Rule ten: Always wash your hands and the children’s when returning home– cleanliness is next to godliness!
Emme committed the rules to memory, wondering whether ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ was a joke, and as she drifted to sleep, she was grateful that she had the weekend to settle in before her nannying duties started in earnest on Monday. She had made it. From the heartache of watching Tom marry Chrissy to a remote Alpine beauty so far removed from it. Emme had kept her cool– declaration aside– she had found a new job, and she had moved to what felt like the most picturesque place on the planet. It was daunting and it was exhausting, but she felt proud of herself as she slipped into a deep and heavy slumber.
In the dark and confusion of the early morning, Emme heard the hushed tones of a family on a mission to make their train and the reassuring clunk of luxe locks, but the fatigue of the past week and waking up somewhere new made her fall back asleep as soon as the family had gone.
At 10am Emme woke, got up, tried to work out how to use the futuristic-looking coffee machine, opted for tea instead, and walked around the apartment, comforted by the warmth of the parquet floor. She pulled open the curtains to the balcony and marvelled at the hot tub outside, and the view beyond that. The glorious Silberschnee, so crisp and close it looked like if she stepped out onto the balcony, she could touch it. Yet it sat at the other end of town, beyond pretty wooden rooftops covered in a smattering of snow, the church spire, and all the beautiful buildings that hugged the Glanzfluss.
She took a photo of the view and hovered her thumb over her phone, poised to send the picture to Tom. Things didn’t seem real if she didn’t share them with Tom, and she was desperate to let him see the vista she was looking at right now. How beautiful it was. How much she wanted him to be in Kristalldorf with her. But they hadn’t spoken since he and Chrissy went on honeymoon, since he said a stilted and interrupted goodbye to her the morning after the wedding, so her pride stopped her.
Emme didn’t fancy braving the hot tub when the outside temperature read almost zero on the thermometer by the balcony doors, plus it might look a little indulgent if any of the neighbours saw the new nanny was already in the hot tub. So Emme settled on the interior tub in the family bathroom and turned on the taps. As the bath ran, she decided to call her mother and give her a video tour of the apartment.
‘Oh goodness, look at that!’ Marian said.
It was bigger than the entire Eversley home in Purley.
Emme told her mother she had arrived safe and welland everything was fine– beautiful in fact– and that the children were lovely. Marian still didn’t seem convinced that going from executive assistant to nanny was the right thing for Emme right now, but Emme had said too many times in the past week that the two jobs were probably more similar than anyone would know. Emme then called her sister Lucille who was on her way to the Kids Club at the cinema in Croydon, and gave her a quick 360-degree tour.
‘Lucky cow, blue sky in November? It’s stunning!’
‘It’s freezing.’
‘Well it’s pissing down here… at least you’ve got sunshine. And that view. Jesus, Em, it looks fake!’ Emme stood on the balcony in her pyjama shirt and angled the camera so the Silberschnee sat behind her shoulder.
‘It is beautiful,’ Emme concurred.
‘What’s the family like?’ Lucille asked.
‘Oh you know… minted.’
‘I bet. And the hot dad?’
‘What?’
‘The dad. You said he was a bit of a silver fox on your call.’
Emme suddenly felt self-conscious. What if they could see her? Hear her? The video security at the front door that connected to an app called BUZZ was pretty high-end. Surely a family like that might consider security inside too. Emme walked back into the apartment, closed the sliding doors behind her with the remote control Lexy had shown her last night and looked up to the corners of the rooms, the worktops and the appliances.
No visible cameras.
‘Not my type,’ she joked. ‘But they’re very nice, reallylovely kids.’ Emme said it with a performative self-awareness not unlike Lexy, before Lucille said the film was about to start and they hadn’t even bought popcorn yet.
‘Go! My bath will be ready anyway. Speak soon.’
Emme didn’t know why but she closed the bathroom door before undressing and stepping into the bath. She plunged under the comforting suds and watched the steam curl lazily from the water’s surface, filling the bathroom with a dreamlike haze. All the stress and tension of the wedding, her confession to Tom, the big move to the mountains, came to a head, and Emme closed her eyes and surrendered to the comfort of the bath, the velvety bubbles clinging to her contours like a caress. She stretched out her toes. The tub was so large she could extend her legs out straight, and parted them a little, stroking the soft triangle between her thighs, finding the button that she knew would help her relax further.
She thought of Tom. A sigh escaped her lips. She tried to succumb to her own touch but the thought that filled her imagination was of Tom and Chrissy, naked, entwined together. Chrissy pinned down and exhilarated. Tom leaning over his new wife. On a sun lounger with the Indian Ocean breeze making their skin tingle.
‘Fuck!’
She wanted so badly to make her own body tingle, but the thought of Chrissy, her face as she reached a climax and waves of pleasure rolling down the man Emme loved, was enough to put her off. She frowned. Wiped the suds from her brow, and decided to make this bath functional.
After she was dry, Emme put on her warmest clothes and Lucille’s turquoise and fluoro orange coat and set out to explore Kristalldorf, taking the stairs down to the ground-floor entrance rather than the elevator. She passed the empty apartment on the third floor, and a name sign that read ‘Glock & Grebe’. Then past ‘Muller’ on the second floor– the other couple who lived there year-round. There wasn’t a name by the first-floor apartment door but on the post boxes outside she could see a man called Tomas Edstrom owned that apartment.
As Emme pondered who her neighbours might be, she retraced her path from last night, down the steep, wide steps to the carless road, where bicycles and yumbos passed her. She wound down the zigzag path to the Glanzfluss, which was roaring and gushing as it cut its path from the glacier to the valley. Emme crossed a bridge, figuring that if she made her way back to the train station, she would be in the centre of town.
Orientation was easy in Kristalldorf. The entire town was framed by the iconic silhouette of the Silberschnee, draped in snow and guarding the town like a stoic sentinel. In front of the mountain, Emme could see flashes of green meadows staving off last night’s melting snow between the houses and buildings that obscured them; the river Glanzfluss cut through the town like a silver ribbon, bubbling with glacier water.
Emme drank in the faces of all the people she passed. Skiers clunked through town in snow suits in a kaleidoscope of colours, their boots thudding as they made their way to the ski train or the gondola, each heading out on the two main exits up to the peaks. Locals tended their shops, sweepingthe cobbled pavements outside, straightening displays of snow globes, chocolates and trinkets. Shoppers weaved in and out of the more luxurious boutiques: watches, jewellery, designer fashion brands. Emme was already getting a handle on those shops she would frequent and those she wouldn’t. Though she could always look longingly in the windows of the numerous designer boutiques.
