Jeremy had an agenda for the weekend, and we were getting in the way of it. I wasn’t entirely sure what that agenda was, although I suspected it was only partly about Colin’s mother. Legitimation? Proving his place as head of the family? The latter was pretty ridiculous, given that Jeremy was only eight years older than Colin. Yes, Colin’s stepfather was a fair chunk younger than Colin’s mother.

I suppose this might be a good time to add that Colin’s stepfather also happened to be his second cousin.

Jeremy was Colin’s great-aunt’s grandson, and he had run off with Colin’s mother pretty much on Colin’s father’s deathbed. If you’re having trouble following that, don’t worry. It’s not just you. As Colin had pointed out to me on a prior occasion, it was all very economical. By combining cousin and stepfather in one, he saved on the Christmas gifts. Kind of like two-in-one shampoo and conditioner, only with more years of therapy involved.

It was all more than a little reminiscent of the more improbable sort of soap-opera plot. I could only hope that I wasn’t heading for kidnapping by the mafia or a three-episode-long bout of amnesia in which I would find myself embroiled with Colin’s evil twin.

For the record, Colin has no evil twin. At least, none that I know of. Yet.

His sole sibling—the only one to whom he had confessed—is a sister named Serena. Serena had taken the whole cousin/stepfather thing a lot harder than Colin had. I had my own suspicions about Serena’s relationship with Jeremy, but since that was going a little too soap-opera, even for Colin’s family, I’d kept them to myself. I could be wrong. I hoped I was wrong. And if I wasn’t wrong, I didn’t want to know.

We’d booked Serena into the Minerve with us. Not in the same room, of course. I’d been tempted to ask if they could put her on a different floor, not because I don’t like Serena, but because there’s something distinctly off-putting about knowing your boyfriend’s sister is just one thin layer of plaster away. This might not exactly be a romantic dream weekend, but I still hoped to salvage some of it. It was Paris, after all.