Chapter Two
At Bloch railway station a guard with an elaborate moustache straightened his cap and blew his whistle so loud, it made Emme jump from inside the train. She looked out of the window and watched as a woman with a snowboard tied to her backpack rushed towards the door.
As the doors beeped to a close, she managed to squeeze in, just in time, the doors almost catching the board.
‘Hijo de puta,’ the woman muttered to herself, before turning sideways and hitting an unsuspecting man on the arm with it.
‘Ah, sorry,’ she said, in accented English. He gave a forgiving nod. The woman looked up and down the packed carriage for a seat, and saw one opposite Emme, next to a mother with a son on her lap.
‘This seat, is it taken?’ she asked the mother.
‘Nein, nein.’
The woman was more careful with her snowboard now as she eased herself in past the child, nodding gratefully at the mother. She gave a relieved and theatrical, ‘Oomph!’, as she placed her backpack and snowboard clumsily on the floor between her snow boots.
Emme had made it from the airport to the mountain train at Bloch with fifteen minutes to spare. The recruitment agent who had fixed Emme up with the job assured her that it would be enough time.
‘It’s Switzerland, trains run like clockwork,’ she said, when she talked Emme through the route from SW12 to the remote mountain village of Kristalldorf, nestled high in the Swiss Alps.
Emme looked at the screen at the end of the carriage and panicked to see the destination saying Alpentor and not Kristalldorf.
As the train pulled out of the station, she realised it was too late.
She stared at the screen, hoping that she hadn’t got on the wrong efficient train.
She absolutely didn’t want to be late – or worse, end up on the other side of the country and be late.
Emme started to panic and wondered whether she should message the mother of the family.
Shit.
The Harringtons were meant to be meeting Emme off the mountain train at Kristalldorf and Emmeline Eversley was never late for anything.
In all the years she had been Dominique’s PA she had never missed or mis-scheduled an appointment.
She did not want to give the wrong impression when she was so nervous and keen to make a great first one.
Dammit.
There was low chatter in the carriage. Polite conversation in French, German, Italian, Spanish and English.
Shit shit shit.
She imagined the children’s faces, remembering them from their hastily arranged Zoom call earlier in the week.
A boy of nine with auburn hair and big brown eyes; his younger sister, seven years old, whose hair was redder, her freckles brighter.
Their mother and father had flanked them on the screen, smiling hopefully, backs as straight as rods, as if they were both willing Emme to be the right fit.
Emme had smiled warmly and taken diligent notes while the mother told her the expectations of the job: getting the kids their breakfast, doing the school run, taking them to ski lessons, clubs and playdates, overseeing their piano practice and the bedtime routine.
She said most of the work would be during the week while the father worked in Zurich, although she would be expected to cover some evening babysitting.
It all seemed so manageable, Emme had tried not to look as desperate as the family to make it work.
Emme cleared her throat.
‘Excuse me please,’ she asked the woman with the snowboard. Her wayward hair and well-worn baggage told tales of someone who knew the mountains. ‘Is this train going to Kristalldorf? It’s just it says Alpentor on the screen …’ Emme nodded and swallowed hard.
‘I hope so!’ the woman said. ‘I’m working there tonight!’ She let out a loud and husky laugh and looked over her shoulder at the monitor at the end of the carriage.
‘There are about five stops until Alpentor and then another three to Kristalldorf. The screen must have got stuck. The mountain train always goes to Kristalldorf, unless it’s snowed in. It’s the end of the line.’
The end of the line.
Suddenly Emme was hit with a sense of doom.
What had she done? Her dad, mum and sister had all looked at her with sorrow when she announced over lunch last Sunday that she was moving to the Swiss Alps for a season.
They had known about her hairbrained scheme to maybe one day take a sabbatical and sublet her flat, but they didn’t think she was suddenly going to become a nanny in Switzerland.
‘Why would you do that, love?’ her mum Marian had asked.
Her sister Lucille was holding one of her five-year-old twins to her chest, while her brother-in-law Ryan had taken the other one into the garden to run around before pudding. It seemed like the right moment to drop the bombshell.
Because I’m too fucking embarrassed to take my lunch break with the love of my life when he’s married to someone else?
She couldn’t tell them that.
‘A change of scene and some fresh air!’ Emme had said with a forced smile.
‘But what will Ms Henry do without you?’ her dad lamented. Geoff Eversley always puffed with pride when he saw Dominique Henry on Newsnight or Business Daily.
‘She said I could take a sabbatical. For the season.’
‘But you’ve never skied!’
‘I did once actually,’ she said guardedly. ‘In Colorado. With Tom.’
Lucille furnished her sister with a worried glance.
‘You know I’ve been thinking about a change of scene. Tayla will look after the flat. The agency I’ve registered with called me yesterday morning, about a very short-notice placement with a family in the Swiss Alps. I’ll head out later in the week.’
‘You’re going to be an au pair?’ Marian looked mystified. ‘You’re twenty-eight!’
Emme looked at her sister for solidarity, but she was comforting her niece Zara.
‘A nanny. Not an au pair. And it’s just for a season.’
Emme wasn’t lying, a change of scene was just what she needed.
And although it seemed sudden to her family, she had trained to be a nanny in her teens and spent the summer after her A levels with a family in the United States while Tom was teaching a football camp out there.
She hadn’t loved nannying, but she’d been pondering this idea since she received her Save The Date last spring. It seemed her only way out.
So Emme spent months scrolling websites for international jobs, and kept landing on Nomad Nannies, an agency that paired young British women with British families around the world.
Emme had interviews with the agency, and candid chats with Dominique, who was the only person Emme confided the real reason for wanting to get out of the country.
Dominique said she’d support Emme and would give her a reference, keep her job open, but for six months max.
Emme understood.
‘Six months is all I need Dominique. Promise.’
The snowboarder noticed the ambivalence on Emme’s face.
‘Don’t look so worried about it! There isn’t anywhere more beautiful to get snowed in.’ She winked.
Emme smiled unconvincingly.
‘And I should know because I am from the second most beautiful place on earth.’
‘Where’s that?’ Emme asked, looking down the carriage to check her suitcase was still teetering on the luggage rack. Of course it was, she was in Switzerland. Surely no one would steal luggage.
She looked back at the woman with the gypsy curls; glad to shift the focus.
‘Patagonia, southern Argentina. The scenery is not so different to this,’ she said, nodding out the window.
That’s not what Emme had expected, at all.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I live on the edge of a glacier: beautiful blues and whites everywhere. Kristalldorf is much more accessible – even if it doesn’t seem it to you.’
Emme gazed out of the window as the train started snaking up the mountain.
‘I’m Catalina, Cat,’ she said, thrusting a hand forward.
Emme was taken aback, but took off her mitten and returned her hand. ‘Emmeline, but people call me Emme.’
‘Emme. Mucho gusto,’ Cat said, shaking her hand effusively. ‘First time in Kristalldorf I guess?’
‘Yes, I’m starting a new job.’
Cat’s eyes widened, as if to say tell me more.
‘I’m nannying. For an English family who live there.’
It was Cat’s turn to look surprised.
‘Interesting, I know everyone in Kristalldorf. Who?’
Emme lowered her voice.
‘The Harringtons.’
Cat widened her eyes, ringed with kohl and mischief, and said, ‘Ooooh, right …’
Emme looked nervous at this response.
‘What?’
Cat waved her hand.
‘Nothing …’ Her smile didn’t wane.
Shit.
‘They come to parties at my family’s home, where I chef. I didn’t know Jenny that well.’ Cat had wide, gossipy eyes as if there was some salacious tea to be spilled.
‘Jenny?’
‘Their ninera – their nanny – but I’ve been in Argentina for a few weeks so I don’t know what the story is with that …’
‘Story?’ Emme pushed.
‘Oh doesn’t matter, you’ll be great.’ The smile was still there, but it definitely faltered for a second.
Emme looked up and down the carriage as the train rolled to its first stop.
On one side of the track stood a pretty pale-yellow building with lilac shutters and a pitched roof.
The word Gesundheitzentrum was painted in an ornate font on the facade.
On the other side was a basketball court, with children in down coats playing in the last of the day’s sunshine.
Some of the buildings around the station had onion-shaped domes on their spires – beautifully preserved medieval architecture spaced out on flat rectangles of grass at the base of the mountain.
‘What’s the family like?’ Emme asked cautiously.
Cat’s voice was loud, which made Emme immediately regret asking.
‘Mama’s uptight. Very British. Sorry.’
Emme shrugged as if to say that’s OK, I am too.
‘The kids seem OK, bit whingy. Jenny was close to them, I think. Very dedicated.’
Emme already felt inadequate.
‘As for Beeel …’