WHEN THE car bypassed the main terminal building and pulled up next to a sign that said PRIVATE JET CENTER, Emily breathed in so fast she almost choked.
“You’re kidding me,” she said to her driver (her very own driver!), who smiled and opened the door for her like she was Cinderella.
A security gate led her through a glass tunnel to a departure lounge so elegant it could have been a hotel lobby. Precisely no one rummaged through her luggage or even asked to see a boarding pass; instead, she was ushered straight out onto the tarmac, where two pilots and a flight attendant greeted her personally with shiny white smiles. The attendant took her passport and led her toward a small plane, sleek and bullet-nosed, with just six passenger windows and a little staircase that dropped from a door in the side.
Emily climbed the stairs into a glossy, leather-lined heaven. Suddenly regretting her choice of comfy flight wear (black leggings, a Ramones T-shirt, and a pair of old Converse sneakers), she stood gawping at the armchairs and full-length sofa, waiting for the crew to realize their mistake and escort her back to the terminal. We’re so sorry, they would surely say. We thought you were someone else. Or she would wake up in her shabby little flat, her lungs full of mold spores, to find that it had all been a dream. Any minute now, she thought.
But she was not asked to leave, and the plane did not shimmer and fade. It took off into the sky with no questions asked, and a measly one hour and forty minutes later they were back on the tarmac. This time, though, instead of London’s neat network of buildings, Emily was looking at a low, barnlike structure with an unpronounceable name painted in large blue letters across the side.
She made her way off the plane and into the tiny terminal, where her suitcase and passport were waiting for her. The arrivals lounge was small and silent, and totally empty. The only other person in the room was a tall man with a tangle of dusty hair and a jaw full of stubble. Emily put her bag down on the floor and squinted at him. The man stared back with heavy-lidded eyes. From somewhere on the tarmac outside, there came a muffled shout and the slow, intermittent beeping of a vehicle in reverse. She hesitated, waiting for someone else to appear—perhaps a nice silver-haired gentleman with a peaked cap and a handwritten sign. But eventually she had to concede that this towering, glowering stranger was her ride. She gave him a tentative smile.
“Emily?” he said in a low, gruff voice. In a thick French accent, her name sounded more like Ey-milly.
She nodded.
“Yves,” he said. Then he reached out, grabbed her bag, and strode off toward the exit, leaving her to trot after him like a puppy.
In the parking lot, Yves opened the door of an enormous black SUV, so tall that Emily had to climb up into it like she was mounting a horse. He stowed her bags in the trunk, planted himself in the driver’s seat, and reversed out of the parking space without so much as a cough.
As they sped away on a flat stretch of road, Emily attempted conversation from the backseat. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said. “Will we be working together much?” But Yves didn’t reply, and seventeen minutes later he still hadn’t said a word, so she resigned herself to gazing out of the window in silence.
Road signs flashed by: Avenue de Cordouan, Boulevard de Pontaillac, Rue des Platanes. She tried them out, rolling the sounds around in her mouth. L’Île d’Aunis. Saint-Marc-des-Fontaines. Beaulieu-les-Marais. They tasted like poetry.
Green fields were punctuated by yellow sunflowers and rust-red roofs. White stone walls ran over hills striped with neat rows of grapevines. She saw farmhouses, rivers, and tall spindly trees; pointed spires, crumbling churches, and, in the far distance, a thin blue stripe of ocean.
Gradually, the roads became narrower and the trees became thicker. Then, with no warning at all, Yves swung the car onto a dirt track. Leaves brushed the sides of the car like fingers, and branches reached out to one another overhead, forming a tunnel of green. The bonnet dipped low as the track sloped downhill, giving the impression that they were burrowing deep into the earth.
They drove through increasingly dense woodland for what felt like hours. Twigs tapped at the windows and snapped under the tires,