‘We can go back to mine?’ he suggested.
Then Emme remembered the women. Sisters.
This is crazy!
She pulled back and shook her head. She could feel the coldness of the building’s exterior behind her. The warmth of his strong, hard body in front on her.
‘No,’ she said, flustered. ‘I can’t.’
Tristan studied Emme to see if she was serious.
‘OK,’ he said, respectful disappointment filling his smile.
Another couple entered the alley, two male friends talking through tomorrow’s skiing schedule, and Emme and Tristan hurriedly and instinctively hugged each other tight, shrouding their faces into a secret embrace so as not to be recognised. The men passed and they released each other from their cocoon.
Emme took a deep breath.
‘Want me to walk you home? If you are going home…’
‘I am. And I don’t. But thank you,’ Emme said, before walking away, utterly confused.
Chapter Forty
On Sunday morning the Harringtons went to Thun to see Bella perform as the Sugar Plum Fairy in her winter dance show. The journey would take the best part of two hours each way, plus the show itself and dinner. They’d be gone for hours.
After they’d left, Emme went back to bed and lay on her side, watching reels, reading the news on her phone, doing anything to stop her thoughts turning to Tristan. She lingered on the kiss in the tiny street. His soft tongue. His growing hardness.
It had been steamy and it had been flattering. Tristan clearly wanted her, and although she couldn’t work out why and didn’t want to be another notch on his bedpost, it had been the kiss of her life.
Emme didn’t imagine she’d get the opportunity to kiss him again, but if she did, she pondered whether Tristan might just be the tonic to help her get over Tom. He was certainly distraction enough.
She couldn’t think even long enough to focus on her fantasy. She was too flustered. So she got up, showered, and called Cat to ask a favour.
‘Can you spare a few hours to come skiing with me?’ Emme asked, as she paced the apartment in her thermals. She wasgetting better at skiing and thought going out with a friend and not a teacher might be a more fun way to improve.
‘Damn, I can’t– Mrs Kivvi wants to do a tasting. The party is only two weeks away and I’m elbow deep in the kitchen. It’s kind of a big deal. I could maybe come up late afternoon and join you, if you’re ready to go out by yourself.’
Cat’s comment bolstered her. Maybe she was ready to go out by herself. She’d had another lesson with Milla and was gaining confidence every session.
‘No problem, don’t worry, I’ll try myself. I can just about turn!’ Emme joked. She had mastered turning right to left across the slope but was struggling with left to right.
Cat laughed.
‘Hmmm, be careful! Maybe go to KristallKinder, the nursery slopes…’
It was midday by the time Emme got through the tunnel, on the ski train and onto the mountain. Her ski map of Kristalldorf showed her where the kids’ ski park was, and it was a good idea of Cat’s to suggest heading there so she could build up her confidence. Emme started on a very gentle, short incline, alongside a class of what looked like toddlers they were so small, and with each short run Emme gained confidence and remembered, she could do this. And she could do it on her own.
She decided to head to the slopes proper and even found her fortitude faced with the chairlifts. The quiet from above was eerie sometimes, when a chairlift stopped high over a piste and people on it waited for it to restart, but Emme got used to worrying less about why they were stopping– some idiot probably got tangled up in their skisdisembarking like she had her first time– and she started to get used to whole notion of skiing. Dare she say it, she was even starting to enjoy it.
During one still moment as the chairlift stalled while she was on it, Emme watched the skiers below, trying to learn from their techniques, their snaking figures and turns. She watched a group tracking down a gentle blue run. A man with a black-and-white helmet snaked while four nervous skiers followed his trail. He waited for them to catch up on a flat right underneath the stationary chairlift. On the other side of a cluster of pines, deer footprints revealed animal adventures. Two snowboarders flew down and ended up tangled, laughing in a heap on the ground. A child who must have been no older than six whizzed down, beating her parents to the bottom. The guide with the black-and-white helmet pointed to the majestic peak of the Silberschnee, the mountain that everyone seemed to gravitate towards, and Emme followed his finger. Cat had boasted that only the people of Kristalldorf got this exceptional view. The Swiss and the Italians who lived on the other side of it only saw a shadowy, less majestic peak.
Emme listened to the guide, his loud commanding voice cutting through the quiet stillness of the air under the stationary chairlift.
‘Silberschnee means “silver snow”,’ said the indisputable South African accent.
Tristan.
‘But personally, I would have named it the Rosaschnee, as it looks more pink.’ The four tourists, wearing their new helmets, all gasped.
