Chapter Nine
‘I’ll get water,’ Emme said, opening a few cupboards and finding a glass jug.
‘Tap is fine,’ Lexy advised, although Emme had assumed that and was already at the pristine sink, where there wasn’t a watermark in sight.
‘Purest water in the world.’ Again Lexy said it as if it were something she had engineered.
‘Darlings!’ Lexy called, which felt for show more than anything. ‘Dinner’s getting cold!’
Emme brought the jug to the table. Looking at it, all set with charger plates, plates, napkins and glassware, as if Harpers or Architectural Digest were coming to shoot, you would think it was a place for conviviality and hearty cuisine.
But something jarred with Emme. Lexy Harrington looked too much like an actress to be genuine.
This home looked too much like a show home for it to be warm.
The spicy scents of dinner came from a cardboard box.
She glanced at the fridge – there were no rudimentary pictures on it like at her sister’s house: hand prints of the twins, notes, meal planners and magnets from faraway places.
There were no accidental crayon marks on the meringue cream walls, beautifully framed by taupe and tobacco-coloured toiles and curtains. Perhaps Lexy didn’t like clutter.
What did feel warm, though, was the heating underneath the polished parquet floor, which invited barefoot exploration, only not when the family were home. Emme felt on edge so far in Lexy’s company, and hoped her nerves would settle.
‘Let’s eat before it gets cold, then I’ll give you a tour of the wider building, and give you the rules,’ Lexy said, as she removed the lids from the takeaway boxes.
‘The rules,’ Emme repeated, careful to sound keen.
‘There’s a spa in the basement … it has a plunge pool, sauna, steam – a few workout machines …’ she said, wittering as she plunged serving spoons into pad thai, nasi goreng, jasmine rice and Asian greens. ‘Although there won’t be much time for spa-ing – that’s rule seven!’
‘Of course not,’ Emme said amiably, wondering how many rules there were.
‘Kids!’ Lexy shouted, a little more snappily. ‘Bill!’
‘Sorry, I was in the bureau,’ he said, as he walked down the ample hallway, scooping up Bella as she came out of her room. Bill had taken his tie off and his contact lenses out, and put on a pair of glasses – he looked hotter with a child under his arm, Emme thought. Less uptight.
Lexy ignored them and carried on talking.
‘I work part-time now and with Bill in Zurich, I need you on hand every day, which is rule one I suppose!’
‘Of course,’ Emme said, proffering a spoonful of pad thai to Bella, who looked at the food with suspicion. Or was she looking suspiciously at Emme?
‘Weekends you’ll have some time off – we tend to do family things, don’t we darling?
’ Lexy said hopefully to Bill. Again, something felt off-kilter to Emme, like she were watching a show.
Or was Emme just feeling cynical after Tom and Chrissy’s beautiful wedding?
She’d wanted to be happy for happy couples but she felt so bruised and sore having watched Tom marry Chrissy.
Bill nodded benignly.
Harry came out of his bedroom with a tablet in his hand and curled his nose up at the dinner.
‘No iPad at the table!’ Bella said, and Emme wondered which rule number that was.
Bella clearly liked to boss her older brother around just as Lexy liked to boss their daddy around.
Bill removed the device from Harry’s clutches and placed it on the kitchen island before sitting down to eat.
As they started, Lexy wittered about the daily comings and goings, the schedules.
Clearly Bill had no interest in the logistics of running this family, he just paid for it with his banking job in Zurich. Emme privately wondered whether the weekdays would be more enjoyable without him around, or whether she would crave his return on Friday nights.
‘In fact, tomorrow we have a wedding, in Italy,’ Lexy said, as she handed everyone chopsticks.
‘Borromeo,’ Lexy added, before taking a small bite of a gyoza dumpling, leaving a theatrical pause for Emme to be impressed or ask more questions. Emme filled the kids’ water glasses. Her sister always seemed to do that with the twins.
‘Bill?’ Emme asked genially, proffering the jug.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
Lexy already had a glass of something sparkling, and she carried on, fizzing and bubbling away, almost as if she were talking to herself.
‘It’s on the lake, not far over the border,’ she said, before remembering. ‘Oh Bill, we mustn’t forget the present!’ She turned to Emme. ‘I always buy the present months in advance, then forget to take it with us.’
Bill glanced up with a furrowed brow as he chased an edamame bean around his plate with his chopsticks. It went flying across the table and hit his wife on the hand.
‘Bill! My ring!’ she snapped, protecting the pink-red jewel on her right hand. Emme looked up.
‘He got it for my fortieth,’ she smiled pompously. ‘It’s a ruby – 1.1 carats, from 1910.’
Emme showed interest, her eyes wide as the jewel glimmered. ‘Bill bought it because it matches my hair but, goodness Bill!’ she scolded him as if he were one of the children.
‘Jesus Lex! An edamame bean is hardly going to take out a rock like that!’ Bill shot, throwing down his chopsticks.
Lexy looked startled and a frosty air set its veil over the dinner table.
Emme looked out of the vast windows onto the balcony, pretending she hadn’t noticed the tension.
Steam bubbled up from the hot tub outside.
It looked very pretty out there, Emme thought, as she searched for a distraction.
Fairy lights coiled around the balustrade and Emme wondered if it was a seasonal thing, or whether they were there year-round.
She tried to lift the mood and focus on the joy of being in a beautiful home, her home for a season, where she could escape the happy newlyweds and regroup.
She was not an eighteen-year-old working a summer in America, who hardly even knew herself.
She was a competent, confident twenty-eight-year-old executive assistant who was usually very good at calming a stressed woman. She could defuse this.
‘Whose wedding is it?’ Emme asked with a charming smile. Weddings were the last thing she wanted to talk about since Tom and Chrissy’s one week ago. She winced internally.
‘Oh, she’s the daughter of a client of Bill’s – a count – she’s marrying a very boring Italian industrialist.’ Lexy said it as if it were a curious match.
‘And she’s awfully plain, despite the parents’ best efforts.
’ She looked at Emme, almost conspiratorially in her tone.
‘Just goes to show sometimes even the best nose job can’t save you.
’ Lexy giggled, wrinkling her own very pretty, very tiny nose.
‘What’s a nose job?’ asked Bella thoughtfully. She looked up at Emme, as if only she would tell her the answer.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ her mother said, brushing the question under the carpet. ‘Their hospitality though is something else: the count always gets Ducasse to finalise his menus, and white peacocks roam the gardens of the island mansion. It’s very pretty … even if the poor bride isn’t.’
‘Christ, Lex!’ Bill scorned. He nodded pointedly towards Bella as if to say not appropriate and Emme imagined Lexy often spoke without thinking too much.
Emme didn’t think they were appropriate things to say in front of little girls or little boys, but the comment certainly helped her get the measure of Lexy Harrington.
‘The biggest surprise was all four of us are invited, but Bill is a trusted confidant of the count.’ Lexy fluttered her lashes rapidly and wiped red lipstick from the corner of
her mouth. ‘We leave on the first train tomorrow, back Sunday afternoon in time for dinner. Ready for …’ she left another theatrical pause, ‘ski school on Monday!’
The children’s faces lit up and they gasped.
‘Ski school?!’ asked Harry. In the winter months, skiing was also on the curriculum for the children of Kristalldorf.
‘Yeth!’ Bella said making a fist in the air.
It was early November. The first flakes were falling in the village tonight, which meant it would be abundant on the mountain, and a new season was officially underway.
Between November and March, the children attended ski school for two hours after lunch every day: pivotal learning for any child growing up in the Alps.
Ski school was their favourite time of year, until it lost its lustre somewhere between Christmas and February, when the tourists made the slopes a little too crowded and the novelty had gone.
‘Does ski school really start on Monday, Mummy?’ Harry asked, a serious concern on his freckled face, just to be sure.
‘Yes, darling,’ Lexy said. He too punched the air with a little fist, a little more gung-ho than his sister, whose smile had returned to a frown. She remembered that one day she might have to get a job inside someone’s nose. She pulled on her mother’s pristine blouse sleeve.
‘But what if I’m too big to do a nose job, Mummy? Surely I won’t fit.’
Lexy looked confused by her daughter but continued talking, gyoza dumpling balanced on her chopsticks like a gymnast on the beam.
‘Perhaps use the time we’re away to acclimatise. The air is different here, you might feel light-headed. Have a look around, get your bearings, make yourself familiar with the rules.’
Emme smiled in agreement. She looked back to the balcony and the steam trailing up from the plunge pool.
It looked like a serpent, weaving its way up against the starry Swiss sky.
What a pristine place, Emme thought, although the tension in the Harrington home slightly took the edge off the mountain idyll.