It seemed a bit of an extreme reaction.
‘Is everything OK, Lexy?’
Lexy picked up Emme’s phone and held it up accusingly, thrusting it towards Emme’s nose as if she’d caught her out.
She wanted her phone back but Lexy was holding it like a hand grenade.
‘After what that man did to Jenny?!’ Her furrowed face was furious.
The timer buzzed and Emme switched the oven off and turned around to face her boss.
‘What’s that?’ Emme scowled, tired now of Lexy’s madness.
‘Don’t you wonderwhyshe left town?’
‘All the time,’ Emme replied with a nervous laugh.
‘YourboyfriendTristan gotmynanny pregnant! Left herin the lurch. He even tried to rough her up when she told him she was keeping the baby.’
‘What?’
‘Did he get rough with you?’ Lexy asked with an arched eyebrow. ‘He’s a very violent man.’
Emme thought about their tender lovemaking. His hands were commanding and skilled, his grip firm and manly, but he was never rough or violent. She was utterly confused.
No!
He said he’d never spoken to Jenny. Had Tristan lied to Emme as easily as she’d seen him lie to Vivian?
Emme shook her head. She wanted to cry but pride and anger stopped her. She turned around and looked at theflammkuchenbubbling in the oven, close to overcooked. She hastily removed the tart and took a deep breath.
Why was Lexy being sonasty?Emme turned back. Lexy was still standing there, hand on her hips as if Emme had done something wrong and she were her mother, waiting for an explanation. Except Marian would never look at her with such contempt.
Emme was doing everything she could not to cry.
Tristan? Jenny? Pregnant?
Emme stood tall. She was so exhausted by Lexy’s psychodramas, her increasing demands, herstupid fucking rules. That she bit back without thinking.
‘I assumed Jenny was having an affair with Bill, from the tension in this place.’ She raised her chin.
‘Bill?!’
Lexy curled up her nose. She was still clutching Emme’s phone in her left hand, her knuckles white.
‘Yes. Poor guy needs to let loose somehow. I assumed– if he wasn’t already getting his rocks off in Zurich in the week, that maybe Jenny obliged him at weekends.’
Emme stood defiant.
‘How dare you!’ Lexy scolded, as she slapped Emme, square on the cheek, the force of her right palm turning her head. Emme gasped.
She held her face, looking utterly confused. The mother of the house, her employer and caregiver, was the one being violent.
‘Fuck you…’ Emme said, as she snatched her phone out of Lexy’s hand, looked around the kitchen, grabbed her bag and coat, and left.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
With tears streaming down her face, Emme ran down the steps from Chalet Stern to the centre of town, breathless, shocked, panicking, as she clutched her cheek and wondered what the hell had just happened. She ran straight to the Steinherrhof hotel near the station, where Tiago was helping guests check in at the start of his night shift.
