyclopaedia, would know but I couldn’t ask her, not unless I wanted Sarah to sue me senseless.

Looking at the long, long list of instructions it seemed very obvious to me that Juliette didn’t need an executive assistant, she needed a glorified babysitter, and seeing as I’d been sacked from that particular job when I was fourteen after my two-year-old cousin rolled off the settee and into the dog, things did not bode well.