The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters: a laugh-out-loud romcom!
Jaimie Admans
‘Enchanting. I found myself whizzing through the pages!’ Rachel’s Random Reads (top 500 Amazon reviewer)Escape to beautiful France this summer with this uplifting romantic comedy.Where dreams come true…?Wendy Clayton stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. Instead, she has a ‘nice’ life. Nice job. Nice flat. Absolutely no men. Until her life is turned upside-down when her elderly neighbour, Eulalie, passes away and leaves her the Château of Happily Ever Afters!But there’s a catch: she must share the sprawling French castle with Eulalie’s long-lost nephew, Julian. And no matter how gorgeous he is, or how easily she finds herself falling head over heels, Wendy needs to find a way to get rid of him…Because surely happily ever afters don’t happen in real life?Perfect for fans of Kat French, Caroline Roberts and Holly Martin.Praise for The Château of Happily Ever Afters:‘Enchanting. I found myself whizzing through the pages!’ Rachel’s Random Reads (top 500 Amazon reviewer)‘A fab beach read!’ The Genre Reader‘An engaging, enjoyable read…well worth picking up!’ Nicola Armstrong (top 500 Amazon reviewer)‘An absolutely magical and charming story.’ Pamela Harrell (NetGalley reviewer)‘A lovely summer read!’ Fiona’s Book Reviews‘A wonderful romantic read.’ Karen Whittard (NetGalley reviewer)‘Brilliant book. I loved it, couldn’t put it down!’ Ann Stewart (NetGalley reviewer)
Where dreams come true…?
Wendy Clayton stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. Instead, she has a ‘nice’ life. Nice job. Nice flat. Absolutely no men. Until her life is turned upside-down when her elderly neighbour, Eulalie, passes away and leaves her the Château of Happily Ever Afters!
But there’s a catch: she must share the sprawling French castle with Eulalie’s long-lost nephew, Julian. And no matter how gorgeous he is, or how easily she finds herself falling head over heels, Wendy needs to find a way to get rid of him…
Because surely happily ever afters don’t happen in real life?
Escape to beautiful France this summer with this uplifting romantic comedy. Perfect for fans of Kat French, Caroline Roberts and Holly Martin.
The Château of Happily Ever Afters
Jaimie Admans
JAIMIE ADMANS is a 32-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather and cheese & onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots. She will never have time to read all the books she wants to read.
Jaimie loves to hear from readers, you can visit her website at www.jaimieadmans.com (http://www.jaimieadmans.com) or connect on Twitter @be_the_spark.
Mum, thank you for always being there for me, and for the constant support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. Love you lots!
Bill, Toby, Cathie, and Bev – thank you for always being supportive and encouraging.
Thank you to my Chihuahua, Bruiser, for letting me use him as a sounding board for plot problems and listening intently when I read dialogue aloud to him!
The lovely and talented fellow HQ authors – meeting all of you has been the best part of this!
All the lovely authors and bloggers I know on Twitter. You’ve all been so supportive since the very first book, and I want to mention you all by name, but I know I’ll forget someone and I don’t want to leave anyone out, so to everyone I chat to Twitter – thank you. You make lonely days of writing less lonely, you cheer me up, you prove that ‘it’s not just me’ when it comes to frustrations, and you make it very difficult to close the Twitter tab and start work in the mornings!
The little group that doesn’t have a name, but I think of you as a writing group because we all started off around the same time – Sharon Sant, Sharon Atkinson, Dan Thompson, Jack Croxall, Holly Martin, Jane Yates. I can always turn to you guys!
Chris, Aaron, Bryan Thomas, Annette and Sarah, my lovely Llama and Owlee – thank you for being awesome friends!
Thank you to the team at HQ and especially my editors, Charlotte Mursell and Rayha Rose, for believing in me from the start!
And to you – yes, you – thank you for reading!
To my lovely mum, for always reading the first drafts and telling me they’re good, even when we both know they’re rubbish!
Contents
Cover (#u28febf58-fd1c-5ec7-a897-eb23b83d8cc4)
Blurb (#uf0b6f861-fa9f-56e8-85ea-8024fef2faa4)
Title Page (#u0f4e2642-c734-5559-b117-aae03d03c4b2)
Author Bio (#u85dacb1a-6115-56b9-9487-ff8fda8d6361)
Acknowledgements (#u52d8de51-5087-5e3e-8e2b-2acffceee2ad)
Dedication (#u92684d6a-d510-57c9-9a73-7effe118b5ac)
Chapter One (#ulink_071fa5c1-52f0-57d5-8d03-c416f73e90bc)
Chapter Two (#ulink_853de807-49a5-50eb-9ad7-da8a54c4f317)
Chapter Three (#ulink_905d8ce5-def8-5a5e-8307-2a41d46d77fd)
Chapter Four (#ulink_69aef6e1-42cc-5593-9df4-6bea66b39774)
Chapter Five (#ulink_d9aa2642-b110-50c3-bd7f-257510b82e62)
Chapter Six (#ulink_f24f3721-0064-5d99-867a-883a14928350)
Chapter Seven (#ulink_1b0dd77b-c288-5cf3-add6-a9cf667cf85c)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_52486c7b-fa6e-5847-8a8e-32b08af45dc1)
Have you remembered to add toilet roll to your shop this week?
Bog roll. That’s as exciting as my life gets. I nod at my phone and slip it back into my bag, trying to pretend it was an important business email and not a weekly reminder from my online shop. I want the two men in the room with me to think I’m such a sophisticated person that I can’t even go for one meeting without someone needing me for something vital.
I’m sitting in a solicitor’s office in central London, two places I try to avoid at all costs, and all I’ve seen on my way here are sophisticated, together-looking people, unlike me who couldn’t find a shirt smart enough so used a striped work shirt and put a cardigan over it so no one would notice the supermarket logo. It’s August and twenty-eight degrees outside. It’s way too hot for a cardi, this solicitor has clearly never heard of air conditioning, and the sweat prickling my forehead has started melting my make-up.
Globules of foundation dripping off my eyebrows is doing nothing to make these men think I’m sophisticated, or that I understand a word that’s been said since I entered this room. Nothing makes sense and I can’t grasp everything the solicitor is trying to tell me. I risk a glance at the bloke next to me, who meets my eyes and gives me a gleaming smile. I huff and look away, folding my arms as the solicitor talks, and he goes back to nodding along calmly like being told you’ve inherited a French castle is an everyday occurrence.
‘As I was saying,’ the solicitor says, pushing back thinning grey hair that he looks much too young to have. ‘My client, Mrs Beauchene, left a will. It was written, signed, and witnessed within the last year of her life, and she was of sound mind. In it, she bequeaths Le Château de Châtaignier to you, Miss Clayton. However, we have encountered a snag.’
I look at the bloke to my left again. I don’t know what’s going on but it seems like he is the admittedly very handsome snag.
None of this can be true. Eulalie didn’t have a château. She was ninety-six years old and lived on the seventh floor of a crappy block of flats in outer London that should’ve been demolished years ago. In the winter, her minuscule pension often left her with a choice between buying food and putting the heating on. The only thing she had to bequeath to anybody would’ve been a sticky boiled sweet from the bottom of her handbag.
‘As Mrs Beauchene held dual citizenship, French law applies to her will, and as such she foregoes the right to disinherit any direct descendant. Therefore Mr McBeath…’ He gestures towards the gorgeous bloke on my left. ‘…Is entitled to an equal share of the estate.’
Why don’t solicitors speak English? Is that what they teach them at solicitor school? To completely lose the ability to communicate with other humans? I take a deep breath and smooth my trousers across my legs. This is surely a mistake or some kind of scam. I expect his next line will be something about a Nigerian prince wanting to give me a million pounds, and all I have to do is give him my bank details and pin number. ‘This is a mistake. Eulalie wasn’t a French citizen. I mean, I know she married a French bloke but he died years ago. She’s lived here for as long as I’ve known her.’
‘She still held French citizenship. She owned property in France and paid her French taxes. She may not have lived there, but French law still applies to French citizens. I have all the documentation right here.’
I sneak another look at this Mr McBeath bloke. He’s still nodding along like he understands all this perfectly, and I wonder how he can be so calm. Isn’t he even half as bewildered as I am?
‘But she didn’t have a château in France, and she definitely didn’t have a nephew. She didn’t have any family. She’d lived alone for twenty-odd years since her husband died.’
‘Great-nephew,’ he says in a Scottish accent.
Annoyance flares in me at his flippant response. This is a big deal and he’s acting like someone’s told him it might rain tomorrow. ‘No nephew. This whole thing is a joke. You’re—’
‘If you don’t mind…’ the solicitor interrupts. ‘There is no question of legitimacy here. You, Miss Clayton, and you, Mr McBeath, are now the proud owners of Le Château de Châtaignier, a nineteenth-century castle in a little corner of lower Normandy, France. Once owned by Lord Beauchene, the Duke of Toussion, passed to his wife upon his death, which she now leaves to you, and—’
‘The Château of Happily Ever Afters.’ I let out a breath. Normandy, the duke, a château. Eulalie always spoke about it. She’d told me so many stories of France in the 1950s, of a young girl falling in love with a handsome duke and living in a castle, but I never thought it was real. She loved to read romance novels and I always thought her tales were nothing more than the fantasies of a lonely old lady, stories spun like those in the books she read. Her hands were arthritic and she couldn’t write them down so she told them to me instead.
Both men are looking at me like I’m a few bananas short of a bunch. ‘Eulalie talked about it. She called it “The Château of Happily Ever Afters”. She used to tell me stories about a duke and a huge château with so many rooms they didn’t know what to use them all for.’ I can’t help smiling at the memory. I miss her so much, the easy evenings with a glass of French wine each while we sat in front of her window, looking at the street down below. The smell of the Indian takeaway three doors down, grown men fighting each other in the road, drunken people vomiting on the pavements. ‘How can you be so drunk that you feel the need to vomit in the street at eight p.m.?’ she’d say. ‘People have no sense of refinement these days. In my day, projectile vomiting was saved for strictly two a.m. onwards.’
Eulalie told stories of a different life, of romance and adventure with a handsome duke in France, stories of love and laughter, a million miles away from the grotty streets and mildewed block of flats where we lived. But they were just stories to escape from reality. None of it was real. Was it?
‘Forty rooms,’ the solicitor says, running a finger down a sheet of paper on his desk. ‘Fifteen acres of land. It’s been unoccupied for twenty years. It’s yours to do what you want with now. You can use it as a holiday home, move there, sell it on and keep the money…’
‘I’ll buy her out,’ the fake-nephew says, like I’m not even in the room, and I splutter at his nerve. Who does he think he is?
‘The property has been valued at just under a million euros,’ the solicitor says.
I choke on air. A million euros?
Fake-nephew goes red in the face and starts fidgeting with his cufflinks. ‘Well, maybe not buy her out as such…’
Ha. Serves him right for being so blasé.
‘It’s a very large property, in a good area, with a good amount of land. Châteaux are still popular with expat buyers and always fetch a decent price.’
Decent? I think about Eulalie. How could someone own such an expensive château in France, and live out their days in a leaky London flat approximately the size of a cramped shoebox?
‘Mrs Beauchene also left a letter for you, Miss Clayton.’ He hands me an envelope. ‘Wendy’ is written across the front in Eulalie’s neat handwriting and the sight of it makes me blink back tears. I cannot cry in front of these men. I’m hyperaware of McNephew’s intense eyes on me as I lean forward and snatch the letter off the solicitor much harder than I’d meant to.
‘Mrs Beauchene also left, er, somewhat of a riddle in her will. She requested that a copy of it be given to both parties.’ He hands me and Nephew-git a sheet of paper each, more words scrawled by Eulalie. ‘Allow me to read it?’ He barrels on ahead without waiting for an answer. I get the impression he wants us out of his office.
The Château of Happily Ever Afters is not just a house, or a home, or a castle.
There is magic in the walls, and there is treasure too.
Treasure at the property just waiting to be found. When you find it, you will be rich enough that you will never have to worry about anything again.
But the château will show treasure to you only when you are ready to see it.
It will only commit to you when you commit to it.
It gives the owners what they need but not what they want. It will give them what they need before they know they need it and what they want before they know they want it.
It is yours to find.
The solicitor is reading aloud from a copy as I read Eulalie’s once-neat handwriting, which had become shaky with age.
‘Treasure?’ Nephew-git sits forward. I can almost see pound signs pinging down behind his blue eyes.
‘She was in her nineties,’ the solicitor says. ‘People tend to drop a few marbles by that age, I wouldn’t pay any attention.’
I glare at him. Eulalie hadn’t lost any marbles. Admittedly, going on about treasure and magical walls from beyond the grave is not quite the most sensible thing she’s ever done, but still. She wasn’t a barmy old bat, she just had a vivid imagination. And maybe it was less imaginary than I thought. If the château is real, and Eulalie’s husband really was a duke, what else is real?
‘Mrs Beauchene also entrusted my firm with the key.’ The solicitor holds up a purple satin bag. ‘Which one of you will take it?’
Fake-nephew springs forward with his palm open. ‘I will.’
Sudden rage overtakes the shock I’ve felt since I came in here. ‘No, you won’t. It’s not yours. Eulalie left it to me, only me, right?’ I say to the solicitor without taking my eyes off the horrible McBeath, who holds my gaze with one perfectly plucked eyebrow raised.
‘Yes, but due to this loophole in French-English law, Mr McBeath has an equal right—’
‘I don’t care.’ I narrow my eyes at Nephew-git. He can only be in his late thirties, but his smart suit makes him look older. His dark hair is smooth with hair product and he looks like he’s trying too hard to look stylish. No one is naturally that polished. ‘She didn’t even know you. It doesn’t matter if there’s any truth in what you say. If this château is what I think it is then it meant the world to her. She loved the place, and she wouldn’t want someone she’d never even met to have it. She chose to leave it to me.’
He fiddles with his navy satin tie. ‘But I have a loophole.’
‘And I’ll have the key.’ I hold my hand out towards the solicitor. ‘Eulalie left it to me, not some git with a loophole.’
‘I’ve been called plenty worse than that.’ He grins at me and I force myself to look away. ‘Fine, fine, ladies first.’ He sits back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other, hooking a shiny shoe in my direction. Who bothers to polish their shoes that much?
I hide my shaking hands under my legs. Look at me, standing up to people. I don’t usually do things like that. If you looked up ‘doormat’ on Google, my picture would be there. But I can’t believe Eulalie’s Château of Happily Ever Afters is real, and she wanted me to have it. That means something. It means more than whatever bogus claim this McBeath person thinks he’s got, and I can’t let him win.
The key the solicitor gives me is unlike any I’ve ever seen before. It’s a big brass thing with an ornately scrolled top, heavy in my hand. It’s a world away from your average British door key, and I can’t imagine the kind of door it would open.
‘Any questions?’ The solicitor checks his watch and then glances at the clock on the wall, as if one time check wasn’t enough of a hint.
‘None at all,’ Nephew-git McLoophole says with a grin. How can he have no questions? We’d be here until midnight if I started asking mine, but the solicitor won’t be able to answer them. The only person who can died four months ago.
The loophole-git stands next to me as we lean on the solicitor’s desk to sign the paperwork, spicy aftershave reaching my nose, which is just unfair. He’s too much of a git to smell that good.
The solicitor looks like he’s got more grey hair than he had half an hour ago as he hurries us out of his office, and I stand in the reception room in a daze. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. In my bag is the key to a million-euro château in France, a place of wonder and magic and love, if Eulalie’s stories are anything to go by. And it’s somehow mine. It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in my life, and I can already feel the pull of it, like I want to go there. Maybe it’ll become real if I see it in person…
It’s a lovely idea but it’s not something I can do. I can’t just drop everything and take myself across the Channel in pursuit of some silly fairy-tale castle that my batty old next-door neighbour somehow owned.
Everyone knows happily ever afters don’t happen in real life, château or no château.
As I walk down the steps outside the solicitor’s building, someone shouts ‘Wait!’ in a Scottish accent.
‘Oh, go away, you knobkettle,’ I mutter. When I turn around, he’s right behind me and I flush with embarrassment. Oh well, he is a knobkettle, what does it matter if he hears or not? I don’t know why I’m blushing as much as I am.
He doesn’t go away. ‘What do you want?’ I snap, even though I should probably talk to him because we’ve both just signed documents I didn’t understand that transferred a very expensive château into our joint ownership, but the whole thing sits wrongly with me. Eulalie didn’t have a nephew, and if she did… well, it’s very convenient that he happens to come out of the woodwork when there’s a French château on the cards.
‘I was hoping to catch you. I wouldn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot. Wendy, right? I’m Julian.’
He holds his hand out but I turn away and carry on walking down the steps. I hear him sigh behind me and he catches up as soon as I’ve hit the pavement. ‘Can we talk?’
‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘You don’t even know me.’
‘Exactly.’ I turn to face him. ‘And neither did Eulalie, and yet you still think you’ve got some right to waltz in and claim what isn’t yours.’
‘I’m family,’ he says, fiddling with his tie again.
‘If you cared so much, maybe you should have been part of her life while she was alive. I’m the closest thing she’s had to family for years.’
‘I didn’t know she existed.’
‘You… didn’t?’
‘No. And I doubt she knew I did either. I’ve been looking into the family history since I heard about the will.’ He adjusts his tie yet again, and it makes me wonder why he’s put so much effort into dressing smartly when the suit is clearly making him uncomfortable. ‘Eulalie had a brother, right?’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But they had a huge argument about seventy years ago and never spoke to each other again?’
‘Yeah…’ I say slowly, not wanting this to go where I think it’s going. Eulalie probably mentioned her brother twice in all the years I knew her. The fact he knows about him means he’s probably genuine.
‘He was my grandfather. He died years ago now, but what I gather from my father is there was some massive disagreement and the family split in two. My grandfather went to Scotland and settled there, obviously Eulalie married this French duke and did pretty well for herself.’
It suddenly makes more sense than it did earlier. She did have a brother who she hadn’t been in contact with for decades. She wouldn’t have known if he had children and grandchildren, her nephews and nieces. I feel myself softening towards him and have to stamp it down. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re really her nephew or not. Nothing changes the fact that she left the château to me.’
‘Maybe she’d have left it to both of us if she’d known I existed.’
I glare at him, but he’s probably not wrong. Eulalie would have loved a nephew, even if he lived miles away in Scotland. She might’ve had a grudge against her brother, but that wouldn’t have extended to his children and grandchildren. If she’d known this Julian existed, she’d have been asking me to teach her how to use Skype and enquiring if pensioners got a discount on rail fares to go up and meet him.
‘So, what do you want to do with the old place then? Should we sell? We’d get half a million euros each. Even with the exchange rate, we’d do pretty well out of it. I don’t know about you but half a million euros wouldn’t go amiss in my life.’
‘It’s not for sale. Eulalie left it to me because she knew I wouldn’t sell it,’ I say, every bit of softness I was feeling towards him disappearing in an instant at the mention of money. Of course that’s all he’s bloody interested in, like all bloody men.
‘What do you intend to do with it then?’
‘I don’t know. This has come as a shock to me. But I will never sell it, no matter how much it’s worth. It’s nothing to do with money. Eulalie loved that château. She talked about it all the time, I just never had a clue that it was an actual place.’
‘And this whole riddle-y, treasure-y thing… She was a looney, right? That’s just the nonsensical ramblings of a mad old fogey? Lost a few marbles?’
‘No, she hadn’t lost any bloody marbles, she was…’ I trail off as I realise what he’s doing. He’s trying to wheedle information out of me without asking outright if there’s some kind of treasure hidden at the château. ‘I mean, she had a vivid imagination and was prone to fantasies. She told so many grand stories, you could never be sure of what was real and what wasn’t…’
‘And you obviously think there’s something in it.’
‘I doubt it. If Eulalie had treasure of any kind, she wouldn’t have lived in the flat she did. She had no money. She lived hand to mouth on her pension.’ This isn’t a lie. Eulalie’s riddle is surely just another one of her stories. If she had money hidden away anywhere, she would have used it years ago.
‘Are you going to open your letter then?’
I raise an eyebrow at the cheek of him. ‘What, here? In front of you? My private letter, to me personally?’
‘She could’ve given you coordinates or something. It’s not right if you have an unfair advantage.’
‘An unfair advantage to what?’
‘Finding the treasure, of course.’
Oh, for God’s sake. The money-obsessed git. ‘There is no bloody treasure.’
He nods. ‘Right.’
I bet he gets punched a lot. He seems like the kind of person who would get punched a lot.
‘I’ll remind you of that when I find it before you and use it to buy you out.’
‘I won’t sell.’
‘I’d make you an offer you can’t refuse.’ He raises an eyebrow in a way he probably thinks is sexy. A three-day seminar on the history of plumbing would be sexier. Really, it would.
‘I doubt that. Some people aren’t soulless bastards obsessed with money.’
He lets out a laugh that sounds genuine, making his eyes crinkle up. ‘Wow. You really don’t like me, do you?’
I plaster on a false smile. ‘Put it this way, if you were on fire and I had a bottle of water, I’d drink it.’
That makes him laugh even harder and I frown at him, unsure whether he’s being patronising or just has a terrible sense of humour. ‘On that note, goodbye,’ I say, pushing past him and stalking off down the street, hoping he doesn’t follow me this time.
Of course, I’ve gone the wrong way and have to hide behind a corner until he leaves before I can double back and find the train station for the next train home.
I don’t know what’s got into me today. I can’t believe I called him a soulless bastard. I’ve never said anything like that to a stranger before.
Men bring out the worst in me. Particularly this one, obviously.
Chapter Two (#ulink_a465fddc-836e-50d6-a69b-47a93a83ecc4)
There’s a little thrill of excitement growing in me as I sit on the train home. I try to stamp it down because this doesn’t change anything. Owning a château in France makes no difference to my life.
Well, part owning with Nephew-git McLoophole. If there’s a loophole for him, hopefully there’s a way for me to loophole him right back out again.
It’s raining as I rush home but I’m so caught up in everything that’s just happened I don’t notice myself getting wet until it’s too late to bother with an umbrella. I can’t get home quick enough and it’s nothing to do with the rain. I’m desperate to read Eulalie’s letter. There must be some answers in it, maybe an explanation about why she never told me it was a real place, and something about this ridiculous treasure riddle. She wasn’t the joking type, and her will is a pretty odd place to start making jokes.
At home, the lift is out of order again and my wet shoes squeak against the stained floor as I drag myself up the stairs. As I go into my own flat, I look at the battered door next to mine, wishing she was still there, that she’d come out with a batch of hot cakes because she’d heard me coming in, that she’d offer an explanation for how any of this château thing can be real.
Inside, the smell of mould hits me like a wall and I open a window and let in the rain and the stink of stale curry from the Indian takeaway three doors down. The smells combine to make a stench that slithers through the flat like low-hanging fog.
Why would anyone live here if they could afford to live somewhere better? Why would she stay here if she owned a castle in France?
Maybe she was like me – she just didn’t need anything more.
It’s fine. It’s nice, even, if you don’t look too hard or think about things too much. The rent is reasonable for being near London, the smell of the Indian almost goes away if you keep the windows shut, and the mildew isn’t that noticeable after a while. This is Britain, after all. Everyone has some level of damp problems.
Maybe Eulalie had the right idea. Why try to make things better when everything is already good enough? When people get ideas above their station, they invest money in businesses that are doomed to fail and their hearts in people who are doomed to break them – that’s when things go wrong. If you have enough to get by then why try for more? Getting by is fine. That’s probably why Eulalie didn’t live at her château, or sell it for the money. What did the solicitor say it had? Forty rooms? Forty rooms is ridiculous. No one needs forty rooms. It would be a nightmare. I have one bedroom, one kitchen-slash-living room, and one bathroom, and it’s all I can do to keep it clean. And what would you even do with all those acres of land? Fifteen acres is mad. You’d need six circuses to cover half of it.
The numbers on my alarm clock are blinking 3.31 and, instead of sleeping, I’m reading the letter for the six hundred and ninetieth time.
My dearest Wendy,
I know this will come as a surprise to you once I’m gone, and that’s exactly the way I wanted it. The Château of Happily Ever Afters is real. It’s real, and it’s yours.
Let my death be the push you need. You’re only young, but you live the life of an old woman. You live inside a comfort zone that’s getting smaller each day, and will continue to do so until it suffocates you.
The Château of Happily Ever Afters speaks to people. It calls to people who deserve a happily ever after, and you, my dear, most definitely do, which is why I’m passing it on to you with the sincere belief that you will find a happily ever after there too. And I hope that one day, in many years’ time, after a long and happy life, you will also pass it on to someone who needs it.
Take a chance, Wendy. Tell me you can hear it calling. Go there, give the old place my love, let it bring you a happily ever after like it brought me.
Forever,
Eulalie
I’m trying to be offended by her attempt at meddling in my life even from the great beyond, but she knows me better than anyone, and I know she’s got a point. All right, I don’t exactly live on the edge or throw myself into things headfirst, but I tried that once and it didn’t work out. Taking chances, taking risks, trusting people – those are the kinds of things that always end badly. Sticking to a normal routine and a quiet life is the only thing that stops everything going wrong.
Eulalie was always telling me to take a step outside my comfort zone, and I did sometimes in little ways, like buying a different brand of teabags, but all I got from it was a week of tea that tasted like you’d asked a local stray cat to pee in your cup.
But it doesn’t matter if you never throw yourself outside your comfort zone, does it? Eulalie might have told fancy stories of love and adventure, but I’m not the kind of person to get on a train and go in search of them. Love doesn’t exist and adventure is for Indiana Jones. There aren’t really French dukes who whisk you away to fairy-tale castles and throw lavish balls for the nobility of France. It’s just a lovely fantasy to lose yourself in for a while.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I lie there staring at a water stain on the ceiling, listening to a drunken man puking up his onion bhaji on the street outside, thinking about how early I’ve got to get up for work in the morning. But then that little fizz of excitement returns.
I bet you don’t get people vomiting outside The Château of Happily Ever Afters. I bet it’s peaceful there. Sunny. Glamorous. About as far away from here as you can get.
When I wake up in the morning, I know I’m going. After lying awake most of the night, trying to convince myself I’m stupid for even considering it, I’d assumed I’d wake up this morning with my sensible head back on, but my mind is filled with the château. Eulalie talked about it so much that getting a mental image is easy and, as I look around my grotty flat, all I can think is one thing. Why would I not go there?
It’s now or never. If I don’t do this now, I’ll talk myself out of it. I’m owed holidays from work, and although I haven’t reserved them in advance, I could book my time off now and phone in sick this week. I could lie to my boss. I could find my passport and go to the place Eulalie loved more than anywhere in the world.
I have two choices. I can go to work as normal. Put on my uniform and get the bus in like any mention of a French château has been nothing but a dream. I can stand with my table in the supermarket aisles, getting in the way of every customer, hawking whatever product the store wants hawked today. I can learn my lines perfectly, deliver them to customers with such chirpiness that the exclamation point is audible, and try to push whatever food the shop has been paid to push. I’m a sampler in a supermarket bakery, a job that goes against the very core of what you think you know about human nature: it makes people turn down cake.
It’s the kind of job you do solely because you get paid. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a day at work, or felt valued, or like my skills as a baker were being taken into consideration. A dog could do my job if it wouldn’t eat all the cake samples.
Or I can take a risk. Eulalie was like a mum to me. My own mum died a few years ago, and Eulalie was there for me through every moment, and she became the closest thing I had to family. Losing her has left a huge hole in my world, even though it wasn’t sudden, and we both knew the end was coming by the time she died. Doing what she wants me to do, and visiting the place she loved so much… it suddenly seems more important than anything else.
Chapter Three (#ulink_c64df766-1430-5955-80a5-9de9040e54b6)
Until today, the biggest step I’ve ever taken outside of my comfort zone is doing the weekly shop in Sainsbury’s instead of Tesco. As I sit in the back of a taxi with a driver who chatters at me in French, oblivious of the fact I can’t understand a word, I realise that my comfort zone has been well and truly left behind.
I’ve never been to France before and, on reflection, it was a mistake to tell the chauffeur de taxi this, as he’s spent the past hour giving me a complete history of the country and the delights of the Normandy region. At least, I assume that’s what he’s doing. He’s been rattling on for ages and the only word I’ve understood so far is the ‘bonjour’ when I first got in.
The countryside here is beautiful, green hills that stretch out for miles, dotted with handsome black and white cows. The roads close up as we get closer to the château, lined with overhanging trees and hedgerows bustling with birds. I have no idea where we’re going. The château is so remote that even Google Maps didn’t cover it, and as we trundle down an overgrown lane that looks only suitable for tractors, I’m sure he’s taking me to the wrong place. There is a château in the distance, popping into view occasionally through the trees, but it’s massive, and it only gets bigger as we get nearer.
This can’t be it. It’s huge. And completely alone. There’s nothing else around for miles, just fields and trees and more cows.
When the driver turns in, I’m convinced he’s gone to the wrong place, because this is insane. I cannot own a place like this. Well, half own. It’s the kind of place you’d expect the queen to live. If Buckingham Palace was in the middle of the French countryside, this would be it. There’s a moat. After we’ve turned into the property and driven down a driveway so long that if the airports ever get overcrowded, planes could easily come in to land on it, there’s an actual moat and an actual bridge that the taxi drives across. I’ve never seen a moat in real life before. It’s impossible that I now own a house that has one.
There has got to be a mistake.
‘Are you sure this is the right place?’
‘Oui,’ the driver says.
Even I can translate that.
Across the bridge is a large square courtyard and gravel crunches under the car tyres as we come to a stop.
It’s been a long drive and it’s cost me more than I’d budgeted for, but trying to understand French trains and buses and however many connections it would’ve taken to get this deep into the Normandy countryside wasn’t something I could cope with today.
The driver is getting my suitcase out of the boot before I’ve even had a chance to process it. After giving him almost every one of the euros I hastily drew out of a cash machine in a French train station this morning, following a panicked realisation that I was in France and completely unprepared, with only my British bank card and a British twenty-quid note in my purse, he leaves me standing in the courtyard, wondering how I’m going to call him back, because he’s obviously brought me to the wrong place.
This can’t be it. I mean, I know the solicitor threw around figures like a million euros, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this big. The building itself is so huge it seems ridiculous that anyone could live in it. Row after row of double windows stare down at me, five floors of them, a tall pointed roof, and towers at each corner, their spires stretching up into the blue sky. I’m not sure if it looks like a castle from a fairy tale or the kind of place you’d need Scooby Doo regularly on hand.
I feel small as I stand in the shadow of the house and look around the courtyard, nothing but land for miles. Trees and grass. Weeds taller than me. The odd ramshackle outbuilding. I suppose it must all be my land now. Well, mine and Mr Loophole’s. I have no idea how much fifteen acres actually is, but it sounds like a lot.
Something in the moat makes a splash. I jump because it’s the loudest noise I’ve heard since the taxi left. There’s no road and no neighbours or other noise-making things nearby, and it makes me nervous. At home, the neighbours are literally on top of you and you need earplugs to get through a day. Privacy and solitude might not be a thing, but at least there’s someone to hear you scream if you get attacked. I step a bit nearer to the moat, but the water is murky and I think better of it. Whatever made the splash was probably a snake. A poisonous one. That would be just my luck.
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself even though the sun is hot and bright. I’m alone in the middle of these huge grounds, with this huge house, in a country I’ve never been to before, with a language I don’t understand. What am I doing here? There’s stepping out of your comfort zone and then there’s bungee-jumping out of it with a broken rope and no parachute. That’s what I’ve done. I should just go home.
Even as I think it, I know I can’t. I didn’t leave the flat before the crack of daylight, lie to my boss about being ill, take two trains and a painfully expensive taxi, and spend half the day travelling only to go home before nightfall.
This is just a holiday. People take holidays all the time. People go to visit French châteaux all the time. All right, so they don’t usually own them and probably pay a pretty penny for the privilege, and that’s the point, isn’t it? You can’t be given a château and not visit it. That would be silly. This is like a free holiday.
If only I was a person who liked holidays. What I like is routine, my usual day and everything being at its right time and place. I despise the disruption of holidays, the weeks of packing and planning and last-minute panics on the way to the airport. I met my ex on holiday. He wanted to go everywhere and try everything, and look how well that turned out. I haven’t been on holiday since. And that’s exactly the way I like it.
Eulalie was always encouraging me to go somewhere. How fitting that my first holiday in years is at her beloved Château of Happily Ever Afters. Even as I stand here, I see her stories in the reality. She told me of going skinny-dipping in the moat and being caught by a group of local villagers. The moat might not look too appealing for swimming now, but decades ago? Maybe. She said there was a bridge, told me of the time the girl and the duke painted the iron railings white on a sunny day so hot that the paint had dried in the tin. The bridge railings are covered in cracked, peeling white paint now.
The key is a weight in the pocket of my jeans, and I turn back to the building, a silent pull, like it’s inviting me inside. Eulalie believed this place was magic, that it would bring a happy ending to everyone who lived here. I’m not sure I believe in magic, and I definitely don’t believe in happy endings, but Eulalie wanted me to have this place. She wanted me to come here, and that’s more important than routines and comfort zones.
I drag my suitcase up a crumbling set of steps to the gigantic front door. Something is carved in one of the stone pillars and I scratch lichen off to see what it says. Le Château de Châtaignier.
Well, I guess it really is the right place. Eulalie never told me it had a real name. She’d christened it The Château of Happily Ever Afters and that was that. If she’d told me the real name, I could have Googled it. Would I? Maybe. Why was she so determined to keep it a secret? Why did she speak of her time here so often but never once tell me it was real?
The key crunches in the lock and I have to shove all my strength against the double doors to prise them apart, the wood no doubt swollen after many winters of rain and summers of drying out. Old varnish flakes off as they creak open and I hold my breath and stay perfectly motionless for a few moments in case the whole lot falls down. Everything is still and the air is damp and stale. Most of all I notice the absolute silence, not even the hum of a refrigerator that I’m so used to at home.
But one thing’s for certain: if this place really is capable of giving everyone who lives here a happy ending, there must be some ecstatic spiders about.
Inside, the house has the smell and look of a building whose only occupants in the past twenty years have been of the eight-legged variety. Dust has settled like dirty snow, deep enough that you could build a snowman with it, and there’s some kind of cobweb Inception going on, where even the cobwebs have got cobwebs of their own.
I stand in the imposing entrance room in awe. The ceiling is the highest I’ve ever seen. There’s ornate moulding around the doors, the faded flamboyance of delicate wallpaper, which is now hanging off the walls, upturned furniture, and a draught coming in from multiple broken windows.
Everything about the place is shrouded in decaying vintage glamour.
I go up the grand double staircase, my hand trailing along the banister, each wooden bar smooth with a hand-carved rose at the base. The first floor is a maze of hallways and so many rooms that I don’t know where to start. I’ll need a map to find my way around.
The first room I go to is a bedroom. It feels hollow, even though there’s an empty wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a moth-eaten armchair, and a double bed still made up, a burgundy bedspread covering it, undisturbed for years. The windows are grey with dirt, but even the window handles are ornately carved metal as I push them open. I stand there and breathe in fresh air, warm in the late-August heat, suddenly realising that if there’s one thing this place needs, it’s fresh air. My first task will be to find all the windows and open them. For a moment though, I brush dead flies off the ledge and lean on my elbows to look out. The room is at the front of the château and gives me a perfect view of the driveway. There are trees on either side of the courtyard and their leaves wave in the breeze, overgrown reeds bending over and dragging their tips through the water of the moat, and somewhere nearby, birds are chirping at each other.
It’s so peaceful here.
No sooner than the thought crosses my mind, a noise reaches my ears. A car engine. The booming thump of a radio playing too loudly. Squealing brakes as it takes a corner too fast. And then I see a flash of red between the trees. It’s getting closer. This cannot be a good thing.
I watch from the window as the car turns in, speeding down the driveway towards the château. Any semblance of peace is shattered as the music thumps out, loudly enough to shake the entire building. The car is a sleek sports thing with the top down, and I squint to get a look at the driver. Long-ish dark hair tamed with product and a pair of sunglasses far too big for his head. Oh no. I’d know the smirk on his face anywhere. It’s the bloody nephew-git.
I should have known. Why didn’t I guess he’d come here too? Of course he would. Men like him are all the same. Money, money, money. He’s got no interest in Eulalie or the château, other than what it’s worth, no doubt. But he’s heard the word treasure, hasn’t he? I should’ve known after all that unfair advantage stuff the other day.
The shiny red car squeals to a halt in the courtyard with a spray of gravel, and the noise finally stops.
‘Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a small willy. No need to advertise it any louder,’ I mutter.
I watch as he gets out of the car and stretches muscular arms, his shirt riding up at the movement, showing a hint of tight stomach, and I shouldn’t feel so disappointed when he pulls it back down again. I can’t tear my eyes away from how low down the buttons lie on his chest – not until he pushes his sleeves up, anyway, easily redirecting my attention to his tanned forearms. He slides his sunglasses off and tucks them into his pocket, pointing his keys over his shoulder as he walks away from the car. The beep-beep of his car locking brings me back to my senses. Bloody hell, what is wrong with me? The French sunshine must’ve gone to my head. Anyone would think I was ogling the enemy. That pretentious knob with his roofless poser car. No way would I ogle him. As if.
He stands in the courtyard and looks up and I jump back from the window. He must’ve seen me. Bollocks.
What am I going to do? I don’t want him here. This doesn’t belong to him.
He’s going to come in here. I can hear gravel crunching under his feet as he walks towards the house.
And I’ve left the door open.
I slip across the landing and half-slide down the stairs in my rush to get to the front doors. I nearly fall out of them rather than close them. As I stumble to right myself, I look up and meet his eyes for one split second as he’s walking up the steps, then I heave the doors together and slam them shut. I twist the key too fast and it makes such a severe grinding noise that I expect it to come out in two pieces. I lean against the doors with a sigh of relief.
I don’t even realise what I’m doing until he bangs on the other side. ‘Oi! What are you doing? Let me in!’
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, hoping he’ll go away.
Shutting him out was a silly, childish thing to do. I know that. But I also know he doesn’t belong here. Eulalie wouldn’t want a complete stranger turning her house upside down because of some silly riddle about treasure.
I didn’t come here because of some half-arsed mention of surely non-existent treasure. I came because Eulalie wanted me to come here. Not for money. He doesn’t care about what Eulalie wanted. He doesn’t care about this house and how much she loved it.
It feels like everything has spiralled out of control since the meeting with the solicitor, and that key is the only solid thing I have. It’s the only power I’ve got over the man outside. I got here first and I locked him out. Winning.
Er, probably.
I hear the crunch of his shoes over the gravel again. Good. He can go back to his fancy car and zoom away with his lustrous hair trailing behind him. I wait for the sound of the engine starting up as he leaves in defeat.
It stays eerily quiet for a few minutes and I try to figure out what he might be doing out there. He’s probably walking around looking for another entrance. I haven’t had a chance to find out if there’s a back door yet, but hopefully it’s still locked. The place would’ve been ransacked by burglars if there were any unlocked doors. He can’t get in. I just have to keep telling myself that.
I get more antsy as the minutes tick by. He hasn’t left yet. And I can’t see what he’s doing. I wish these doors weren’t solid wood and had a window to peek out of.
Just as I’m thinking about going back upstairs and peeping out of the open window, his voice filters in from outside.
‘Wendy! Come to the window!’
I can’t. I can’t go up there and talk to him. I’m not good at talking to people. It’s probably why I’m so bad at my job. Pushing samples of food is mostly about engaging with people, talking them into trying something new and then buying it, and my boss is constantly on my case about poor sales figures.
If I talk to him, he’s going to want an explanation for why I slammed the doors in his face, and the only one I can come up with is that I’ve temporarily forgotten I’m thirty-three and not an immature eight-year-old.
‘I know you’re in there!’
I leave the wooden support of the front doors and creep up the stairs. Not that creeping makes much difference – everything in this house creaks loudly enough that someone in the next village can probably hear it. I get to the landing and do an SAS-style crawl across the grimy floor so he can’t see me from outside, until I’m lying on my belly under the window.
‘You’ve got to come to the window eventually,’ he shouts in his Scottish accent. ‘If you don’t close it, I’m going to find a ladder and climb in, so you may as well just show yourself.’
Bollocks. I’m only on the first floor, he wouldn’t need a very big ladder, and there were a few outbuildings in the grounds. You can be sure there’s a ladder lying around somewhere.
‘What do you want?’ I shout back.
‘A Lotto win, a milky latte with just a hint of macadamia nut, and one of those human-sized hamster wheels!’
‘Well, the only thing you’re going to find here are dust bunnies the size of bowling balls, so you may as well leave.’
He laughs. ‘Okay, we’ll start with the basics. How about access to my own property?’
‘This isn’t your property,’ I shout out. ‘It’s Eulalie’s, and she wouldn’t want you here.’
‘We both signed documents that say otherwise.’
I stand up, suddenly seething at his nerve. ‘I don’t care. You’re obviously only here because—’
‘Nice dust.’ He nods towards me.
I glance down at myself. Great. I’m wearing more dust than a sock that’s been lost behind the washing machine for two years, and when I look behind me, there’s a body-width trail where I’ve unintentionally cleaned the carpet with my clothing.
‘Anyone would think you’d been hunting for treasure,’ he says from the courtyard.
I look down and glare at him. ‘Well, I haven’t. Some of us are interested in more than money.’
‘Yeah. You’re here because you loved my great-aunt so much, and you—’
‘She wasn’t your great-aunt. You didn’t even know her.’
‘You weren’t even related to her!’
‘Family is about more than blood. She chose who to leave this place to, and it wasn’t you.’
‘Maybe she would’ve if she’d known I existed.’
I huff, trying to ignore the niggling voice in my head. Eulalie and I were the closest thing each other had to family, but if she’d have known she had real family, would I really be the sole inheritor of this place? Probably not. ‘Well, you’re obviously only after one thing and you’re wasting your time. There’s no treasure here.’
He nods towards me again. ‘And you know that because you’ve been rolling around on the floor trying to find it?’
‘No, I haven’t. But I knew Eulalie. She had a vivid imagination and she liked to tell stories. This treasure is her idea of a laugh. It doesn’t exist.’
‘From what I gathered at the solicitor’s office, you said that about the château too, and yet…’ He gestures at the building in front of him.
All right, he’s got a point about that, but this is different. I can kind of understand that Eulalie would have kept quiet about owning a castle in France. I know she loved it too much to sell it, and any form of renting it out would’ve been too much work at her age, but if she’d had a treasure chest full of gold sitting in the basement, she wouldn’t have struggled to make ends meet.
He’s still looking up at me expectantly. ‘Yeah, well, I have the key and I’m not letting you in.’
He laughs again, like I’m too pathetic to be taken seriously. I ignore the voice in my head that says I am being utterly pathetic here.
The laugh turns into a falsely sweet smile as he looks up at me. ‘You might have the key, but do you know what I’ve got?’
‘Your ticket home, with a bit of luck.’
He grins. ‘I’ve got all the patience in the world. I’ve got no job to get back to. I’ve got no reason to leave this courtyard. So I hope you stopped for food supplies in your rush to beat me here, because I did. I’m set for weeks, me. I’m going to stay right here. So, if I can’t get in, you can’t get out. Think about that when you’ve eaten the packed lunch your mummy made for your trip back to the school playground.’
I go to respond but nothing comes out. Bollocks. He’s right, of course. I haven’t eaten since the train switch in Calais this morning. Food didn’t even cross my mind. Somewhere downstairs, there’s my handbag with a half-eaten packet of chocolate digestives in it… No, actually, I ate those in the taxi. No one in their right mind would leave half a packet of chocolate digestives.
‘Oh, sod off,’ I say, pulling the window shut hard enough that the glass threatens to make an escape.
Great. My stomach has already started rumbling, I’ve got no ingredients to make anything with, ordering a takeaway would involve having to open the door, if I could get one ordered in French anyway, and I can’t get out without him getting in.
The sun is dropping in the sky, casting shadows across the courtyard from the trees, and I hide at the corner of the window and watch as Nephew-git McLoophole saunters back to his car. He does something to make his seat tilt back, then he sprawls into it, putting his feet up on the dashboard. He lifts his sunglasses out of his shirt, slides them on and settles back with his arms behind his head. He looks like he’s going to bed in a luxurious hotel, not a small-willy-syndrome car.
Well, of all the things that have gone wrong in my life lately, this is definitely at the top of the list. My grand plan was to refuse him entry and send him packing with his tail between his legs. How did I end up getting myself trapped in here with no way out other than surrendering? And why didn’t it even cross my mind that, in a house that’s been unoccupied for twenty years, any food left in the cupboards would be likely to have sell-by dates so old they’d be written in roman numerals?
As I stand there trying to brush muck off my once-lemon T-shirt, ignoring the rumbling in my stomach, which has got more insistent since his smug display outside, my mind wanders to treasure.
What if he has a point? All the times I sat and listened to Eulalie talking about an English girl falling in love with a French duke, the lavish château they shared… I always thought they were embellished versions of reality. I knew her husband had been French and they’d spent their married life in Normandy, but there was so much glamour and luxury in her stories, and she was such a fan of unrealistic romance books, and she had been alone for so long. I always assumed she was rewriting her own memories into a love story, that there was some truth, but mostly she was just a lonely old lady who wanted to remember an ordinary life as extraordinary.
And now I’m standing in the middle of her stories. Her husband really was a duke. There really was a château. The moat with a bridge across it. The grand ballroom I peeked into downstairs. It was all real. Is it really that far-fetched to think there might be some truth in Eulalie’s treasure riddle?
All Loophole-git out there wants to do is squeeze as much money as he can from this place. He’s already said he wants to sell. He doesn’t care about the personal meaning. Eulalie could have sold this place years ago and made herself rich. But she chose not to. Just as she chose to leave it to me because she knew I wouldn’t. She didn’t have children, but if she had, she would have left it to them as a family legacy. I’m not family by blood, but I know this place is worth more than money. But money is my only chance of getting Nephew-git McLoophole out of my life. And it’s the one thing I don’t have.
Unless there’s treasure.
And I find it first.
If there is some kind of treasure hidden here, I can use it to buy his half of the château. It’s the only way of un-loopholing him and setting things right again. He’ll get what he wants, which is undoubtedly money, and I’ll get to keep the château, which is what Eulalie wanted. It’ll give him a fair share of the inheritance, which she would probably have wanted him to have if she’d known him. If there’s treasure here, it’s my only chance to make things right.
It will be a nightmare with him involved. He’ll march in and take whatever he wants. There’s a lot of antique-looking furniture lying around. He could gut the place and what right would I have to stop him? None. The only thing my co-ownership means is that he can’t sell the château without my consent, but he’s so good at loopholes, I even wonder how watertight that might be.
If there’s any hint of truth in that treasure riddle… it would be worth looking. While I’m in here and he’s out there.
Chapter Four (#ulink_bcda3c91-ff46-581d-bdd4-92024e528ab8)
It’s a good plan until it gets completely dark outside. Although there are plenty of lights in the château, most of them fancy crystal chandeliers, I can’t get any of them to switch on. The electricity supply has probably been cut off after so many years of the place being empty. Which is just great when you’re treasure hunting in the dark. I didn’t think to bring a torch with me, and after using my phone’s flashlight to poke around a couple of rooms, the battery has died, and without an electricity supply, I can’t charge it.
It’s getting quite dangerous actually. It’s pitch-black inside now and there aren’t even any streetlamps to let in light from outside like there are at home. I have no way of telling where I’m going or what I’m looking at, my legs are covered in bruises from walking into things, and this is an old house that makes a lot of creaking noises. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t keep looking at shadows and trying to work out the difference between the noise of a pipe expanding and an axe murderer coming to kill me.
Just as I’m thinking of giving up until morning, I see something. I’m on one of the lower floors, although I have no idea exactly where. I’ve lost track of how many sets of stairs I’ve gone up and down. I’m in a small room, much smaller than the others in the house, and as I’m about to walk out, a glint of silver catches my eye. I crouch down to the floor and try to see through the wooden boards in the way. There’s a hole at the base of the wall that’s been boarded up, and whatever that silver thing is, it’s hidden between the walls.
It would be a good hiding place for treasure…
I scoot backwards and kick out one of the boards. It’s so old that it crumbles under the heel of my shoe, and I scramble to clear enough space to get my arm through.
I stretch my hand in, trying not to think about the cobwebs that cling to me. It’s still out of reach though, and I break more wood away and try again, getting further, to my shoulder this time, but still not far enough. Only one of the wooden boards crumbles, leaving a slim gap into the wall cavity; the other one is rock solid and I need a crowbar to prise it off, but it’s too dark to go hunting for tools.
Right, come on, Wendy. Enough pratting around. If Loophole-git McNephew was in here, he’d be through that hole by now with the promise of treasure, and you wouldn’t be getting a sniff of it. I’ve got to get this before he does.
I look at the gap. It doesn’t look completely impossible. I mean, if I breathe in and squash my boobs down a bit… surely I could get in there with just a bit of squeezing. What could possibly go wrong?
I’m stuck.
I am stuck halfway into a wall in a French château, my phone is not only dead but in the upstairs room where I left it, and no one knows I’m here. No one is going to come looking for me.
And I locked out the only person within a five-mile radius.
Well, this is just great, isn’t it?
I wriggle and struggle, trying every way I can think of to free myself, but I have to face facts.
I am going to die here.
Within hours of arriving, I will disprove Eulalie’s belief that this place will give anyone who lives here a happily ever after.
It should be renamed The Château of the Grim Reaper.
I’m going to starve to death. Unless the spiders eat me first.
Or that noise upstairs actually is an axe murderer.
I lose track of time as I lie there waiting for death to take me, trying to work out what will kill me first. Starvation? Dehydration? Choking to death on dust, or suffocation by cobweb? Being cannibalised by French spiders?
I’ll wait until morning and then start shouting for help. There’s got to be a neighbour somewhere nearby who might hear. Maybe Nephew McGit will hear and phone the fire brigade to break in and cut me free. Even letting him in is better than dying. Probably.
I must have dozed off eventually, despite the wooden board digging into my stomach, because the next thing I’m aware of is laughter. Laughter with a Scottish twang to it. And a shutter noise and flash of light.
‘Did you just take a photo of me?’ I shout at him, so annoyed that I suck in a mouthful of cobweb and choke on it.
He’s laughing so hard he can barely catch his breath to answer me. ‘I came in here to find nothing but a pair of legs sticking out of a wall. Of course I took a photo. Hold on a sec while I put it on Instagram.’
‘Don’t you dare!’ I kick out at him and miss. ‘You bloody loophole git!’
‘Or Julian, as people tend to call me,’ he says. ‘And it’s nice to see you don’t believe there’s any treasure and you weren’t looking for it.’
‘I wasn’t.’
He laughs again. ‘No? Then what exactly are you doing halfway inside a wall? Please do tell, because I can’t wait to hear the explanation for this.’
I huff and roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. ‘There’s something in here.’
‘Something that might be treasure?’
‘Maybe.’ I’m sure he can hear how sulky I sound, even though everything is muffled through the wall.
‘Ah-ha! So you do think there’s something in that riddle!’
‘No. I just saw something… and I thought… it doesn’t matter.’
‘Let me guess, you thought you’d lock me out to get a head start, and if you found anything, you’d hide it and pretend you hadn’t?’
‘No.’
‘Okay then,’ he says cheerfully as his footsteps head away. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘No, wait!’ I shout after him. ‘I might need a bit of help here.’
I imagine him folding his arms across his chest. ‘Why should I help you when you can’t even answer a question honestly?’
‘What, the treasure?’ I sigh. ‘Oh, come on, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing!’
‘I wouldn’t have made you sleep in your car all night!’
‘It’s August in France, for bollocks’ sake. What were you worried about? Freezing to death in a freak ice storm?’
‘It’s just not a very nice thing to do.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I mutter, sounding the least sorry I’ve ever been. ‘Besides, I’ve been stuck in a wall all night. I think I got my comeuppance, don’t you?’
He laughs. ‘I don’t know. I could leave you there a while longer to find out…’
‘Julian!’
‘Julian what?’
I huff, more annoyed at my own stupidity than at him. ‘Julian, please, you’re my only hope.’
‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Hold still. I’ll use this hammer to pull the other board out.’
‘Where did you get a hammer from?’
‘Hanging on the other wall. This is some kind of tool cupboard.’
Great. It’s a shame I didn’t see that last night. I could’ve used the hammer to pull the silver box closer and not got into this mess in the first place.
I don’t dare to take a breath as he prises the other board away and I can finally move for the first time in hours. I scramble and push myself backwards to get out of the wall, bringing a cloud of dust with me. Julian holds out his hand to help me up but I smack it away and struggle to my feet by myself. I don’t need Nephew-git’s help with anything else, ever.
Every part of me is stiff and aching from being stuck in place for so long, I’m covered in dirt and debris from the floor, and I’ve got cobwebs in places I didn’t know cobwebs could exist. I pull my hair out of the plait it’s in and shake it so hard that I start coughing and spluttering again.
‘Would you like some water?’ He holds a bottle out to me.
No, not from him. But the only tap I found in the château yesterday spurted brown goo at me and, of course, I didn’t bring any of my own.
I choke a garbled agreement and grab the bottle off him, not intending to be quite so snatchy.
I know he’s watching me as I pour water down my parched throat and I try to block him out. It’s not easy. Through the curtain of my hair, I can see his brown boots crossed over each other where he’s leaning against the wall, and despite the musty, damp wood smell in this room, his aftershave has somehow overpowered it. I glance up and he’s still looking at me. ‘You haven’t poisoned this, have you?’ I ask, wondering if he’s waiting for me to drop dead, and if it’s a question I should have considered before I poured half of it down my throat.
‘I suppose you’ll have to wait and see,’ he says with a shrug.
I start gagging and try to spit out what I’ve already swallowed, but he starts laughing. ‘I’m joking, Wendy. I considered it but I left the cyanide at home. Thought the French police might have something to say about it if I got searched on the ferry.’
‘Then why are you looking at me?’ I snap, annoyed at myself for falling for it.
‘I’m not. I’m looking at the centipede in your hair.’
I scream and start slapping wildly at my head.
He laughs that infuriating laugh again. ‘Bloody hell, it’s only a wee centipede. I’ll get it if you hold still.’
It’s not easy to stay still when every inch of your skin is crawling, but I try to stop flapping around as he strides across the room and reaches his big hand out. I squeeze my eyes shut and let him extract the wriggly thing from my hair.
Instead of stamping on the centipede like I thought he would, Julian crouches down and sets it back inside the hole I’ve just escaped from. ‘Couldn’t you have killed it?’
‘Why should I kill it? It’s been in this house a lot longer than you have. Why does it deserve to die because you’ve invaded its home?’ He stands back up and faces me.
I go to snap something in response but my eyes lock on to his blue ones and my train of thought stops abruptly. He’s right, isn’t he? Why should I be angry at him for not killing an animal, even an insect with far too many legs? It’s kind of nice, actually. I’ve never met anyone who would think twice about stamping on an insect before.
I try not to look at the hint of chest showing under the charcoal-grey shirt that’s so far open he may as well not be wearing one. I’ve never been particularly taken with muscular men, but no one can deny that his chest curves in all the right places.
‘Wendy?’ He clicks his fingers like it’s not the first time he’s said it.
When I look up, he’s smirking again and there’s laughter in his blue eyes. He knows exactly what my attention was on. ‘Hmm?’
‘I said, how far did you get in your search last night? Did you find anything interesting before you attacked the helpless, unsuspecting wall?’
‘Not very,’ I mutter, glaring at him, mostly because there’s no point in even trying to pretend I wasn’t looking for it. I’m just as bad as him. ‘We’ve got no electricity so it was pointless after dark. We’ll have to phone the electric company and get them to switch us back on. I expect it’s been shut off after so many years of the place being empty.’
‘Nah. No way does a place this far out in the countryside get electricity from the grid. There’ll be a generator outside somewhere that probably needs a good oil-up. I’ll see if I can find it later.’
I hadn’t even thought of that. And I’d thought I was being clever to deduce that the electric had been cut off. He’s undoubtedly right. Again. ‘How did you get in here anyway?’
‘I went for a walk and met our neighbour. Lovely old chap, lives at a farm about three miles down the road. Doesn’t speak a word of English, of course, but turns out he was good friends with Eulalie and her husband, and when she left, she gave him the spare key so he could keep an eye on things in exchange for grazing his sheep in our empty pastures.’
‘If he doesn’t speak a word of English, how did you get all of that?’
‘I speak fluent French.’
‘Of course you do,’ I mutter as I pull my hopefully insect-free hair back. You could fit what I remember of French on the bottom of an ant’s foot. Bonjour. Uno, dos, tres… Oh wait, that’s not even French, is it? I should’ve picked up a phrasebook at the train station yesterday.
‘So, this treasure then…’ He nods towards the wall. ‘Shall I see if I can reach it or would you like another try?’
‘I think I’ve crawled into enough holes for one day, thank you.’
He smirks again and I look away, trying to concentrate on the room I couldn’t see in the dark last night. He’s right about this being a tool room of some kind. There are work benches around the walls and mops and buckets and a broom propped up in one corner, an array of tools attached to the far wall. It’s only a tool room and it’s bigger than my entire flat at home.
Julian reaches the box with no trouble and I frown at the back of his head as he pulls it out. Is there anything he doesn’t make look easy? I’d obviously nudged it closer with all my struggling. That’s definitely it.
‘So…’ I watch in anticipation as he stays crouched on the floor, smoothing his hand across the top of the dirty silver box. We could be holding a fortune here and he’s bloody feeling the indentation of whatever French wording is etched on the top.
‘Oh yeah, this is definitely treasure.’ He looks up at me with that smirk again. ‘Congratulations, you’ve found a bonafide French rat box.’
‘What’s that?’
His face screws up in revulsion as he opens it. ‘You know. You put the rat poison in, the rats go into the box, eat the poison and can’t get back out again, so they snuff it in there. Well done, you’ve found the twenty-year-old bones of a dead rat. Here.’
He hands the open box to me and I shriek and stumble away. ‘Seriously? I nearly died for a dead rat?’
He bursts out laughing as he fits the lid securely back on the box. ‘Nothing like a bit of melodrama first thing in the morning. I didn’t realise getting stuck in a wall was such a near-death experience.’
‘I was alone! It was scary! I didn’t think anyone could get in to help me!’
‘Yeah, well, if you will insist on acting like a child and shutting the door in people’s faces. The solicitor never did say how old you are but I assume it’s in the single digits. Did someone have to sign a permission slip for you to come here?’
‘At least I’m not wearing a shirt that was clearly made for someone much younger. You must’ve got that from the children’s department,’ I say, even though he looks better than he did in the suit the other day.
‘Which is a step up from your current fashion choices, which seem to be showcasing the contents of a floor that hasn’t been cleaned since the nineties.’
I start brushing off the grime that’s ingrained in my clothes, trying to ignore him as he starts undoing the buttons of his shirt. ‘Why are you doing that?’
‘Well, if you have such a big problem with my shirt then it’s only fair I take it off. If you wanted a proper gawp at my abs you should’ve just said so.’ He slides the shirt off his tanned shoulders, flexing his bloody huge biceps and rolling his six-pack.
My eyes don’t know where to look first and I force myself to turn away so I don’t give him the satisfaction.
‘Okay, so…’ he says after a long silence. ‘Thanks for saving my life, Julian. Sorry for locking you out and for the crick in your neck from making you sleep in the car all night just so I could get a head start on the treasure hunting and keep it all from you.’
‘It wasn’t because of that.’
He doesn’t say anything but I can practically hear the raised eyebrow.
‘Fine,’ I mutter. ‘Sorry. And thank you for rescuing me.’
‘You’re welcome. I’m always happy to help idiots in distress.’ He claps his hands together. ‘There, now that’s settled and it’s daylight, I’m going to have a look round the grounds and see what’s growing on our fifteen acres.’
I hate the emphasis he puts on ‘our’. He’s doing it on purpose. ‘I was just about to do that.’
‘No, you were going to stay stuck in that wall until the end of time. Maybe after a few weeks of starvation, you’d have lost enough weight to free yourself.’
I turn around and glare at him, the shirtless git. His mention of starvation has made me remember how hungry I am. Now he’s in, there’s nothing to stop me going out to get food. Surely the village can’t be far away.
‘Seeing as you trying to kill me with that look of pure hatred has failed, shall we go and have a look round together? I’m not sure I can trust you not to fall down a well or something.’
I glare at him even harder but he continues smirking with his smug face and laughing eyes.
That feeling of being alone out here earlier? That was a good feeling. I miss that feeling.
Chapter Five (#ulink_d34f60ab-3da7-5aed-8f75-3408756d6297)
Outside, the early morning sun is high in the sky and I squint up at it like a mole seeing daylight for the first time. It makes my eyes sting and start watering. Julian slides his sunglasses out of his jeans and puts them on. Of course, I didn’t think to bring sunglasses with me.
He stands at the top of the main steps and takes a deep breath, looking around. Past our courtyard, driveway, and the little access lane, there’s nothing but fields and trees for miles in front of us, the rolling green of Normandy hillsides. There’s no road, no traffic noise, nothing but the occasional squawk of a bird.
‘It’s so peaceful here.’ Julian breathes in again and exhales slowly, and I do the same, trying to breathe in some of the French countryside and block out the man beside me, even though he hasn’t really done anything wrong. Yet.
‘I live in the centre of Glasgow,’ he continues. ‘You can’t go five minutes without a siren or a police helicopter or someone yelling at someone else.’
‘Same,’ I mutter.
‘Where are you?’
‘Outskirts of London, on a road with the nearest takeaway to a nightclub that chucks out at three a.m.’
‘Oh, I bet that’s fun,’ he says with a laugh.
‘Supremely.’
He glances over at me. ‘Ever been to Normandy before?’
‘No. You?’
‘Nope. I work in Paris sometimes but it’s busy there. It’s nothing like this.’
I work in Paris sometimes. I want to mutter it under my breath. Posh git.
He looks at me with that smirk again and I swear he knows what I’m thinking. Instead of saying anything, he walks down the steps and I follow him, annoyed at myself for following him. I want to go in the opposite direction and be brave enough to look around on my own, but it didn’t exactly end well last night, and there’s a lot of land behind the château. Having someone around, even him, makes it seem less imposing somehow.
‘We have a moat,’ I say, rushing to catch up with him.
‘Have you won any prizes for your powers of observation lately?’
‘Ha ha ha,’ I say, just to let him know how utterly hilarious I think he is.
He lets out a genuine laugh. ‘Yeah, I’ve got to admit the moat is impressive. It’s a shame it’s not cleaner. Can you imagine how awesome it’d be to literally swim around the house?’
‘I don’t want find out. I think there’s enough things already swimming around in there.’
‘What, like fish? Don’t tell me you’re scared of them too?’
‘I’m not scared of… there are fish in there?’
‘Yeah, I saw them last night. Maybe you were too busy rushing inside to start treasure hunting to notice them.’
‘I wasn’t…’ Oh, what’s the point? He’s never going to believe I shut him out for any other reason than to get a head start on the non-existent treasure, and why does it matter if he does anyway? Give it a few days and I’m sure he’ll have turned the place upside down, discovered for himself that dead rats are the most exciting things hidden in these walls, and gone on his merry way back home, leaving me to enjoy my holiday in peace.
At the back of the château is a huge area that was probably a lawn once but now bears a resemblance to the Little Shop of Horrors. ‘If there’s not something in there shouting “Feed me, Seymour” I’ll be surprised.’
He turns round and smiles at me. ‘That’s one of my favourite movies.’
‘Mine too.’ I meet his eyes and feel myself smiling involuntarily, remembering the classic old film about the man-eating Venus Flytrap. I realise what I’m doing and give myself a good shake. ‘I mean, yeah, alien plants are about what I’d expect from your level of intelligence.’
He gives me a look but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. I can’t insult him for liking a film I’ve seen at least twenty times.
The bridge across the moat at the back of the château is nothing more than a footpath through the water that looks like it’s sunk over the years.
‘Look.’ Julian crouches down on the edge of it, the wide expanse of his back in front of me as his shoulders flex in a not completely unattractive way. I force myself to look into the water where he’s pointing and not at his tanned skin. He wants me to look at him – why else would he take his shirt off? – and I’m not giving Loophole-git McNephew what he wants. Ever.
In front of us, two large fish are near the surface.
‘They’re catfish,’ he says, sounding delighted. ‘Feel free to put your hand in. It’s not like those whiskers will give you a nasty sting or anything.’
The fish shoot away when his shadow falls across the water and he makes a noise of disappointment. ‘We’ll have to buy some fish food for them – poor wee things are probably starving.’
Of course he’s going to feed something that wants to sting me. It reminds me of how hungry I am. I’m about to admit this but quickly think better of it. I can’t let him know he was right. Again.
Outside of the main garden area, there’s so much greenery that I wouldn’t know where to start. Weeds and bramble bushes stretch out for miles. It looks like there might’ve been paths between them once, but they’ve long since disappeared into the undergrowth. You can imagine people setting out to explore it and never being seen again. It’s the kind of sight that makes me want to run back inside and not come out. At least inside you can get around without being attacked by angry-looking plants and whatever might be living in them, even if there are a few creaky floorboards and crumbling walls.
Julian is looking around in awe. ‘We’ve got our own orchard.’
‘How can you tell?’ I squint in the direction he’s pointing. ‘There’s just a load of green things.’
‘Otherwise known as trees.’
‘Oh, ha ha. I meant the brambles and grassy stuff that’s taller than me.’
He laughs. ‘They’re called weeds, Wendy. They tend to happen when a garden isn’t maintained for twenty years.’
‘This isn’t a garden. A garden is a little square of lawn with some flowers around the edges. This is Day of the Triffids, this is.’
He looks at me but his sunglasses hide most of his face. ‘Call me presumptuous, but you’re not big on the outdoors, are you?’
‘I like the outdoors just fine,’ I mutter. ‘As long as it stays out and I stay in.’
‘How can anyone not like the outdoors?’ He takes a deep breath in again. ‘All that sunshine and fresh air.’
‘The vague smell of cowpats, the wet grass that’s soaked right through my shoes… and there’s a daddy longlegs crawling up my trousers.’ My voice gets higher as I bend down to slap it away. What is it with the French insect population attaching itself to my body today?
‘You don’t get places like this at home. Not where I live in the city, anyway. They’ve tried, but even the parks are surrounded by gridlocked traffic and angry people.’ He sighs happily. ‘Now this, this is the proper outdoors.’
‘Says the man whose hair looks like it will melt in direct sunlight.’
‘Gotta love hair insults coming from the girl with hair that looks like you borrowed it from a recycled mop.’
I pull it back and try to smooth it down. ‘I was stuck in a wall all night!’
‘I slept in my car!’
‘You’re really pernickety about that, aren’t you?’
‘It’s an uncomfortable car and I’d already spent twelve hours driving it to get here yesterday.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not made for comfort, is it? It’s made to show off how small your willy is.’ I feel a little spike of guilt as I say it. I’m being horrible to him. I’m not usually this unkind to complete strangers, even if he is one of the more irritating strangers I’ve met lately.
He’s clearly got enough confidence in his willy size to ignore the insult. Instead, he picks up a fallen tree branch and uses it to start beating a path through the bramble bushes. ‘I really want to know what’s growing in that orchard. Stand back, and watch out for snakes.’
‘Snakes?’ I gulp.
‘They like undergrowth and places they won’t be disturbed. A garden that hasn’t been visited in twenty years is ideal.’
‘Are these snakes likely to be poisonous?’
He glances back at me with a smirk. ‘Yep. Very poisonous, and very, very big.’
I want to cry.
Coming here was a terrible idea. This is why people have comfort zones. Because you don’t meet poisonous bloody snakes on the way to work in London.
By the time we reach the orchard, I’ve been scratched by three hundred bramble bushes, bitten by a million mosquitoes, and stung by at least one horsefly. I’m sweating, thirsty, still starving, and Julian hasn’t even broken a sweat. He bashes a path through the brambles with ease, whereas I get tangled up just looking at them. Our land is an overgrown mess to me, but Julian is fascinated by it. He keeps stopping to point at things and saying names like I’m supposed to know what any of these weeds are called. Personally I’d call them all Steve and be done with it.
The orchard is less overgrown than everywhere else, but you still need a scythe and a few axes to get through it.
‘Wow,’ Julian says.
I’ve got to admit, he has a point. There’s green grass still visible through the weeds here, unlike the rest of the grounds, and there are rows and rows of trees, tree after tree stretching into the distance. The biggest ones are perfectly in line, and I picture whoever created this orchard, maybe Eulalie’s husband, maybe someone from decades before, out here with a tape measure, lining them up perfectly. Surrounding them are a hotch-potch of smaller trees, sprouting from anywhere and everywhere, no order to them at all, and I wonder if they’ve self-seeded from the fallen harvest of the bigger trees. There are still rotting shells on the ground, remnants of whatever fell last year, I guess, although looking up at the trees gives me no clue of what they’re growing. They’re covered in green spiky balls. Why does everything in this country look like it wants to hurt me?
Even with the sunglasses hiding most of his face, I can tell Julian’s impressed as he looks around.
‘What are they?’ I ask him.
He stretches a long arm up and pulls down a branch, and I absolutely don’t watch his forearms flexing as he runs a finger across one of the green, spiteful-looking things. He might be a git but I’ve got to admit he’s a nice-looking git.
He smiles a soft smile and shakes his head. ‘Chestnuts. I should’ve known.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Le Château de Châtaignier. The Chestnut Castle.’
‘That’s what it means?’
He nods.
‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, stating the obvious. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the name might have a meaning, and I definitely couldn’t translate it. ‘Chestnuts as in… conkers?’ I think back to conker fights in the school playground. ‘Because they’re meant to keep spiders out of houses and so far they’re clearly doing a terrible job.’
‘Completely different thing. Those are horse chestnuts, these are sweet chestnuts – y’know, the roasting on an open fire at Christmas kind?’
‘Oh, right.’
‘They’re not common to this region. I expected this to be an apple orchard. That’s what Normandy is known for. I wouldn’t mind betting this is the only chestnut orchard around here. Someone named their château this for a reason.’ He looks at me. ‘This was someone’s livelihood once. There’s enough of a chestnut harvest here to sell for weeks in the autumn. This whole place looks like it was set up to be self-sufficient with all the different areas and the outbuildings.’
‘You can tell that under all the weeds?’ I ask, trying not to be impressed that he knows this sort of thing.
He shrugs. ‘Yeah. I bet whoever lived here grew everything they ate. Do you know any of the history of the place?’
I shake my head, not bothering to point out that, until this week, I didn’t even know the place existed.
‘These trees are way older than Eulalie or her husband. They’ve been here for at least a hundred years.’
I’m not sure if I’m impressed he can tell that or creeped out, picturing the ghosts of long-dead chestnut farmers from centuries ago watching us in their beloved orchard. Maybe Scooby Doo would come in handy after all. ‘Are you going to pick any? I saw a couple of open hearths in the house last night to roast them on.’
‘It’s way too early for chestnuts – they’re nowhere near ripe. But in the autumn, definitely.’
Something pings in my brain at that. We won’t still be here in autumn, but I’m sure the squirrels will enjoy them. ‘You know a lot about plants,’ I say instead. He doesn’t look like someone who knows much about plants. He looks like someone who knows a lot about hair products and gym memberships.
‘I like plants. They’re reliable. You give them what they ask for and they do what they say they will.’
‘If plants are saying anything to you, I’d be concerned.’
‘Ha ha,’ he says in a high voice, mimicking me. ‘I just mean they’re predictable. You give them the right conditions and they’ll do what nature intended them to. There’s give and take with them. You help them and they help you, unlike people.’
The hint of bitterness in his voice intrigues me, and then I wonder why I’m even thinking about it. ‘Same could be said of certain people I’ve met lately.’
He raises an eyebrow above his sunglasses. ‘So far this morning I’ve rescued you from a wall and saved an innocent centipede from death by hair. What exactly have I done that’s so bad?’
I go to shout something at him but I stop myself. ‘Eulalie didn’t leave this place to you,’ I say calmly. ‘She didn’t even know you. She wouldn’t want you destroying the place looking for money.’
‘Is it me who broke into a wall and got myself stuck there for a box of dead rats?’
‘No, but—’
He doesn’t let me finish. ‘If she wanted you to have this place so badly, she should’ve been better prepared. She must’ve known French law entitles direct descendants to a fair share and she must’ve known there was a possibility that her brother had children.’
‘Oh please, you’re a great-nephew. That’s barely even a relation!’
‘You’re not even a relation! What moral high ground do you think you have to stand on here?’
‘This is what she wanted.’
He shakes his head. ‘She was insane. She’s going on about treasure hidden here like there’s some pirate’s bounty buried in the basement or something. It’s madness.’
‘She was not…’ I start to defend Eulalie’s sanity when my brain realises what he’s said. ‘You don’t think there’s any treasure?’
‘I find it highly unlikely.’
‘Why are you here then?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Same reason you are, I suppose. If you inherit a French château, you can’t just ignore it. I had to see the place.’
A part of me believes him. Eulalie’s mention of treasure is so ridiculous, it’s laughable, but the sensible side of me is screaming at myself to be careful. He’s obviously only saying this to throw me off. All he’s after is money, like all men. It’s a classic diversion – if I think he’s not interested in treasure, he can hunt for it in peace while I swan around obliviously believing it doesn’t exist.
‘And I’m glad I came,’ he carries on. ‘Despite the welcoming party. This place is incredible. I’ve dreamed of someday retiring to somewhere with even a fraction of this land. All I’ve ever wanted is my own orchard.’
‘It’s a bit overgrown,’ I say, distracted by wondering if I should give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘It’s just naturalised. All it needs is some care and attention and some fixing up and it could be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not wasting my holiday here fighting with weeds that will have grown again by the time I have another chance to visit. Given the short notice this time, I doubt my boss will approve any time off for at least another year.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a food ambassador,’ I say, surprised he’s interested enough to ask. I haven’t exactly given him reason to make small talk with me so far, have I?
‘What’s that?’
I blush. ‘I man the sample stands in a supermarket. You know that woman who’s always in the way of the exact shelf you need to get to, trying to offer you centimetre-square bits of cake while chattering about how lovely it is? That’s me.’
‘Sounds riveting,’ he says with a laugh.
‘What about you?’
‘I’m a fitness model.’
‘Of course you are,’ I mutter. I don’t know why I expected anything else. Plumbers don’t have abs like that.
He raises that eyebrow above his sunglasses again.
‘So when are you leaving?’ I ask, trying to sound nonchalant, like it doesn’t matter to me at all when he leaves. Behind my back, my fingers are crossed for luck. It’s Wednesday now, so surely he’ll be off by Friday? Sunday at the latest?
‘I’m not.’
‘You’re… not?’ He means, like, this week, right? I’m not leaving this week but I’ll be gone on Monday?
He looks at me and his mouth breaks into that tight-lipped smile. ‘Why would I leave? This place is half mine. I have every right to be here whenever I want, and I have a key now so you can’t play your little games any more. I have nothing to keep me in Scotland. I drive down to London for photoshoots all the time, so it’d be just as easy to nip back from here. This place is a dream, and I see no reason to leave.’
‘But… but…’ I stumble over my words, they get tangled up with my desire to knee him in the bollocks.
‘Oh, what a shame you’ve got a fixed job you’ve got to get back to in, what, two weeks?’
‘Four,’ I mutter. ‘Three if my boss needs a doctor’s certificate for the sick days I’ve taken this week.’
‘And I have no ties. I can stay here as long as I want. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.’ He grins and, in that moment, he achieves a previously unaccomplishable feat – he gets even more smug than he was before.
‘You can’t just move in!’
‘I didn’t say I was going to move in, but I could if I wanted, and you couldn’t stop me.’
‘But it’s not yours!’
‘No, it’s half mine, so I’ll tell you what, I’ll only move into half of it, and you can do whatever you want with the other half in the two weeks’ holiday your boss gives you next summer.’
Somehow the thought of him being here and me not being here is worse than us both being here together. I feel like Eulalie entrusted me with her beloved château and it’s my responsibility to protect it from everything, and that includes him. How am I supposed to do that when he can come and go as he pleases? He could knock the whole place down in his hunt for the treasure and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
All plant-loving, non-treasure-hunting softness I was feeling towards him disappears instantly. ‘You’re a git, has anyone ever told you that?’
‘Probably about as many people who have said the same to you.’ He grins with pride at the snarky comeback.
‘No wonder you prefer plants. That bramble bush is nicer than you and it’s scratched me twice today. I prefer something that’s drawn blood to you.’
‘I’m wounded by your dislike of me.’ He puts his hand on his heart and bows his head. ‘Wounded, I tell you.’
He couldn’t be more annoying if he tried. It’s been a long time since I shared a house with anyone, and my roommates back then were annoying enough to make me want to move back in with my mum…
I wonder how annoying I’d have to be to drive him away. If he won’t leave out of choice, he’s giving me no option. I can’t spend my holiday with him, even if he is nice to insects and plants. The only thing I can do is make him leave. I’ve spent my life repelling men. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
He seems to know what I’m thinking because he’s looking at me with that bloody eyebrow raised again.
‘Apparently, I’m a terrible housemate,’ I start. ‘It would be a shame if you—’
‘Got so annoyed I decided to leave?’
I shrug.
He smirks. ‘When I was younger, I had a revolving door of roommates. I learnt every trick in the book. If you think you can outdo me in the annoying-housemate ranks, bring it on.’
For the first time since I saw his car pull in, I feel a genuine smile break across my face. I suddenly have a purpose in life again. I will get this man out of my château. ‘Bring it on.’
Chapter Six (#ulink_1c1f5e16-c708-59fb-aa22-6ceaac7f66a6)
Julian’s still oohing and ahhing around the orchard when I hear a voice coming from out front. ‘Hello? Anyone home?’
A woman! An English accent! I zoom back through the bramble pathway so fast that I snag my clothes and nearly fall over myself in my rush to see who’s there.
There’s a woman with short blonde hair standing in the courtyard.
‘’Ello, lovely,’ she says, smiling when she sees me. ‘Hope you didn’t mind me popping me head in. I saw the car in the driveway with the British number plate and thought I’d say hello.’
I take in her spiky blonde hair with blue and green tips, her matching eyeshadow, which would’ve made anyone else look like an eighties escapee but somehow works for her, and, more importantly, I take in the fact she’s standing next to a cart full of French baguettes. I run at her so fast that she takes an involuntary step backwards.
‘Oh my God, you’re English and you have food. I think I might love you. Are you selling these?’ I’ve grabbed one and ripped the top off with my teeth before she’s had a chance to answer. ‘Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.’ I don’t know why I’m bothering. My words are so muffled around the huge mouthful of bread that she’d have an easier time understanding Cousin Itt.
The woman watches me with a look somewhere between fear and amusement.
I make indeterminable noises and flap my hand in front of my face, trying to tell her I’m not a hyperactive giraffe, I don’t usually behave this way, and I’ve bitten off far too much bread and am struggling to chew it up.
I’m actually out of breath by the time I swallow, swiping the back of my hand across my face as I’m no doubt covered in crumbs. I’m desperate to take another bite, but force myself to manage a conversation with the poor woman I’ve just attacked and stolen a loaf of bread from.
‘Sorry,’ I say, blushing at how much of a mess I’ve made. ‘It’s been a long night and I’m so hungry I was just wondering what the grass might taste like. You turned up at exactly the right time.’
She laughs, bright and jingly. ‘I’m a mobile baker. My career revolves around turning up at the right time.’
‘A mobile baker? I’ve never heard of that.’
‘Yep. I get up at the crack of dawn every day, bake everything in my kitchen at home, load it all into my cart, and do my rounds. Only around my local streets and to the village. There’s a boulangerie there but it doesn’t open until lunchtime and when it does there’s a queue for miles. This way, I catch people as they’re looking for breakfast, just at the right time.’
I blush again at how rabid I was. Instead of shoving the whole baguette in my mouth, I snap the gorgeously crusty crust and pull pieces off, trying to remember how civilised people act.
‘I’m Kat.’
‘Wendy,’ I say, my words muffled around yet another mouthful of the best bread I’ve ever tasted. ‘And you’re English. I didn’t expect to find any English people out here.’
‘There are a lot of expats around these parts. Land is cheap, the commute back home isn’t too bad, and everything’s just that bit nicer over here. Well, you must know that already if you’re moving in.’ She nods towards the château, her long earrings jangling with the movement.
‘I haven’t moved in,’ I say, trying not to choke on the baguette I’m making short work of. So much for being civilised. ‘I’m just here on holiday for a few weeks. After that, it’s back to the grindstone in the UK.’
‘Where are you…’ She stops mid-sentence with her mouth hanging open. I follow her line of sight towards the château. Julian has chosen that moment to appear from the gardens and is walking up the steps to the open door.
‘Oh. My. God,’ Kat says, doing an unintentional impression of Janice from Friends. ‘Look at that fine specimen of manhood. That is a god carved out of pure marble, that is.’ She grabs my wrist. ‘Is he yours?’
‘No!’ I say in horror. ‘Ick!’
At the top of the steps, Julian turns and gives us a wave.
Kat is practically swooning on the spot as he disappears into the depths of the château. Her grip on my wrist tightens. ‘Why on earth is he not yours? He’s gorgeous.’
‘Ew! I would never…’ I stutter, struggling to find the words for just how hideous a thought that is.
She looks at me and then back at the house. ‘There’s something wrong with you. As they would say around here, that is un homme magnifique.’
She may as well be drooling.
‘Yeah, from a distance. Once you meet him, his attractiveness drops so far below zero that we need a bigger numeric table.’
‘I don’t believe that for a second.’ She finally lets go of my wrist, but if she was a cartoon character, there would be hearts in her eyes.
‘He’s a Scottish knobkettle who thinks he’s far better looking than he actually is.’
‘Ooh, he’s Scottish too?’ She fans a hand in front of her face. ‘Don’t make it worse! Scottish men are so sexy. Does he have a kilt?’
‘I sincerely hope never to find out.’
The look she gives me would be less incredulous if I’d told her there was a flock of pterodactyls swooping overhead. ‘Why is he shirtless?’
‘Because he’s an idiot.’
‘I didn’t know idiocy caused men to spontaneously remove their shirts. If that was true, there’d be a lot more shirtless men in my life.’
I smile as I look over at her. She’s got friendly blue eyes that are accentuated by her short haircut, and her bright green top is colour-coordinated to perfectly match the green bits of her hair, her eyeshadow, and the bracelets around her wrists. Everything about her screams of someone who’s supremely comfortable in their own skin.
‘I could introduce you, if you want,’ I say against my better judgement. She seems like a nice person. She deserves better than Julian.
‘Nah. I’ll trust your judgement. Besides, I’ve got my eye on someone. He hasn’t got the body of that glorious creature, but he’s got a smile that makes me go weak at the knees every time I see it. Of course, he’s only in town twice a week for the market and he doesn’t speak a word of English, but I think we have some kind of lost-in-translation connection.’
‘In all fairness, most men don’t understand English. Communicating with them is hard enough in the same language, so maybe non-verbal relationships are the way to go.’
She laughs. ‘I hear you on that one, lovely. I also sometimes think pushing them out of a window might be the way to go.’
‘If you want to test the window theory, please come in and try it from the fifth floor…’
It makes her laugh again and nod towards the château. ‘So what about him? Is he a workman or something?’
‘No, unfortunately. If he was, he’d be leaving soon.’ I sigh, unsure of how to explain sharing this place with Julian in a way that makes sense. ‘We’ve inherited half the château each. We’ve both turned up at the same time and there’s nothing either of us can do about it.’
‘Oooh, forced to share a house with him. I wouldn’t complain about having to look at that body! It’s a shame it’s such a big house really. You’ll probably never even see him.’
‘I live in hope.’ I go to tell her about my plan to drive him out, but I stop myself. It seems just as childish as everything else I’ve done since I’ve been here, and I get the feeling she’d tell me I’m being unreasonable, and I don’t want to have to admit that I am being a teensy bit unreasonable. Like, the teensiest, tiniest bit.
‘Well, I must be getting on, lovely, but I’ll come back tomorrow. If you could arrange for that gorgeous Scottish thing to be shirtless again, I’ll feed you for free.’
‘What if I could arrange for him to be upside down in the moat? Would that work?’
‘Aww, I’m sure he’s not that bad. Do you want anything else before I go?’ She pulls back the cover of her cart to reveal a selection of goodies I hadn’t even seen until now. ‘I’ve got croissants, pains aux raisins, cinnamon twists, brioche, and white crusty loaves that’ll still be fresh by lunchtime.’
Everything’s set out on her cart in individual clear plastic boxes and, even with the lids shut, the smell is divine. The bakery at work never smells like this. It always smells of the chemical preservatives the company pumps into their dough to keep it looking fresher than it is.
This is proper baking, proper fresh, proper food. The noise I let out sounds positively orgasmic. ‘Oh God, one of everything, please. Two of that iced twisty thing.’
‘And for your gorgeous housemate?’
‘Ha. He can feed his bloody self. After all that taunting last night, I wouldn’t get food for him if you paid me in fresh baguettes and gold bars.’
She gives me a curious look, obviously having no idea what happened last night, and I blush. ‘I’ll just run in and get my purse.’
When I get back, Kat’s still standing in the courtyard, looking around at the surrounding land, and I’m feeling sheepish.
She’s bagged everything up into brown paper bags, and I tip my empty purse upside down as I walk towards her. ‘What do I owe you? Because I’m fairly sure it’s more than the three euros I’ve got left.’
‘Six euros.’
I hand her my last three coins. ‘I used the last of my cash to pay the taxi driver yesterday. Can I cancel—’
‘You know what, don’t worry about it,’ she says with a smile.
‘No, I can’t do—’
‘Seriously. Coming here and seeing the, ahem, sights has really perked up my morning. It’s the least I can do for a fellow Brit.’
‘I can owe it to you. If you’re coming back tomorrow, I’ll have it by then.’
‘There’s no need,’ she says with a shrug.
‘Speaking of, where is this village you mentioned earlier? Is there a shop there? Because I need to get cash out and I really need to get some food in, and some teabags. I haven’t had a cup of tea in over twenty-four hours. I’m failing as a Brit.’
She starts laughing. ‘If you think you’re going to get a cup of tea around here, you’re sorely mistaken.’
‘What?’ My stomach plunges in unease. ‘No PG Tips?’
‘Not a chance. The French don’t do tea. Not in the way you mean, anyway. In cafés, you might find teapots full of some pseudo tea liquid too weak to drown a gnat, but you won’t find proper tea here. You’ll be hard pushed to find a kettle in the shops.’
‘We’ve probably got a kettle,’ I say, glancing back at the château. I still haven’t had a chance to look around properly and haven’t found the kitchen yet. Even as I say it, realisation sets in that anything here has been unused for twenty-odd years. If there is a kettle, I can’t imagine it still working. ‘They must sell teabags somewhere.’
‘Yep. Back in Britain. Next time you come out, stock up and fetch them with you. The French are wine and coffee people.’
‘Great,’ I mutter. While wine and coffee have their place in the world, the day just got infinitely worse. This is why people have comfort zones. Never mind poisonous snakes and plants with homicidal tendencies – it’s because there’s never a shortage of PG Tips in London.
‘I’m going there now if you want to tag along.’
‘Hmm?’
‘To the village,’ Kat says. ‘It’s about a forty-minute walk, but I’ve got to make some stops on the way, obviously. You’re welcome to come with me, if you want. It’s best to get there early. It gets busy at lunchtime.’
‘Oh yeah, that would be great,’ I say, even though it makes me nervous too. I’m not good at new places, and I’d be guaranteed to get lost trying to find this village on my own, but I’m equally not good at new people, and I envision forty minutes of awkward silence as Kat and I run out of things to say to each other before we’ve got to the end of the driveway.
I gather up my baked goods, leaving a croissant to eat on the way, and run back inside. I dump them on a table near the door, make sure to slip my key into my pocket, just in case Julian gets any ideas about locking me out, and run back out to the courtyard.
‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Kat says as we walk along the little lane outside the château grounds. There are no pavements and it’s barely wide enough for a car. If one comes by, we could be in trouble. ‘You’re so lucky to own such an amazing house.’
I haven’t felt very lucky so far. I still miss Eulalie like I’m walking around with a hole in my stomach, and no château can change that. In fact, everything about the château makes the need to talk to her claw even deeper. I want to tell her that I’m here, that I’m seeing the things she saw, that all her stuff is still here, and I’ll look after it somehow.
And then there’s Julian. I want to tell Eulalie that she had a nephew and he’s here too. I want to ask her if she’d want him here or if I should protect her beloved château from him somehow, even though annoying him to the point of making him leave seems like an even more stupid plan the further I get from the house. We’re adults. What am I going to do to him? Clingfilm the toilet seat?
Kat’s first stop is a farmhouse twenty minutes down the road from us.
‘This is Wendy,’ she says to the old man who comes out to greet us. ‘She’s moved into Le Château de Châtaignier.’
The man suddenly looks excited. ‘Oh, avec Julian!’ he shouts, before spouting off a mouthful of French. The only word I can understand is Julian’s name. He makes the motion of turning a key in a lock.
‘I only understand basic French,’ Kat says to me. ‘Something about someone locking someone out?’ She shrugs like she hasn’t got a clue what he’s going on about.
Oh great. This must be Julian’s new friend, the one who gave him the key.
‘Un homme bon,’ he cries, shaking his fist at me. ‘Charmant!’
I look at Kat helplessly.
‘A good man,’ she translates. ‘Charming.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Said by someone who must’ve spent all of twenty seconds with him. Any longer than that and I’m sure his opinion will change.’
The man starts babbling in French, looking annoyed with me.
‘He’s saying he loved your great-aunt,’ Kat says. ‘Something about her being proud of Julian having the chestnuts.’
‘She wasn’t my great-aunt, she’s was Julian’s, which just proves that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And I don’t know about chestnuts but there’s definitely something nuts about Julian.’
‘What’s he done to you?’ Kat says as we walk away. ‘Old Mr Adelais seemed very fond of him.’
‘Old Mr Adelais doesn’t have to live with him,’ I mutter. ‘It’s complicated. The château was supposed to be mine, but he’s muscled in with this bloody loophole and he thinks he owns the place. Which he kind of half does.’
‘I don’t know why you’re letting it bother you. Surely there’s enough space in that huge house for both of you? Personally, I’d be very happy to share a house with him for nothing but the view alone.’
Maybe she’s right. Forty rooms and fifteen acres. You could easily lose someone in all that space. I won’t even know he’s there. It’ll be fine. Even if I don’t manage to drive him out, he’s not going to spoil my time here. The place is so big you could have a family of sixteen in it and still need smoke signals to find each other.
The walk is slow because we constantly stop off at Kat’s morning regulars, always being met at the gate by eager villagers, waving money at Kat in exchange for the goodies on her cart. I watch her have stilted conversations with people in French, which mainly involve miming and some species of sign language. She introduces me each time, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what’s being said to me, so I just nod and smile, and say ‘oui’ a lot, even though I have no idea what they’re asking me, and Kat loses the conversations when they start speaking too fast. I could have told everyone that I enjoy grating cheese and wearing an alien cow on my head for all I know.
‘So, do you really make a living doing this?’ I ask, even though I can easily see her cart is nearly empty and there’s no sign we’re anywhere near the village yet.
‘Yep,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of old people around here who find the walk into town challenging or who only go in on market days. The bloke who owns the boulangerie in the village is a bit of a bugger, to be honest. He refuses to open early even though people want their bread in the mornings, but I can’t complain because he’s left a clear niche for me.’
‘I’m kind of a baker too. I mean, not professionally or anything, I just knock cakes together in my spare time, but I love it. I used to bake a lot with Eulalie, the woman who left us the château.’
‘What do you do for work?’
I’m embarrassed to mention my job to her. It doesn’t even seem like a proper job. ‘I’m a sampler in a supermarket. I hand out samples and try to make people buy whatever the store wants pushed on any particular day.’
‘Oh, I hate those people.’ She suddenly realises what she’s said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that.’
It makes me laugh. ‘It’s fine. I hate it too. It’s not what I intended to be doing with my life, but it’s a paying job, so why rock the boat?’
‘You’re talking to someone who relocated to France on a whim. I’m a big believer in boat rocking.’
‘Things go wrong when you start rocking boats.’
She waves an arm around her. ‘At least you sink in a beautiful place.’
She’s definitely right about that.
‘It must be amazing to cook in your château,’ Kat says. ‘I’ve stood at the gate loads of times and tried to imagine what the kitchen would be like. Is it huge?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t found it yet.’
‘I bet it’s huge. You’ll have to give me a guided tour sometime. And bake me something in it. It’s such a beautiful old house. It probably infuses everything that’s made in there with decadent glamour.’
‘Well, Eulalie certainly seemed to think it was infused with something.’
By the time we reach the village, I understand why elderly folks around here aren’t keen to do it often. Even this early in the morning, the sun is hot enough that sweat is beading on my forehead and I’m desperate for a bottle of water. It’s not a hard trek, but it’s uphill towards the end, and the narrow lanes don’t get any wider or safer, although we don’t see any traffic other than a man on a horse.
There’s a little wooden sign up on a wall surrounding a house that reads ‘Bienvenue à Toussion’. It looks like it’s been burnt into the wood by someone with a magnifying glass in the sunlight. It’s the kind of sign you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it, and as I look at the village spread out in front of me, the same could be said about that. The pavementless tarmac gives way to cobbled streets lined with half-timbered houses, painted in a rainbow of pastel colours around their wooden beams. If the Easter Bunny existed, he would live here.
It’s a beautiful place, and I feel Kat watching me as I take it all in. ‘It grows on you,’ she says. ‘I worked in the middle of a shopping centre back home, every shop in one place. If you ever needed anything it was right there. I laughed at the idea of trying to live here, but you adapt.’
I can’t imagine ever adapting. You could fit the whole of this village into one boarded-up shop on my local high street.
The most noticeable thing is the silence. There’s no traffic, no beeping horns, no yelling. The only sound is a bee buzzing around a red flower in someone’s windowbox.
An old lady totters down her flower-edged garden path with a sprightly ‘bonjour!’ As she chooses one of Kat’s baguettes, I look around and see an old man watering flowers in his window. He waves and shouts a greeting.
If I had a book in my arms, I’d be walking around like Belle in the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast. There’s a calmness here, an atmosphere of the village that time forgot. And stepping back in time is exactly what it feels like. The pretty, wooden-framed houses are nothing like the dull, drab bricks in England. Each window has a windowbox underneath it, full of tumbling, colourful flowers, and although I can’t understand the names on the few shops I can see, it’s easy to tell they’re houses-turned-shops and their owners probably live above them.
‘The épicerie,’ Kat points out as we wander. ‘That’s the grocery shop. There’s a little cash machine in there but it’s often out of funds. You can pay for anything with your cards though. Did you tell your bank you were coming here?’
‘No. I didn’t think they’d be interested in my holiday plans.’
‘Well, they’ll probably block your card because they suspect it’s been stolen. You’ll have to phone them and prove you’re you. And that’s the pharmacie, I don’t need to translate that one.’ She points across the road. ‘That’s the boulangerie, the bakery, and not to toot my own horn, but my stuff is much better than his. Further on is the library but you’ll be lucky to find it open. It’s run by a forgetful old bloke who forgets he runs it most days.’
I look around in disbelief. ‘That’s it? A chemist, a baker, a grocery shop, and a library?’
‘What else do you need?’
‘I…’
‘This village only really comes to life on market days. The streets are lined with stalls and that covered triangular area in the middle is full of sellers.’
I look at the odd-shaped area between the bakery and the library, hanging baskets full of flowers swinging from each concrete pillar supporting the roof. ‘When’s market day?’
‘Tuesday and Saturday mornings,’ she says. ‘I’d love to get a stall but I’d have to get here so early that I’d let my regular customers down. Then again, when you meet Theo, the butter seller, you’ll see why it might be worth it. He’s gorgeous.’
When Kat leaves me, with a promise of coming round with breakfast tomorrow morning, and me actually having the cash to pay her this time, I watch her green-tipped hair walking away and wonder what I’ve let myself in for coming here. I don’t understand a word of the language, and even though Kat’s taught me to ask ‘parlez-vous anglais?’ in shops, she’s also told me not to count on any locals speaking English. The next few weeks might not be quite the relaxing holiday I was hoping for.
In the épicerie, the shopkeeper greets me with a bright ‘bonjour’ and comes out from behind the counter babbling in French. After a series of hand gestures and me butchering the pronunciation of the three words I know, he goes back behind the counter and watches me like he’s not sure if I’m a foreigner or a really weird shoplifter.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_c358bd8b-428c-55a0-9749-583b22ca1774)
By the time I get back to the château, I’d sell my soul, my first-born child, and every non-vital organ on the black market for a cup of tea. Kat was right about not being able to find anything that even resembles British tea over here. With my few groceries in a brown paper bag, I don’t see anyone but a woman walking her dog on the way back either.
The château door is open when I go in and I let it slam shut behind me to let Julian know how annoyed I am. I’ve no idea where he is, but he can’t go around leaving doors unlocked.
‘That you, Wend?’ he shouts from somewhere below me.
‘No,’ I shout into the empty entranceway, annoyance prickling even harder at him shortening my name like we’re friends. ‘It’s a burglar. I came to steal all your valuables because the door was so conveniently left open, and as your car keys are on the table inside the door, maybe I’ll nick that as well while I’m at it.’
‘You’re wasting your time in food ambassador-ing or whatever it is you do,’ he shouts back. ‘You should be in stand-up comedy.’
‘Ha ha,’ I mutter under my breath. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve found a kitchen yet, have you?’
I feel completely lost looking around the château. I’ve barely had a chance to explore it and half of that was in the dark. There are so many rooms, too many, full of too much stuff. This is Eulalie’s house, her history, her memories. All of the stuff in these rooms is stuff that she bought, that she put there, that she left after her husband died. She might never have come back here, but she never stopped thinking about it, weaving it into tales, getting lost in her memories. It feels like a lot of pressure to treat it with the honour it deserves.
‘Down here,’ he calls, his voice muffled from the floor below.
I pick up Kat’s baked goods from the table where I left them, surprised to see Julian hasn’t pinched any, and cross the empty entranceway and reception rooms towards a tiny staircase which leads down into the basement level of the château.
‘There’s a kitchen down here?’ I ask as I squeeze my way down a narrow stone staircase with no banister.
‘Servants’ quarters,’ he says from somewhere. ‘The lord and lady of the manor would never have lifted a finger. Everything would’ve been done for them, cooking, washing, all that stuff hidden below deck, out of sight. Don’t tell me you’ve not seen Downton Abbey?’
‘Surely Eulalie and her husband didn’t have servants? She wasn’t the kind of person who’d have servants. She hated people doing anything for her.’
‘I don’t know. It depends how rich they were. To be honest, it probably goes back much further, this house has a lot more history than just Eulalie.’
There are dark stone floors and an open fireplace at the bottom of the stairs, a huge room that spreads in both directions. If this really was servants’ quarters once, it’s bigger than an entire floor of my block of flats put together. It smells damp and musty, and like the rat in the box I found last night isn’t the only thing to have died here in the past twenty years.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he calls from another room.
‘I walked into the village with Kat to get some shopping, not that it’s any of your business.’
He lets out a low whistle. ‘Oh good. I was starting to worry you’d been eaten by a snake. They’re big enough around here to devour a human. It would’ve been a dreadful shame if you’d run into one.’
‘You’re hilari—’ I turn a corner and put my head around the door of the room I think he must be in. Then I let out a shriek and nearly drop my shopping. ‘You’re naked!’
He glances down at himself. ‘Your powers of observation get more efficient by the day.’
I blush crimson red and turn around so I don’t have to look at him. ‘What are you doing without any clothes on?’ I ask, trying to ignore the edge of hysteria in my voice.
‘Getting an early lunch.’
‘I meant why are you doing it naked?’
‘Well, why not, eh?’
I make myself take a deep breath and count to ten. ‘Julian, you can’t walk around with no clothes on.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re not alone. I’m staying here too and I don’t want to see that!’ I wave a hand over my shoulder to indicate his bits.
‘Don’t look then.’ He laughs. ‘If it annoyed you so much you wanted to leave, that would be fine with me. You said you could outdo me on the annoying housemate front. You obviously haven’t begun yet so I thought I’d get a head start on proving you wrong.’
‘Well, I’m asking you nicely,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘Please would you put some clothes on?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because that’s offensive!’
‘This is my house just as much as yours. You can walk around naked too, if you want. I won’t mind.’ I can hear the smirk in his voice.
‘If there were police around, you’d be arrested for indecent exposure.’
‘Only in public. Not in my own home. If it offends you so much, you know where the front door is.’
I glare at the empty room so I don’t have to turn around and face all of him. He’s doing this to annoy me. He’s doing it for a reaction, and I’ve given him one. I should’ve ignored it. All I’ve done is given him what he wanted.
And I cannot let him win.
I paste a grin on my face and spin around, waltzing into the kitchen, keeping my eyes focused upwards. ‘Actually it doesn’t bother me at all. Just surprised that someone with a willy that small would be eager to show it off, that’s all.’
He laughs. ‘Well, your sense of humour is equivalent to a childish six-year-old’s and you’re quite happy to show that off.’
I glance at his smirking face. ‘Just so you know, you can try to offend me all you like, but I’ve met men who are far worse than you’ll ever be, and nothing you do will work.’
‘Ah, but it won’t hurt to make sure, will it?’ He winks at me.
I’ve never had violent tendencies before, but I’ve suddenly started wondering how difficult it would be to dig up this floor and bury the body.
I smile at him instead, forcing my eyes to stay upwards and not start wandering down his smooth chest… Focus, Wendy. Focus.
‘Wow.’ I tear my eyes away from the vast expanse of bare skin and look around the room instead. It’s the biggest kitchen I’ve ever seen.
He laughs. ‘Yeah. I thought you might like it… Well, you’re probably used to big kitchens, but this is off the scale. There’s a big cook-y thing over there, and…’
‘A cook-y thing?’ I ask, trying not to let out the giggle that wants to escape. ‘Are you really so undomesticated that you can’t identify an oven?’
‘I don’t know.’
I follow the direction he waves his hand in and gasp in delight. ‘An Aga!’
He scratches the back of his neck. ‘Aye, one of them.’
Just as I’m about to go over to it, I catch sight of something else out of the corner of my eye. Familiar red and green lettering on a white box. I dump my shopping in a heap and grab it, cuddling it to my chest like a golden chalice. ‘Where did you get these?’ I ask in delight. ‘And a kettle!’ I let out a noise so squeaky that a mouse would be embarrassed to make it.
He raises an eyebrow and looks at me like I’m not a full loaf, but I don’t care. He’s found PG Tips and a kettle. Eulalie probably had them all along, although they both look new and modern. I look at the kettle out the corner of my eye. It’s shiny white plastic with no hint of two-decade-old grime on it, and there’s no way Julian’s that good a cleaner.
‘I brought them with me,’ he says, confirming my worst fears.
‘What kind of person brings a kettle on holiday with them?’ I snap, instead of begging him to let me borrow a teabag.
‘The kind who’s ever tried to find a cup of British tea in France before.’ His voice is so smug it could hold up wallpaper. ‘From your reaction, I take it you didn’t bring any with you.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, what a shame. I wouldn’t like it to be awkward when I’m drinking my lovely, delicious cups of tea and you can’t have any.’
‘Surely you wouldn’t be that cruel?’ I know there’s hope in my voice, but even as I say it, I have to wonder why he’d share anything with me. I haven’t said one nice word to him yet; he’s not going to give me a teabag every morning, is he?
‘Ah, but we don’t share things, do we? How convenient that someone who’s got such a big problem sharing a house with me suddenly wants to share something when it suits her.’
‘A mansion and a box of PG Tips are not the same thing.’
‘Both are a valuable commodity, are they not?’
I glare at him so hard that it makes him laugh. ‘Is it my fault you didn’t prepare for coming here? Is it my responsibility to provide you with things you forgot in your rush to beat me here?’
‘Well, no, but…’
He makes a noise that says I’ve proved his point.
I’m trying to have a reasonable conversation with a naked man. The reasonable train clearly left his station a long time ago. I’ll have to try a different approach. ‘Look, I’m practically having withdrawal symptoms here and it’s only been a day. Surely we can work something out. I’ll do anything.’
‘Anything?’ He waggles his eyebrows.
‘Anything within reason. I’m not doing you bloody sexual favours for a cup of tea.’
‘Firstly, what makes you think I’d want that sort of thing from you? You’ve got all the sexual charisma of a coffee table with a wonky leg. And secondly, what makes you think I’m the kind of man who’d ask for sexual favours in exchange for tea?’
‘You’re a git. I wouldn’t put anything past you.’
‘Trying to get round me with insults. Not the best approach.’
‘Sorry,’ I mutter. Insulting him has already become second nature. ‘A swap then? Look, I have all these lovely baked goods from Kat this morning.’ I wave my hand in the direction of my heap of shopping. ‘Wouldn’t you like a nice flaky croissant or a brioche round with a hint of lemon icing?’
‘Nope, I’d like my PG Tips. In fact, I might just put the kettle on now and have one. Can I get you something like, oh I don’t know, a glass of hot water?’
‘Please, Julian. Surely you can spare one? There are two hundred and forty teabags in this box!’
‘That’s two hundred and forty lovely cups of tea for me then, isn’t it?’
My nails dig into my palms as I clench my fists to stop myself from throwing the box at his head. I wonder if anyone’s ever been killed by teabags before…
‘I can’t believe how big this kitchen is,’ I say instead, looking around to take my mind off caving his head in with a box of PG Tips. ‘That sink is the size of my bathtub at home.’
‘Yeah, and the spider living in it is the size of a small cat. It should be paying rent and its fair share of the household bills.’
I shiver as I peer into it from a safe distance.
Julian’s suddenly much too near. He nudges me with his elbow. ‘Ask it to get the Mr Sheen out, will you? The place needs a good clean and it’s obviously not been pulling its weight around the house.’
‘Don’t nudge me when you have no clothes on.’
I see a flash of something cross his face, maybe guilt, and he walks to the other side of the kitchen, giving me space.
‘Whoever lived here would’ve thrown big, lavish parties for big, lavish people,’ he says. ‘Their servants’ quarters had to be big enough for the servants to cook and prepare food for a lot of important people. You’re probably talking twenty or so people in here at once if there was a party going on, cooking, serving, bussing food up and down. Most of them probably lived here too. There’s a laundry room in there.’ He points to a door at the opposite end of the kitchen. ‘It’s full of tin baths and mangles and fun stuff like that, but thankfully someone’s installed a washing machine in more recent years. Off the main room, there’s a bathroom and a massive bedroom where the servants must’ve slept. This was probably the liveliest part of the house once.’
When he’s talking like this, I see a glimpse of a real person under the git persona. His accent is soft, his voice deep, and he sounds genuinely interested in what he’s saying. ‘You like this sort of thing then? Old houses and stuff?’
He looks at me and his mouth curves up. ‘Yeah. This place is fascinating. It’s a snapshot of times gone by. Houses aren’t built like this any more. They haven’t been for over a century, and even though it needs a lot of work, it’s still beautiful.’
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