I nod again. ‘I want to give up anyway.’

Julia smiles. ‘Don’t we all?’ She slides into one of the wooden chairs and invites me to do the same. ‘You’ll meet Léa and Luca soon. Michel has taken them to the zoo, but they should be back in about half an hour.’ She looks at her watch. ‘And you’ll have tomorrow to settle in – I’m not expecting you to start immediately. But from Monday we will both be at work so they’re all yours.’ She inhales on her cigarette and I notice, with an unexpected sense of satisfaction, tiny lines appear around her mouth.

‘I’ve prepared rough lesson plans,’ I say. ‘But of course I’ll adapt to what you want us to do and what suits them best.’

Julia waves the smoke away from our faces. ‘The main thing is to get them speaking more. I want them to go back to school in the fall with a higher level of English than they have now. How you achieve that is up to you.’

‘Right. I’ll do my best.’

‘You don’t have to do formal lessons. You will have a budget and you can take them out, explore, do things. There’s a lot nearby for kids. I’ve put some tourist brochures in your room. And of course you don’t know the area, so it’s a chance for you to get to know it too and have fun. It’s summer, n’est-ce pas?’

Excitement flickers inside me, a long-dormant feeling unfurling like a leaf in spring. I think how reluctant I was when Maggie first touted the idea of me doing this. My godmother was usually right about most things, but I had serious doubts about this particular suggestion. Did I really want to take a job looking after someone else’s children? It felt like rubbing my face in it. But I was a teacher, I already spent my life around kids, so surely I could cope with a couple more? And I needed to do something with my semi-enforced sabbatical from St Mary’s instead of sitting in Maggie’s garden drinking endless cups of tea. Plus, the money was good.

But, really, it wasn’t any of that. It was Switzerland. The place I’d imagined in my head for the past two years, ever since those tests threw up so many questions; the place I now felt compelled to be, in the hope that it might provide me with some answers.

‘I’m still not sure why you need me, though,’ I say. ‘I mean, your English seems fantastic.’

‘Thank you,’ Julia says, and I can tell she’s pleased. ‘But we’re not native English speakers and we don’t speak it at home. The kids learn it at school, but I thought employing a native teacher over the summer holidays would give them the…’

‘Upper hand?’