Jules left without saying another word. She called Jimmy, went upstairs, and carefully packed up the accessories and shoes. She had no idea how to explain the missing jumpsuit. “Vivian said I can keep it” seemed a little thin.

She’d figure something out. In the meantime, she used the car ride to pull herself together. It didn’t completely work, but she reminded herself of some salient facts.

Like the fact that Vivian was over a decade older than her. And Vivian was getting divorced. And was pregnant. And was Jules’s boss. And liked men, not women, as far as Jules knew.

It had to be a defense mechanism. Jules was still stung from losing Aaron, and so she’d fixated on somebody safe, or—okay, not safe. Not safe at all. But somebody she didn’t have a chance with. Somebody unattainable so that she didn’t have to worry about having an actual relationship. That was all.

And this was so sudden. At least, it felt sudden. It had obviously been building up for a long time, but that totally didn’t matter because Jules was overreacting and letting her feelings go to her head, and in a few days’ time she was going to feel ridiculous about this. It wasn’t a true feeling. It was an impulse, a crush on a mentor figure, the result of months of celibacy. It was anything but genuine. It’d vanish like the wind.

Jules told Jimmy not to wait for her, deciding that taking the Tube home or even just wandering around for a couple of hours would be good for her. Anything that kept her away from Vivian until lunchtime would be good for her, in fact.

The Du Jour UK offices were much more sparsely populated than they had been on her last visit, although they weren’t completely closed for the public holiday. They felt lonely.

Georgie and Janys weren’t there. Hopefully, they’d done something suitably wild for New Year’s Eve. The front desk was manned by a lone receptionist, who looked sleepy.

Jules made matters easy on herself, saying only, “Vivian wants to keep the jumpsuit. You can call the Du Jour office in New York when she gets back to confirm.” That seemed good enough for the receptionist, who surely wasn’t paid enough to deal with Vivian Carlisle. She accepted the package with a friendly New Year’s greeting, and Jules escaped.

The streets felt deserted when she emerged from the building. Few Londoners or tourists were out and about at eight a.m. after a night of revelry. No shops or attractions were open yet.