Chapter Forty-Three
‘The iPad’s not working, Emme! It’s stuck!
’ Bella complained, as she sat up from lying prone on the sofa.
It was the last Friday in November and the kids were tired from ski school.
Bella had been watching cartoons on the iPad and Harry was in his bedroom building Lego while Emme took a breather and looked at her phone on the sofa next to Bella.
She had spent the week idling over Tristan Du Kok and why she hadn’t seen or heard from him, and it left her full of regret.
Not about what she had done. Sex in the gondola had been spectacular.
She was regretful she hadn’t bumped into him in this small town.
Every night she had gone to bed she had thought of the delicious sensation of Tristan inside her.
But the polite thing would have been for him to seek her out.
Emme had certainly sought Tristan out. She’d finally found his social media footprint since remembering what Cat told her: that he was called Tristan Joubert by birth.
Emme had found the news stories. Charles Joubert had gone missing while ski touring in the Swiss Alps with his son Tristan.
Both were competent skiers. Charles was believed to have fallen down a ravine near the Teufelsgletscher glacier.
Tristan, then twenty-two, gave search and rescue accurate coordinates of the last known sighting, but Charles’s tracking device was found elsewhere, in his abandoned coat pocket, hanging off a branch hundreds of metres away from where his son last saw him.
And now she was looking at pictures of Tristan Joubert again on Instagram: Tristan looking like something out of a Gillette ad: playing polo, rugby, surfing or heli-skiing.
Tristan on safari. Tristan in a verdant vineyard.
He looked younger and less refined, even more tanned, but he hadn’t posted for eight years and his comments were turned off.
As Emme ruminated on the screen and studied his beauty, Bella tapped her on the arm.
‘It’s stuck! This box is in the way, it won’t let me watch!’
‘Sorry Bells, let me have a look,’ Emme said, taking the device. ‘Why don’t you watch the cartoons on TV while I fix this?’
Emme gave a deft clap and commanded Gustav to raise the television, and the vast flat screen glided upwards from a sideboard. How far Emme had come in less than a month.
As Bella settled to watch TV a knock at the door startled them both. Usually visitors buzzed on the downstairs main entrance first.
‘You wait here,’ Emme said, stroking Bella’s hair as she got up.
Emme put her phone on the console table by the large oak door and opened it, expecting to see a neighbour from the building, but aghast to see Vivian Steinherr standing eagerly on the other side, clutching a document file.
Emme smoothed down her hair and checked herself. She suddenly felt terribly exposed.
‘Oh! Hello.’ Vivian smiled, not expecting Emme either, although she looked less furrowed than when Emme had seen her on the terrace café with Tristan; less prim than she had seen her that night in Down Mexico Way.
Today she looked professional and cool, her game face on.
Emme was relieved she wasn’t angry and confrontational. Vivian couldn’t know.
Emme glanced at the phone on the side in full view, grateful that the screen had darkened to sleep.
‘Hi,’ Emme said unsurely. ‘Can I help?’
‘Is Lexy in?’ Vivian asked hopefully. ‘I have a press release for her. I was heading to a meeting nearby and thought I’d drop the hard copy. It’s full of my scribbles.’
Vivian looked beyond Emme for a second, and Emme wondered if she should invite her in. What was the Kristalldorf etiquette for your boss’s boss calling by when you happened to have fucked their boyfriend?
‘Lexy’s at work, I think. She’s not usually back until after five.’
Vivian rolled her eyes.
‘Oh drat, I could have caught her at the Alpenrose!’ She smiled as if she’d been silly.
‘Never mind, I was passing – stairs aside.’ Vivian joked, nodding in the direction of the steep wide sweep from the road up to Chalet Stern, although no staircase could beat her Bambi-like legs. ‘Can I leave this for her?’
‘Sure,’ Emme said, taking the file. ‘Would you like to come in?’
Emme really didn’t want Vivian Steinherr to come in. She was wracked with guilt for the man they had both had inside them. And he had slept with her sister too.
‘No it’s fine, I need to get on … thank you.’ Vivian nodded, as Emme’s phone beeped and flashed up with a notification. Her face flushed red as she snatched up her phone in case Tristan was illuminated in all his Insta glory.
Phew.
A message from her sister, against the backdrop wallpaper of her niece and nephew. Emme tried to style out her panic as she pocketed her phone.
‘Right then! Cheerio, I’ll be sure to give this to Lexy as soon as she’s home.’
Vivian looked a little cautious. Emme’s reaction was odd.
‘Great, thank you,’ she said, as she turned away and elegantly bounded down the stairs.
Emme closed the door and looked across at Bella on the sofa, hammering a finger on the iPad screen.
‘Bells, be careful!’
‘I fixed it!’ Bella said proudly as she squinted her eyes and peered at the screen. ‘Pur-chase succ-sex-ful! Now can I watch Bluey?’
‘Bella!’ Emme said, more sternly, walking over to retrieve the iPad. ‘What have you done?’
Emme took the screen and studied it.
‘Oh dear. “Purchase successful. You now have 90 days’ cover”. Bella!’
The girl looked up with doleful eyes, as Emme scrutinised the screen to see if she could undo the transaction. She pressed the back button but the screen went blank.
‘Emme! Come and look at my Ninjago set!’ Harry bellowed from the bedroom. And Emme was so surprised that Harry wanted to show her his Lego set that she handed the iPad back to Bella so she could get back to Bluey.
Down the hallway Emme poked her head around Harry’s bedroom door.
He’d spoken to her with disinterest at best for much of the time since she’d arrived, but now she could tell from the look on his face as he sat on his knees, turning his Lego set on the plush carpet, that her approval meant something to him.
‘Oh wow Harry, it’s really cool!’ she said, getting down on her haunches.
‘So this is Zane’s apartment …’ he said, before tentatively giving Emme a tour.
After a few minutes and the onset of pins and needles, Emme looked at Harry’s face, his auburn eyelashes sweeping over his eyes, and thought she might have finally cracked him.
‘Ooh, can I have a play with this figure?’ she asked, cautiously.
‘No,’ Harry said, swooping the ninja up off the floor.
‘OK,’ Emme said, pulling herself up to standing and circling her tingling ankle. ‘I need to start dinner anyway, but great job Harry.’
Harry didn’t say anything, but Emme could tell from his smile that he was proud of himself.
As Emme walked down the hall she took her phone out of her pocket to check the time, and ruminated on Vivian Steinherr’s visit. She swiped up to awaken it and was confronted by Tristan’s Instagram again.
That was close. She felt bad about Vivian, but Tristan was so intoxicating, her swirling feelings of passion had managed to overcome the guilt.
She studied the screen as she walked into the kitchen.
Tristan Du Kok and his father, smiling on a ski slope in Switzerland.
It was the last picture he’d posted. He was handsome in his early twenties, but like the Du Kok Estate wines he sold, Tristan seemed to get better with age.
Where are you now, Tristan?