Walter shook his head. Lumi thought Walter looked tired, and a little confused. She couldn’t know from his grumpy demeanour that this was the happiest he had felt in weeks.
‘How are you, Walter?’ she asked with candour.
‘Desperate. I need to talk to you…’
Lumi laughed gently, belying her shock.
‘Why now? We’ve barely spoken in the decade since I moved back to Kristalldorf!’
‘I’m sick.’ Walter said in a tone that grabbed her attention.
Lumi stepped back, a horror washing over her radiant features. Of course. That’s why the old man looked so tormented.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing serious!’ Walter backtracked with a wave of a hand. He didn’t want to guilt Lumi into engaging with him. ‘You know, just the idiosyncrasies of old age. You’re still a spring chicken but I’m seventy now.’
‘I remembered your birthday.’
‘You did?’
‘I’ve always remembered,’ Lumi shrugged.
Lumi Heikkinen had been a young nurse travelling through Europe, when she tended to Anna Maria Steinherr at the Hospital of the Sacred Heart in Bloch. Lumi had done stints of nursing in Gothenburg, Hamburg and Stuttgart before stopping in Switzerland, because she fell in love with the Glanzfluss valley. When doctors told Anna Maria that her cancer was terminal, Anna Maria and Walter asked Lumi, Anna Maria’s favourite nurse at the hospital, if she would care for her privately at their home up the mountain in Kristalldorf. So that Anna Maria could spend her last days close to her four young children; so that she could die at home.
Lumi didn’t hesitate. She moved into one of the staffrooms at the Steinherr mansion and gave Anna Maria unwavering palliative care. She got to know the children over the course of three months, and held them tight that horrific day Anna Maria died. When Walter asked Lumi to stay on, to offer some consistency and care for the children, and offered to pay her handsomely, she accepted.
In the months after Anna Maria’s death, Lumi tended to the children by day and played cards with Walter in the evenings. Soon they fell in love. Forbidden, treacherous love. And after a night of passion on the bearskin behind the locked study door, Lumi realised she had to go. Their relationship had come too soon for anyone to be happy for them; and even more importantly, at twenty-five she was too young and carefree to take on Walter’s four children.
Lumi fled Kristalldorf and went back to Helsinki, broken hearted. She took on a nursing role at the University Hospital there, secretly hoping that, with time, Walter might come for her. He never did. Lumi never returned. Until after she married Viktor Kivvi and had children of her own, and moved to Switzerland for the advantageous tax breaks. They settled on Kristalldorf after Lumi had said how stunning– and exclusive– it was. For ten years, Lumi and Walter had circumnavigated each other on the social scene– managing nothing more than polite smiles at charity galas and balls– smiles which became frostier after Walter stitched Viktor up with the Seven Summits deal. Walter’s children hadn’t remembered Lumi was the nurse who got them through their worst of times. But now, thirty years after that passionate night by the fire in Walter’s study, they were alone in each other’s company again.
‘Well I have never forgotten a thing,’ Walter said proudly. He wanted to stroke the contour of Lumi’s cheek, the curve of her breasts held beautifully in her shimmering dress– she must be fifty-five now, and she dazzled– but he couldn’t. She was a married woman. Married to his nemesis. Viktor would always be Walter’s nemesis, for reasons he didn’t know.
‘You clearly forgot your senses,’ Lumi laughed, ‘because you got married in a chapel in Vegas. Of all places, Walter!’
Lumi tried to mock him, but Walter could see she still cared.
‘You know how reckless I am; you know how I love playing cards…’
They both remembered their long nights and long conversations over poker, baccarat andtrente et quarantein the Steinherr mansion.
‘You know how I lovedyou,’ Walter added, clutching Lumi’s hand. And she felt completely undone, for the first time in decades.
Chapter Sixteen
First stop for the newfound friends was the sleek and bustling restaurant within the Steinherrhof hotel, where Tiago led Cat and Emme to a quiet booth and low-key instructed them to each grab a plate from the buffet. It was an unspoken rule in Kristalldorf that the workers procured freebies for their friends wherever they could. As Emme surveyed the spread of meats, potatoes, remoulades and salads, and Cat whispered that the buffet cost 150 francs per plate for those who paid, she realised that this option was better than the noodles she’d grabbed at the supermarket on her way home.
‘Fill your boots!’ Cat said with a wink.
A waitress with a name badge reading ‘Camilla’ came over and chatted to Tiago and Cat in English with a Scandinavian accent, and furnished all three glasses with white wine from a bottle labelled Du Kok Estate in a pretty scrawl.
‘They don’t mind us doing this?’ Emme asked Cat in a hushed voice.
‘No man, Tiago is the concierge/night manager here– he does the same for Camilla on her days off.’
From the way Camilla had fluttered her lashes at Tiago, Emme wondered what else he did for her.
As they tucked into their plates of hot meats and coldsalads, Emme drank in a feeling of self-satisfaction as she took a large gulp of South African white. She liked the camaraderie among the workers and this place was beautiful, even if it was a mindfuck. She’d been in Kristalldorf precisely twenty-four hours and already she was dining for free with new friends. She rose a little in her seat as she felt proud of herself for making the leap. Perhaps she could get over Tom and Chrissy.
