‘Do you know how long Emme’s going to be? I thought you and I could go out for dinner,’ Bill said, leaning in to kiss his wife on the cheek, but she flinched.
‘Can we have pudding?’ Bella asked.
Lexy looked at them, flustered for a second.
‘Get an ice cream, you can have it in your rooms.’
‘Yes!’ they both cheered.
‘But clear your plates first.’
Bill looked at the scene. Something was obviously wrong. Lexy could barely look at him. The atmosphere in the chalet was tenser than ever.
Harry and Bella negotiated over which flavour ice cream to have and happily went off to eat in their rooms, back with their tablets. Bill kicked his shoes off and put them in the cupboard.
‘When’s Emme back?’ he asked again. ‘I was thinking we could try 1865 tonight, Dirk Detzer said it’s–’
‘I don’t want to go out for dinner,’ Lexy cut him off.
‘I thought after our disastrous anniversary meal last week, we should try again.’
Lexy turned to him sharply.
‘What was wrong with our anniversary meal?’
Bill looked at his wife agog.
‘Anyway, my hunches were right.’
‘About Emme being sexy?’ he joked.
‘Bill!’ Lexy scolded. ‘I was right about her not being a good nanny.’ She put her hands to her temples.
‘What the hell’s going on, Lex?’
Lexy couldn’t tell Bill what Emme had really said, so she dug deep and shuddered.
‘I think Emme has Münchausen by proxy. I think she’s trying to poison the children.’
Chapter Seventy-One
Emme lay across the bed of room 319 looking at the BUZZ doorbell footage on her phone. She scrolled back to what she thought might have been Jenny’s last days in Kristalldorf. She must have left in late October or early November because Emme started at the end of that first week. She whizzed back through the banal comings and goings, of Lexy with the kids. Bill nipping out to see a friend for a drink. Lexy toing and froing to work, and back to 1 November. There was nothing except Lexy leaving and re-entering the apartment with the kids, looking harried and hurried and stressed as she spun her plates without having a nanny.
Jenny must have left by then.
She continued to turn back time. Halloween. Time stamp: 8.58pm. A young woman appeared on the black and white footage, fresh faced and blonde with a long fishtail braid, bringing Harry and Bella home, excitedly clutching buckets full of sweets. But the woman looked troubled.
Jenny.
Jenny had a pretty, wholesome face, Emme could see that Tristan would find her attractive, and a pang of jealousy hit her like a silent punch. Did Jenny know a part of Tristan Emme didn’t? If she was pregnant, she’d alwaysbe connected to him. Envy seared through Emme’s body as she clutched the phone screen and searched back to the previous event. Jenny again, on her own this time, leaving the apartment at 7.18pm, except now her face looked angry rather than troubled. The BUZZ footage had no sound, but from the expression on her face, Jenny was not happy with someone inside. She looked like she might be shouting. Perhaps she was shouting at the children, except her eyeline was too high.
‘Dammit!’Emme said, as she turned her volume up to maximum, just in case she could hear anything, but it was soundless. It always had been.
Emme continued to watch. Lexy came out of the apartment. But her face wore an expression Emme hadn’t seen on her before. She wasn’t helping Jenny in a crisis. Or even admonishing her the way she had just berated Emme. Lexy waspleadingwith Jenny. It was Jenny who looked angry. Her earnest face cracked into frowns and anger. She was shaking her head and reproachful. Jenny was the one who looked like she was telling Lexy off.
‘What the fuck?’
Emme could understand why Jenny would be angry at her predicament, for being pregnant and ditched, and probably out of a job, but why was Lexy beseeching her?
