Continuity mistake: Julie doesn't come home one night; the next day as she is getting out of the pool we see that she has been "roughed up" and has a black eye. Next to her eye there is a circular bruise/mark. That evening, as Julie and Sarah are at dinner the bruise is now under Julie's eye and is a different shape (longer and more oval in shape). (00:52:50 - 00:58:00)
Continuity mistake: As Sarah Morton copies the text from Julie's diary, there is a picture of Julie's mother sitting on the crease of the diary between the two opened pages. In the next shot, the picture is sitting to one side of the diary, yet Sarah has never stopped typing out the diary entries and therefore could not have moved the picture.
Chosen answer: Julie was not the publisher's daughter. Julia, who we see at the end, is the real daughter - given that Sarah doesn't seem very surprised to see Julia at the end (and the reaction of the secretary proves she's known to everyone), the most likely explanation is that the entire sequence in France is in fact the content of Sarah's book, and never really happened.
Jon Sandys