‘Erm, hands!’ Lexy commanded in a singsong voice. The children washed them at the slick kitchen sink then nimbly escaped to their bedrooms. Bill ambled off to the fridge to have a look at its contents.
Lexy closed the sliding door, but stopped short of drawing the cream curtains. The twinkling lights of the view were too impressive to shroud.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Emme said.
Lexy tapped a sensor pad on the sidewall triggering ambient lighting to cast an intimate glow over the room.
‘Gustav, turn on the fire.’
Emme looked around–who was Gustav?
A small light glowed orange on the sideboard, then an electric fire roared into life.
‘Gustav. He’sourAlexa.’
Emme’s eyes widened. It was certainly more impressive than the Victorian plumbing and rattling radiators back home.
Bill wheeled Emme’s suitcase down a wide hallway, Lexy and Emme following. Lexy pointed out the children’s bedrooms, a family bathroom with a white free-standing bath sitting atop dark slate tiles, brushed nickel hardware and a thick grey bubble mat. Emme’s guest room was modern yet cosy, without a trace of the nanny who had left just days before. Bill deposited Emme’s case in her room and swiftly left.
‘That’s our office, and that’s our room round the corner…’ Lexy said, but didn’t go as far to show Emme somewhere that was obviously out of bounds.
‘Wonderful!’
As they walked back down the hallway, Emme poked her head around Bella’s bedroom door.
‘Want to show me your room?’ she asked.
Bella shook her head.
‘No,’ she whispered, looking down at her plastic pony.
‘Bells!’ Lexy admonished, who was lingering over Emme’s shoulder.
‘That’s OK,’ Emme said. She admired a girl with boundaries.
‘Come on, everyone must be hungry…’ Lexy flapped, as they headed back to the large open-plan kitchen and dining room.
Now she mentioned it, Emme had noticed the faint smell of fried food and spices emanating from the kitchen area. On top of a thick, engineered wood worktop stood a stack of cardboard boxes with KK embossed on them in a silver circle.
‘Our maid delivered dinner,’ Lexy said. She might look like a Stepford Wife but Alexia Harrington didn’t cook. Fortunately she didn’t expect her nanny to either. She had said in the Zoom interview that cooking duties would be limited to breakfasts, packed lunches and the odd heatedflammkuchenor pizza after school because Lexy was a supporter of the KristallKit dinner service that most people in Kristalldorf without a live-in chef subscribed to. Lexy selflessly supported KristallKit because she had done the PR for the brand during its launch phase, and its owner, Samuel Sommar, one of Kristalldorf’s most prolific and dashing businessmen, was someone Lexy would do anything to stay in with.
KristallKit was the first client of Lexy’s when she decided to go back into PR and set up her own business from the Alps.
She carefully opened a corner of one of the boxes.
‘Ooh, Thai,’ she said, with a self-satisfied smile. Emme helped Lexy carry the boxes to a wood-and-steel dining table, already set by their maid before she had left for the evening. Emme placed the boxes in the centre, among the floral centrepieces and plates without cutlery, that made the room look all rather staged.
Chapter Eight
After dinner, the Steinherrs retired to the drawing room for post-prandial drinks and jollity. The mansion was unusual in Kristalldorf in that it was made from stone and marble rather than the usual wooden structures around the town. This gave it a slight fairy-tale look.
From any of the mansion’s many balconies you could see the stunning peak of the Silberschnee, and on the other side of the river, the Anna Maria hotel, glimmering in glass. Over the decades, Walter had been furnished with lucrative offers to buy the land he owned on the opposite side of the river: it was prime real estate, furthest from the train station in the quietest corner of the town. But Walter would never sell.
Nanny Iris had been instructed to put the children to bed, and the butler was preparing drinks for everyone. Negronis for Walter and Lysander, Pernod on the rocks for Anastasia, a pineapple daiquiri for Kiki, and sparkling water for Dimitri, who always stopped at one glass of wine with dinner. Vivian, who was planning on returning to the hotel after her father had turned in, drank a coffee.
The head maid entered with the large birthday cake Vivian had procured from the most elegant bakery in Kristalldorf, and she started a shy ensemble of ‘Happybirthday to you…’, which Lysander, Anastasia and Kiki made louder.
Kiki rubbed her husband’s back as he blew out a solitary candle, then kissed his balding head. He tried not to wince.
