‘Of course,’ Emme said, proffering a spoonful of pad thai to Bella, who looked at the food with suspicion. Or was she looking suspiciously at Emme?
‘Weekends you’ll have some time off– we tend to do family things, don’t we darling?’ Lexy said hopefully to Bill. Again, something felt off-kilter to Emme, like she werewatching a show. Or was Emme just feeling cynical after Tom and Chrissy’s beautiful wedding? She’d wanted to be happy for happy couples but she felt so bruised and sore having watched Tom marry Chrissy.
Bill nodded benignly.
Harry came out of his bedroom with a tablet in his hand and curled his nose up at the dinner.
‘No iPad at the table!’ Bella said, and Emme wondered which rule number that was. Bella clearly liked to boss her older brother around just as Lexy liked to boss their daddy around. Bill removed the device from Harry’s clutches and placed it on the kitchen island before sitting down to eat. As they started, Lexy wittered about the daily comings and goings, the schedules.
Clearly Bill had no interest in the logistics of running this family, he just paid for it with his banking job in Zurich. Emme privately wondered whether the weekdays would be more enjoyable without him around, or whether she would crave his return on Friday nights.
‘In fact, tomorrow we have a wedding, in Italy,’ Lexy said, as she handed everyone chopsticks.
‘Borromeo,’ Lexy added, before taking a small bite of a gyoza dumpling, leaving a theatrical pause for Emme to be impressed or ask more questions. Emme filled the kids’ water glasses. Her sister always seemed to do that with the twins.
‘Bill?’ Emme asked genially, proffering the jug.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
Lexy already had a glass of something sparkling, and she carried on, fizzing and bubbling away, almost as if she were talking to herself.
‘It’s on the lake, not far over the border,’ she said, before remembering. ‘Oh Bill, we mustn’t forget the present!’ She turned to Emme. ‘I always buy the present months in advance, then forget to take it with us.’
Bill glanced up with a furrowed brow as he chased an edamame bean around his plate with his chopsticks. It went flying across the table and hit his wife on the hand.
‘Bill! My ring!’ she snapped, protecting the pink-red jewel on her right hand. Emme looked up.
‘He got it for my fortieth,’ she smiled pompously. ‘It’s a ruby– 1.1 carats, from 1910.’
Emme showed interest, her eyes wide as the jewel glimmered. ‘Bill bought it because it matches my hair but, goodness Bill!’ she scolded him as if he were one of the children.
‘Jesus Lex! An edamame bean is hardly going to take out a rock like that!’ Bill shot, throwing down his chopsticks.
Lexy looked startled and a frosty air set its veil over the dinner table.
Emme looked out of the vast windows onto the balcony, pretending she hadn’t noticed the tension. Steam bubbled up from the hot tub outside. It looked very pretty out there, Emme thought, as she searched for a distraction. Fairy lights coiled around the balustrade and Emme wondered if it was a seasonal thing, or whether they were there year-round.
She tried to lift the mood and focus on the joy of being in a beautiful home, her home for a season, where she could escape the happy newlyweds and regroup. She was not an eighteen-year-old working a summer in America, who hardly even knew herself. She was a competent, confidenttwenty-eight-year-old executive assistant who was usually very good at calming a stressed woman. She could defuse this.
‘Whose wedding is it?’ Emme asked with a charming smile. Weddings were the last thing she wanted to talk about since Tom and Chrissy’s one week ago. She winced internally.
‘Oh, she’s the daughter of a client of Bill’s– a count– she’s marrying a very boring Italian industrialist.’ Lexy said it as if it were a curious match. ‘And she’s awfully plain, despite the parents’ best efforts.’ She looked at Emme, almost conspiratorially in her tone. ‘Just goes to show sometimes even the best nose job can’t save you.’ Lexy giggled, wrinkling her own very pretty, very tiny nose.
‘What’s a nose job?’ asked Bella thoughtfully. She looked up at Emme, as if only she would tell her the answer.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ her mother said, brushing the question under the carpet. ‘Their hospitality though is something else: the count always gets Ducasse to finalise his menus, and white peacocks roam the gardens of the island mansion. It’s very pretty… even if the poor bride isn’t.’
‘Christ, Lex!’ Bill scorned. He nodded pointedly towards Bella as if to saynot appropriateand Emme imagined Lexy often spoke without thinking too much.Emme didn’t think they were appropriate things to say in front of little girls or little boys, but the comment certainly helped her get the measure of Lexy Harrington.
‘The biggest surprise was all four of us are invited, but Bill is a trusted confidant of the count.’ Lexy fluttered her lashes rapidly and wiped red lipstick from the corner of
her mouth. ‘We leave on the first train tomorrow, back Sunday afternoon in time for dinner. Ready for…’ she left another theatrical pause, ‘ski school on Monday!’
The children’s faces lit up and they gasped.
‘Ski school?!’ asked Harry. In the winter months, skiing was also on the curriculum for the children of Kristalldorf.
‘Yeth!’ Bella said making a fist in the air.
