AustLit

"Paul Radcliffe, Paris-based British diplomat, has made a career out of being handsome, charming, and above all, discreet. But he harbors a secret that even he can't keep forever. Tess, Paul's eighteen-year-old babysitter, is what her femme fatale mother, Aurora, calls a "bill payer and clock winder." In short, Tess is a dependable sort of girl, and one rainy night Paul finds himself depending on her to keep the secret that has tormented him for fifteen years: his affair with and betrayal of an older woman, whom he still loves. Tess tells no one, until she realizes she has the power to change forever the lives of his wife and daughter."