Chapter One
As Emmeline Eversley thanked the crew and exited the budget aircraft, she paused at the top of a rickety staircase overlooking the tarmac and inhaled. The air felt crisp, clean and fresh, despite all the jet fuel in the vicinity. The snow-capped mountains in the distance called to her. Zurich was spelled out in huge, pristine letters above the terminal building. She truly opened her eyes for what felt like the first time in a long time. And felt invigorated.
Inside the terminal, passengers gathered at a set of double doors while they waited for a shuttle to take them to the arrivals hall, immigration, and their baggage. As Emme idly waited, she became aware of a presence, amongst all the people gathering around her, waiting for that same shuttle train; a powerful one. She knew just from the way the man, tall and strapping and smelling of bergamot and sage, looked at his Patek Phillipe watch on his tanned wrist that he had come from the private jet that had parked up next to her plane. Emme deliberately didn’t look at him, despite his immense allure. This kind of man was infuriatingly used to people looking at him, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so she kept her gaze firmly fixed on the countdown clock. The terminal train would be arriving in two minutes.
As Emme waited, she rewound her mental clock to one week ago. A Halloween wedding. A monstrosity of a dress.Always the bridesmaid,she thought. Her peach satin gown (verging on orange) was a shade that very few people could pull off, and it had done nothing for Emmeline with her warm apricot cheeks and gilded chestnut shoulder-length bob. And it drowned all 5ft 2in of her. Had Chrissy done it on purpose? As Emme looked at the other bridesmaids in shades of sorbet, buff and blush, in shapes that suited their figures, she considered her own: off-the-shoulder, puffball and drop-waist. It might be Halloween but did she have to look like a pumpkin?
It was obvious the bride didn’t like her. If Emme was honest, the feeling was mutual. Not dislike, more like polite disdain. She knew Chrissy only asked her to be in her bridal party because she felt obliged to. And the truth that was worse than the dress: Chrissy was marrying the love of Emme’s life, and Emme was the one who had set them up.
Three years ago Emme and Tom had been drinking after work in one of their favourite City haunts, as they often did, even on a school night, when a goddess with black hair tied back like a show pony put a coin on the pool table and gave Tom a wink. Emme took umbrage with this. Not because she and Tom were a couple, they weren’t. Even though they’d been for tapas and rioja before hitting the bar, like couples do. Even though they’d been to the cinema the weekend before and watched a film so gory, Emme had curled into Tom’s arm. Like girlfriends do. Everyone always said theylookedlike a couple. Emme hankered for them to be a couple, conflicted by the fact that Tom was her bestfriend. He had been her best friend since they were paired up on a trip to London Zoo in primary school and they held hands in hi-vis bibs. The woman, who introduced herself as Chrissy, was dazzling. So dazzling, in jeans, a blazer and YSL heels, that Emme foolishly encouraged Tom to get her number as their dismal game went on. Tom’s happiness meant more to Emme than her own. And when he didn’t dare, Emme handed Chrissy her cue and said to her, ‘Winner stays on.’ Leaving them to play pool, while she headed home to her flat in Balham. Boy did Chrissy stay on.
One week ago, a murder ballad played as Emme walked down an aisle illuminated by squash and pumpkin lanterns behind the bride sheathed in Vivienne Westwood. As they reached the altar, Emme saw Tom glance away from his wife-to-be for just a second, to wink at Emme. A wink of friendship, a wink of love, a wink of pity given her regretful outburst– before he looked back at his bride and welled up.
As Emme waited now for the train, still aware of the man with aviator shades and a Prada holdall, she rolled back to the excruciating nightbeforethe wedding, when Tom knocked on her hotel room door after the rehearsal dinner and asked why she was thinking of leaving her job.
‘My sister told me,’ he said, blindsided. ‘Why would you give up your brilliant job, your flat, your life in London– your friends…’ Tom stopped himself from saying the wordus.‘Why would you give up all this to be a nanny? Anywhere in the world? At a moment’s notice?’
Emme had been the trusty executive assistant to Dominique Henry, chief financial officer and leader of theboard at ConCore Consulting for six years. Tom had sent her the job alert from the HR department when it came up two months after he’d started on the graduate training programme to become an auditor. They thought it would be fun working together. It had been fun working together.
Tom looked at her pleadingly. Emme had tried to bite her tongue but that wicked cocktail of champagne and heartache finally made her blurt it out it.
‘Because of you, Tom,’ Emme had replied with a desperate sigh. A tension hung between them; they both knew she was teetering on a precipice. ‘I’m in love with you.’
As Tom looked aghast, Emme whizzed through all the almost-moments in the zoetrope of her mind: the times she and Tom snuggled on the sofa lost in a movie and she wanted to caress his face; or dancing in a nightclub, high on beats per minute and she wished he didn’t look at her like a sister; or the time she saw him cry when his mother died and she felt such immense love for him. If only she had declared it then.
Tom was so shocked he needed the doorframe to hold him up. He shook his head.
‘I don’t think you are Em. You know me too well to be in love with me. It’s all got blurred in the lead-up to the wedding, emotions are heightened– Christ, do you think I haven’t had my doubts?’ He looked up and down the corridor.
Emme was taken aback. Did he mean doubts about Chrissy, or what-ifs about her?
‘Have you?’ she asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
They were interrupted by Tom’s father-in-law, thundering down the corridor sloshing a large glass of red in his hand.
‘Come here Larner! Important men’s talk to be had…’ he said, as he commandeered him away. Tom looked back, but Emme had already closed the door and slunk down the other side of it, knowing that either way, it was too late.
Shaking off her regret Emme snapped back to Zurich as a slick futuristic train pulled in exactly on time and the thick double glass doors opened in a whoosh. Passengers spilled on, keen to collect their baggage and start their adventures or return to their beautiful homes. The man, who was so well-dressed he looked like Switzerland might be his home, held back to let Emme on first and she found a corner to stand in, an internal thrill quashing the simmering nerves. Love and regret could be left in London. Nannying in Switzerland was not going to be forever, but here, on this train, surrounded by hot strangers and wholesome-looking families as she careered to a new future, Emme realised she could be anyone. Tom might have been right, she might have been mad to give up her brilliant job, at the brilliant company she worked at with him, to be a nanny, but possibilities outweighed fear right now.
As the train glided through a tunnel, the carriage lights dimmed and the tunnel walls became illuminated with a kaleidoscope of Swiss scenes. Cows pasturing on lush meadows with spring flowers. Medieval turrets and crystal lakes. Snowy peaks and picturesque mountain villages.
‘Hi, I’m Heidi…’ said a voiceover. ‘Welcome to Switzerland!’ Children and adults alike looked around at the screens illuminating the tunnel, enchanted. Strangerssmiled at each other. The man from the private jet looked at his phone, sunglasses still firmly on despite it being dark, and Emme wondered if she would ever be as blasé about being in such a hilariously brilliant place as he was.
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.
