Chapter Forty
On Sunday morning the Harringtons went to Thun to see Bella perform as the Sugar Plum Fairy in her winter dance show. The journey would take the best part of two hours each way, plus the show itself and dinner. They’d be gone for hours.
After they’d left, Emme went back to bed and lay on her side, watching reels, reading the news on her phone, doing anything to stop her thoughts turning to Tristan. She lingered on the kiss in the tiny street. His soft tongue. His growing hardness.
It had been steamy and it had been flattering. Tristan clearly wanted her, and although she couldn’t work out why and didn’t want to be another notch on his bedpost, it had been the kiss of her life.
Emme didn’t imagine she’d get the opportunity to kiss him again, but if she did, she pondered whether Tristan might just be the tonic to help her get over Tom. He was certainly distraction enough.
She couldn’t think even long enough to focus on her fantasy. She was too flustered. So she got up, showered, and called Cat to ask a favour.
‘Can you spare a few hours to come skiing with me?’ Emme asked, as she paced the apartment in her thermals. She was getting better at skiing and thought going out with a friend and not a teacher might be a more fun way to improve.
‘Damn, I can’t – Mrs Kivvi wants to do a tasting. The party is only two weeks away and I’m elbow deep in the kitchen. It’s kind of a big deal. I could maybe come up late afternoon and join you, if you’re ready to go out by yourself.’
Cat’s comment bolstered her. Maybe she was ready to go out by herself. She’d had another lesson with Milla and was gaining confidence every session.
‘No problem, don’t worry, I’ll try myself. I can just about turn!’ Emme joked. She had mastered turning right to left across the slope but was struggling with left to right.
Cat laughed.
‘Hmmm, be careful! Maybe go to KristallKinder, the nursery slopes …’
It was midday by the time Emme got through the tunnel, on the ski train and onto the mountain.
Her ski map of Kristalldorf showed her where the kids’ ski park was, and it was a good idea of Cat’s to suggest heading there so she could build up her confidence.
Emme started on a very gentle, short incline, alongside a class of what looked like toddlers they were so small, and with each short run Emme gained confidence and remembered, she could do this. And she could do it on her own.
She decided to head to the slopes proper and even found her fortitude faced with the chairlifts.
The quiet from above was eerie sometimes, when a chairlift stopped high over a piste and people on it waited for it to restart, but Emme got used to worrying less about why they were stopping – some idiot probably got tangled up in their skis disembarking like she had her first time – and she started to get used to whole notion of skiing.
Dare she say it, she was even starting to enjoy it.
During one still moment as the chairlift stalled while she was on it, Emme watched the skiers below, trying to learn from their techniques, their snaking figures and turns.
She watched a group tracking down a gentle blue run.
A man with a black-and-white helmet snaked while four nervous skiers followed his trail.
He waited for them to catch up on a flat right underneath the stationary chairlift.
On the other side of a cluster of pines, deer footprints revealed animal adventures.
Two snowboarders flew down and ended up tangled, laughing in a heap on the ground.
A child who must have been no older than six whizzed down, beating her parents to the bottom.
The guide with the black-and-white helmet pointed to the majestic peak of the Silberschnee, the mountain that everyone seemed to gravitate towards, and Emme followed his finger.
Cat had boasted that only the people of Kristalldorf got this exceptional view.
The Swiss and the Italians who lived on the other side of it only saw a shadowy, less majestic peak.
Emme listened to the guide, his loud commanding voice cutting through the quiet stillness of the air under the stationary chairlift.
‘Silberschnee means “silver snow”,’ said the indisputable South African accent.
Tristan.
‘But personally, I would have named it the Rosaschnee, as it looks more pink.’ The four tourists, wearing their new helmets, all gasped.
‘Yes!’ said an American woman in the same white embossed Louis Vuitton helmet as Emme. ‘I see it!’ She sounded enchanted.
An Irish man spoke.
‘Is it always pink?’
‘No sir, and it’s really barely pink now. Later in the day you get what we call “alpenglow” – it only happens at the right time, in the right conditions.’
‘Wow,’ marvelled the woman.
‘It hits best just after sunset, or just before sunrise, when the sunlight has no direct route to the mountain, and it’s reflected off ice crystals and particles in the atmosphere. It’s mild now, but if anyone wants to get up super early with me tomorrow, we can.’
The novice group looked less enthusiastic at the prospect of skiing in the dark.
But Emme wanted to go with him.
Tristan looked up as the chairlift started up again, and recognised Emme from her new lilac outfit and white helmet.
‘Hey!’ he waved a pole skyward.
She waved a gloved hand, as casually as she could, somewhat embarrassed to be caught by him again, concerned he was going to think she was following him or something.
‘Want to join us?’ he called up helpfully. ‘They’re all newbies!’
‘No, it’s OK thanks!’ It was so dismally embarrassing skiing in front of him the first time, even though she had improved, she didn’t want to have to do it again.
At the top of the chairlift Emme glided off it feeling rather proud of herself for managing it, and thought that if Tristan’s party of beginners could do that blue slope, so could she, especially if she heeded the technique and the advice of Tristan and Milla in her head.
And she did it. Cautiously so, but she managed to snake down the mountain, making S-shaped turns both to the right and the left, and feeling proud of her control, even if her knuckles were white in her gloves clutching the poles.
She even noticed Tristan’s tracks, his figures and turns, and followed them, feeling they were a safe bet – knowing that he was nothing of the sort.
Emme got to the bottom and wanted to punch the air she was so pleased with herself, but instead she took a selfie to send home. She sent it to Cat too. Emme in front of the Silberschnee, turning pinker by the minute. This place was so fucking Instagrammable.
As Emme put her phone away, Tristan’s group lapped her and he skied over to her, almost kicking snow up in a fan. He stopped with a smile and put his goggles onto his helmet. His brown eyes gleamed in the light. The secrecy of last night’s kiss making them both smile.
‘Wow, you’ve come a long way! Blue slopes on your own!’
‘Thanks.’ She wasn’t sure if he sounded patronising or proud of her, but she settled on the positive.
‘Want to join us for one last loop?’
‘I’m OK, I should get back to town.’
‘Come on, show me how far you’ve come.’
They held each other’s eye as the largest man in the party, a wine buyer from India, slammed into the back of Tristan and he in turn almost knocked Emme off her feet.
‘Yeesh!’ Tristan said, looking a little annoyed, his strong brow furrowed as he held Emme tight with both arms, almost in a clinch. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
Emme nodded.
‘Yes, thanks.’
Tristan shook his head then remembered his manners. The buyer, Shivam Masrani, was the sommelier to a Maharajah in Maheshwar, and he had a lot of money to spend on Du Kok Estates.
‘Careful now,’ Tristan said, politely but sternly enough to let the man know he was a liability.
Masrani had been the clunkiest skier of the group. Shivam gruffed a little while Tristan untangled his ski tips from Emme’s.
‘One more slope?’ he asked the group as he stood up.
Everyone nodded.
‘Great, we have an extra skier in our party – this is Emme from London. Emme, this is Kelly, Shivam, Justin and Patrick.’
The wine buyers smiled and nodded hellos, as they all shuffled themselves into the queue for the chairlift.
The chairs were four people wide, so Tristan instructed the four wine buyers to take the first chair, and he and Emme waited for the next.
As they waited, her heart pulsed. They were about to be alone, in the air, for five whole minutes. More if the lift stopped again.
As much as Emme didn’t want to like him – this dog who slept with his girlfriend’s married sister – the thought of being on her own with him, riding the peaceful panorama with him, was thrilling, especially after last night.
She wanted her thighs to touch his on the chairlift.
For it to stop so they could talk forever.
He was so sexy, she had never physically fancied someone with all her body like she did Tristan.
Not even Tom. With Tom it was pure, deep, friendship and love.
She could picture being married to Tom, creating a family with him – but Tristan stirred a lust in her that she had never known.
And he wanted her too. She could have fucked him.
I should have fucked him.
‘Quick Wolfie, slide in!’ said a father to his son, as the next chair scooped them up and lifted them skyward.
Damn.
Emme was sitting at one end of the chairlift, next to her was Tristan, then the little boy was nestled between Tristan and his father at the other end. Emme and Tristan looked at each other, their faces close, both feeling obvious disappointment not to be alone.
They sighed and smiled at their luck.
Why am I falling for this? Emme asked herself, as Tristan pressed his thigh against hers. She felt it. Electricity from his body to hers. Making her wet, even under all those layers of underwear, thermals and salopettes.