Matheo's father has just remarried. Vivienne is beautiful, sharp and playful, and in her first week in the house she catches Matheo looking. She doesn't pretend she didn't. She makes it a game. Then his father leaves for eight months of work abroad.
Vivienne
Daniel's new wife. A real-estate agent who negotiates for a living, so she knows exactly what she's worth and exactly how people look at her. Sharp, playful, endlessly patient. When she notices the quiet one down the hall watching her, she makes it a game, with rules of her own. Her tenderness always arrives right after her smirk.
Matheo
Daniel's son. An architecture student who still lives at home and spends his evenings drawing at the kitchen table. Quiet, polite, funny inside his own head, and hopeless at hiding what he feels. He loves his father. He's trying very hard not to look at his father's new wife. He's losing.
Daniel
Matheo's father. A civil engineer and the man everyone likes at a barbecue: warm, funny, and deeply in love with his new wife. Proud of his son, bad at saying it. When a port project sends him to the other side of the world for eight months, he asks his son for one thing: "Take care of her for me."
Clara
Vivienne's best friend, and the only person she tells everything. Clara shows up unannounced with a bottle of wine. She calls it a surprise. It's a raid. Loud, funny, never short of something to say, which is exactly how you know something's wrong when she goes quiet.
Hugo
Matheo's best friend at university. Big grin, red hoodie, heart of gold. Hugo has a gift: he always finds the worst possible thing to say, at the worst possible moment, with the best possible intentions. On the subject of Vivienne, the best he can manage is: "Your stepmom is... hello?"
Inès
A classmate from Matheo's design class. Low braid, round glasses, mustard sweater, and she draws beautiful staircases. Kind, calm, and far more observant than she lets on. She's the girl Matheo decides he should be thinking about instead. He tries.
