Skylar—as Carmen deduced this must be—had long blond hair, very good skin, a yoga-fit body, and bright blue eyes. She walked in and stared at the burst suitcase lying on the floor and the children squabbling over the crisps, as if she wasn’t sure she’d come into the right house.

Sofia looked a little tense. “Oh, hi, Skylar!” she said overbrightly. “This is my sister, Carmen.”

Skylar did something that Carmen found astonishing: she held up a finger to tell Sofia—the great lawyer—to be quiet for a second.

“Hello, children?” She had the kind of intonation that went up at the end.

Immediately they stopped squabbling over the crisps. Pippa stepped away. “Namaste, Skylar,” she said quickly.

“Namaste,” mumbled the others, both reluctant to release their grip on the packet.

Skylar let out a beaming smile and turned to face Carmen. “Hello!”

“Uh, yeah, hi.”

She really was so pretty, it was hypnotizing.

“It’s just if we’re going to be working together? Sofia doesn’t normally let the children snack? On junk food? Just before we eat? It’s really, really bad for them?”

“Um, we’re not going to be working together?” said Carmen, realizing as she did so that somehow she’d let her voice go up at the end of the phrase.

Sofia groaned and busied herself over the teapot.

“I mean, are we?” said Carmen, turning her face toward her sister.

“I thought . . . A couple of nights a week Skylar has university classes . . . Maybe you could . . . I mean, you don’t have to, of course, but maybe you could . . . cook and do bedtime?”

The children looked at Carmen as if they were as doubtful about this as she was.

“But I’m going to be working too!”

“Sorry, could you just move that bag?” came Skylar’s voice. “Only I want to get the recyclables out so I can help preserve the earth? You know you can’t recycle crisp packets?”

Carmen made the mistake of not zipping up the bag again, which meant, as she knelt down to pick it up, her toiletry kit and knickers burst all over the floor.

“Knickers!” said Jack, bursting out laughing. Phoebe laughed too, while Pippa pursed her lips and looked disapproving. Sofia looked absolutely pained at all this horrible stuff going on in her Martin Moore kitchen. Face bright red, Carmen knelt down and started stuffing everything into the bag, which now, of course, wouldn’t zip up. It seemed to take an hour to gather up her toiletry kit—which was filthy, and she thought out of the corner of her eye she caught Skylar mouthing something—and a couple of jumpers, stick them under one arm, sit down on the bag, and zip up the rest, all the while watched by three mouth-breathing, crumb-covered children.