Fire and Ice Read Free

with experience.”
    Emily tried a reassuring smile. “It
isn’t experience they’re worried about, it’s discretion. They have this gig
going where celebrities advertise their watches for some sort of charitable
cause, and they often come up for a weekend with one of the sons. The chalet
girl last year blabbed to the paparazzi and broke a scandal about an affair
with a famous Bollywood star who was married or engaged or something. Caused
them all sorts of bad publicity and lost them a lot of clients in India. You
must have heard about it.”
     “So they’ll be thrilled to get
somebody who works for a newspaper. What were you thinking, Emily?” Kate
sounded close to hysterics. “And what are you laughing about?”
    “Just realising how much I’ve
missed you and your excitable temperament, all that emotion and bluntness,”
Emily said with a fond look at her old friend. “You’ll find the Swiss a bit
more reserved.  Now we just need to find your old spontaneous sense of fun
again, which Mickey seems to have temporarily squashed - ”
    “Squashed?” Kate interrupted
incredulously. “I just chucked in my life in London and sublet my flat because
of one email from you and moved to Switzerland for a dodgy-sounding job on the
strength of your reassurance that it was all fine. What part of that is not
spontaneous? It’s just that you know how much I hate lying.”
    “I know. But just remember drama
club and consider it acting, role playing.”
    “Playing Annie every year in high
school musicals doesn’t exactly prepare me for a life of fraud,” Kate retorted
impatiently. “Or any of the college musicals, if that’s what you’re smirking at.
You know I never really liked the acting, I just liked the singing.”
    “And I liked the attention and glamour,”
Mimi laughed reminiscently. “You had the voice, I had the legs.”
    “And the face and the talent,”
Kate finished with a sigh. “Together we were really the phantom of the opera.”
    “Is my voice really that bad?”
Mimi asked indignantly.
    “Is my face that bad?” Kate
retorted, contorting her features into a hideous expression before tossing back
her hair with irritation. “Look Mimi, I can’t act all season. If they aren’t
accompanied by some dramatic melody, I trip up and forget all my lines.”
    “Rubbish,” Emily said
dismissively, obviously not listening to any of her friend’s objections. “Whatever
did you learn in all those years on the stage?”
    “Only a lifetime supply of catchy
little show tunes with lyrics to fit all occasions,” Kate grumbled.
    “Well, that’s always stood us in
good stead,” Mimi tried, grasping at straws. “Can be a useful life skill.”
    Kate glowered in response, pulling
her hair back and twisting it to keep it out of her face. “The problem is the
lying. You know how much I hate it.  Or do lies not count if I sing them with a
catchy show tune?”
    “Don’t consider it so much lying
as allowing people to think things that aren’t quite true,” Emily suggested
with her typically dodgy reasoning. “It isn’t really that different from
embellishing your experience on a resumé, which I’m sure everyone does to some
extent.”
    “To the extent of stealing someone
else’s?” Kate threw up her hands in exasperation. Her mother had always accused
her of being emotionally volatile, too easily excited and too quick to let her
fiery temper rise. She had considered herself more stable in the past few
years, but maybe her emotions had simply been dulled by living with Mickey. It
was something she would have time to think about here. Or while she rotted in
prison.
    Mimi was laughing at her dire
expression. “I promise you you’ll be a natural for the job. It’s just like balancing
all your brothers and sisters growing up, and you have always been responsible.
Now get into character. You are Michelle, experienced and discrete chalet hostess.
On that note, let’s find you something appropriate to