The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters Read online

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why are you so convinced that everything comes at a price?’ he asks, cocking his head to one side.

  ‘Because it does.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not with me, not with most decent people. Thinking that is actually a really sad way to go through life.’

  I go to bark out something nasty in reply but stop myself because he’s hit an old nail on its old head without realising it. It’s been a long while since I believed people could be nice without wanting something in return. ‘Yeah, well, there haven’t exactly been an abundance of decent people in my life.’

  ‘Mine neither.’ He catches my eyes and smiles a little half-smile. ‘But you have to look on the bright side, right? We’re in France and we somehow own this amazing mansion. This time last week, I would never have seen that one coming. Who knows what’s around the next corner?’

  I sigh, despite the fact it’s a nice sentiment, and he does have a good point. Again. It’s just not that simple for me. I’ve already lost everything once. It’s not easy to trust people again. ‘Why are you being so…’ I go to say nice, but I can’t bring myself to say it out loud, because he’s not nice, is he? He’s a git, and I’m sure he wants me out of this château just as much as I want him out of it.

  He’s quiet for a while before he answers. ‘Because I get the feeling we’re bringing out the worst in each other. I know I haven’t been at my best since I got here, but I’m not this person. I’m not someone who bargains for every little thing and refuses if I don’t get something in return, so use the adapter as much as you like. Don’t worry about ordering one. Leave it down here and use it whenever.’ He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. ‘It’s a pathetic thing that cost 99p and I’ve got three more in the car. It’s not worth any kind of exchange, just use it.’

  He pushes himself off the unit and walks out of the room, and I feel the familiar guilt niggling at me. It’s definitely fair to say we’re both making life harder for each other.

  ‘Wend?’

  I look out of the door and see him halfway up the narrow staircase. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘That doesn’t apply to my teabags. Touch them and there’ll be trouble!’

  Chapter Ten

  I nearly trip over Julian when I next go outside. ‘Sit in the middle of the steps, why don’t you?’ I say, even though he’s sitting at the side and there’s plenty of room to get by. ‘It’s not like you’re in the way or anything.’

  He bends his head back and looks at me upside down, hidden behind his sunglasses again. ‘Sorry. Didn’t think you’d be coming out, what with all the bees and wasps and snakes queuing up to bite you.’

  ‘Ha ha. I thought you were working on the generator.’

  ‘Just stopped for lunch.’ He’s got that daft lidded cup with him again and he takes a sip.

  I’m positive I see him shudder as he swallows.

  I step past him and crunch across the gravel of the courtyard, trying to measure the distance between trees with the bundle of string I found in a cupboard.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Julian says slowly. ‘Other than attempting to strangle yourself, what exactly are you trying to do?’

  ‘String up a washing line. I’ve got bedding about to come out of the wash, no tumble dryer, and a gorgeously sunny day out here. I need somewhere to hang it.’

  ‘Want some help?’

  ‘At what cost?’

  He sighs. ‘No cost. I just can’t sit here and watch you flailing around like a drunken octopus trying to hang itself any longer. Thought I’d offer my services before you fall out of another tree.’

  I glare at him. I have one foot on a tree trunk and I lost my balance once.

  He walks across the gravel without waiting for an answer. The warmth of his arm presses against mine as he takes an end of the string and the smell of his aftershave makes something fizz inside me. Up close, he’s solid and tall, and he smells like a delicious mix of burnt wood and something dark and masculine.

  He points with the string. ‘So, from this apple tree to the hazelnut over there?’

  ‘No, to the—’ Oh, that’s a much better idea, and it won’t decapitate visitors. Great. I can’t even tie a piece of string around a tree trunk without him being better at it than me.

  When we’re done and I’ve carried a few armfuls of bedding up the stairs and flung it over the makeshift line, Julian is sitting on the steps again, swigging from his cup.

  I sit on a step a few down from him. ‘Okay, I have to ask, what is that? Because it looks like you’ve made a milkshake out of dog food and it smells worse.’

  He laughs. ‘It’s protein powder. You mix it with water and use it as meal replacements. It fills you up and builds muscle.’

  ‘You think your muscles need to get bigger?’

  He rolls his shoulders and flexes a bicep. ‘I don’t know. You spend so much time looking at them, you tell me.’

  I force myself to look away. ‘It depends on what look you’re going for – the Incredible Hulk, Arnold Schwarzenegger on steroids, or a caricature of Jean Claude Van Damme.’

  ‘I’m going for the “normal guy who works out and looks the age I told my bosses I was on my CV” look.’

  ‘You missed that about two treadmills ago.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I’ve got to stay in shape.’

  I shake my head. ‘No wonder you’re so bloody grumpy.’

  ‘I’m not grumpy!’

  ‘Of course you’re grumpy. You drink something I’d expect to find in Pets At Home and you don’t eat cake. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen you eat anything at all.’

  ‘I’ve got a big shoot next month. The sportswear company I model for, Masters of Gym, are launching a new range and doing the biggest advertising campaign they’ve ever done. This shoot is the big one. It’s going into tube stations, there’ll be a billboard in Piccadilly Circus and posters on bus stops on Oxford Street, and it’ll be in gyms and magazines all around Europe. My body will be in front of millions. I’ve got to look the best I’ve ever looked.’

  ‘And you do that by starving yourself?’

  ‘I’m not starving myself. This stuff bloats your stomach so you don’t get hungry, and I still eat vegetables.’

  ‘Vegetables. How exciting.’

  ‘And exercise.’

  ‘That can’t be healthy, Jules.’

  He raises an eyebrow at the nickname. ‘I’m a couple of years off forty. This body doesn’t upkeep itself.’

  He sounds sad as he says it and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or projecting my feelings onto him, because it makes me feel sad to hear him say it. ‘Sounds like a one-way ticket to making yourself ill.’

  ‘I’m a fitness model. I model workout clothes for a fitness clothing manufacturer. Fitness is in my contract.’

  ‘But there’s more to life than a six-pack.’

  ‘Not when you get paid for having one. My modelling agent, Kinzi, and my bosses at Masters will sack me if I don’t keep myself looking like this.’

  I kick at the gravel because I don’t know what to say to that. He sounds nonchalant, but like he’s trying to sound that way, and I get the feeling that, if I dug just a little deeper… I have to stop thinking about it. Why do I care if he sounds sad? If he puts his looks before his own health, well, that’s his choice.

  ‘So, you haven’t come across any treasure today then?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Can I ask you something just person to person? Not rivals or enemies or whatever we are here.’

  I nod.

  ‘Do you really think it’s bollocks?’

  ‘The treasure?’ I let myself think for a while before I answer him. ‘Eulalie had no money. Some months she made the landlord a cake to make up for her shortfall in the rent. This place had such senti
mental value to her that I understand why she didn’t sell it, but I can’t believe she lived the way she did if she had any kind of treasure. And I’m not saying that to throw you off and take everything for myself. I’m saying that because it’s what I think is true.’

  He’s watching me with such intensity that I know he’s trying to figure out if he trusts me or not, but his face gives nothing away. ‘I think so too,’ he says eventually. ‘I know I didn’t know her, but it just seems too far-fetched.’

  As much as I want to think he’s just saying that to throw me off and find the treasure for himself, something about him seems genuine, and I don’t like it. He’s not supposed to be genuine, he’s supposed to be a git. He is a git and I can’t let myself forget it.

  When I go to bed that night, it’s too much effort to drag something heavy in front of the door to block Julian out. It’s been a long day of cleaning and all I want to do is fall into bed and catch up on the missing sleep from the past few nights. He won’t come in tonight. He didn’t like getting pushed out of bed last night, and he knows I’ll do it again.

  Just as I’m snuggling myself down into clean bedding and breathing in the fresh, outdoorsy scent from drying on the line, the door creaks open.

  I sit bolt upright. ‘No. You cannot be in here again. Sod off.’

  ‘Now, why would I do a thing like that?’ He turns his torch off and flicks the big light on. ‘This is equally my house. I can sleep wherever I choose.’

  ‘I’ll go somewhere else then. If you’ve got some kind of attachment to this room, you’re welcome to it. Just leave me in peace and don’t follow me.’

  ‘Well, I might not have, but as you’ve suggested it…’

  ‘Why do you do this?’ I wring my hands in the blanket instead of wrapping them around his neck. ‘You seemed semi-normal today. We managed a reasonable conversation. And then it’s like the clock strikes midnight and you turn back into a pumpkin.’

  ‘All that means is you think I’m a prince at any other time.’

  I force a laugh. ‘No, just a round, orange, gooey thing that makes a mess on Halloween. And any fairy godmother trying to cast a spell on you would’ve drowned in all that hair gel before she’d had a chance.’

  He closes the door behind him and I watch as he walks round to his side of the bed and lays his sleeping bag out.

  ‘I’ll push you out again. In the middle of the night when you least expect it.’

  ‘I know. I took precautions.’

  ‘Let me guess, elbow protectors and knee pads, which you also happen to have brought with you.’

  ‘Nope.’ Instead he steps onto something on the floor and bounces up and down. ‘I dragged a mattress off one of the other beds and put it down here, the perfect crash mat.’

  ‘You did not.’ I lean over and look as his toes curl into the sponginess.

  He grins that smug smirk at me, his face saying he knows he’s won without a word needed.

  I lie back down, yanking the bedding over me and pulling it tight. I try to ignore his every movement as he wriggles into his sleeping bag after turning the light off and leaving us in complete darkness.

  ‘Why aren’t you singing yet?’ I snap, after the silence has gone on so long it’s become unnerving.

  ‘When you have a voice like mine, you have to rest your vocal cords between performances.’

  ‘When you have a voice like yours, you have to go back to the field and neigh with the other horses.’

  It makes him laugh, but he doesn’t start any godawful songs.

  Just long enough to lull me into a false sense of security.

  I’ve just convinced myself he’s going to behave tonight when he speaks. ‘Have you seen The Shining?’

  ‘The Jack Nicholson film?’ I wait for his noise of agreement. ‘As random questions go, that’s an odd one. And yes, years ago, why?’

  ‘I was just thinking of those twins in the hallways. Our hallways look a bit like that here. I was picturing the creepy twin ghosts in them asking us to come and play with them forever… and ever…’

  ‘You’re a very strange person, Jules, has anyone ever told you that?’ I don’t wait for him to answer. ‘Goodnight.’

  He’s quiet for a few more minutes. ‘Do you ever wonder if this place might be haunted?’

  My eyes shoot open. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s an old building, it’s been here for a couple of centuries. It stands to reason that people could’ve died here through the years, particularly in the earlier centuries before the times of modern medicine.’

  ‘No,’ I say as the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. ‘Just no.’

  ‘People could have laid in this very bed and breathed their last. Their ghosts might still be here. They could be watching us right now. They could be standing over the bed, heavy breathing, looking for revenge.’ The bed creaks as he wriggles around in his sleeping bag. ‘Just thought that might be a nice thing to think about last thing at night. Don’t lose any sleep over it, will you?’

  I reach over and thump him, wishing the sleeping bag didn’t give him a protective layer of padding. He deserves another bloody bruise.

  Chapter Eleven

  A few days later, I’m in the kitchen downstairs trying to get to grips with how the Aga works when I see something out of the corner of my eye. I tell myself it’s just a spider or a mouse, and wonder how, in the few days since I’ve been here, spiders and mice have become a normal sight. I barely even scream any more.

  But this movement is different. It’s a fast, swishing movement, and goosebumps break out across my shoulders at the sense of being watched. I half know what I expect to see before I’ve even started to turn around.

  This time, I scream.

  Because when I turn around, there’s a snake on the kitchen floor.

  It’s a greeny-grey thing, coiled with its head raised, hissing. Its beady eyes are watching me.

  To say I panic would be an understatement. My heart speeds up and I can’t catch my breath properly, there’s sweat prickling at my forehead, my knees are shaking, and my hands are freezing cold and sweaty at the same time.

  There’s no escape. The snake is between me and the door. There’s no window I can climb out of. Without taking my eyes off the snake, I try to search for a weapon, but there’s nothing within reach. Even the shovel I’ve just used to load coal into the Aga is back in the utility room, and if I make a run for it, that snake’s going to make a run for me. I have no idea what to do.

  It’s going to kill me. It’s obviously in here looking for its next victim. And I’m cornered. I have no way out.

  ‘Julian!’ I shout, struggling to get my voice out past the tightness in my throat. ‘Help!’

  I have no idea where he is. He could be miles away across the grounds somewhere, he probably can’t even hear me. It’s not that I want to call him for help, but there’s no one else, and I don’t want to die from a snake bite before I’m thirty-four.

  ‘Snake!’ I shout instead. Knowing him, he’ll come to help the snake, not me.

  Even so, I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear footsteps rushing through the hollow floors above.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Julian says from the stairs as he comes down. ‘There’s not a snake, is there? I think there’s some folks back in London who didn’t quite hear you, could you shout a bit louder?’

  He appears in the kitchen doorway wearing nothing but a pair of navy shorts. He might be a git with a loophole and a nice chest, but I’ve never been so happy to see someone in my life.

  I point wordlessly at the coiled hissing thing in the middle of the floor.

  Julian’s face lights up when he sees it. He’s smiling at a snake. As if I needed further proof of his insanity. Firstly, he doesn’t like cake, and secondly, he likes snakes.

  ‘It’s going to kill me,’ I whisper, my voice shaking.

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s a grass snake.’


  ‘It’s not a grass snake. A grass snake would be in the grass, and it’s not in the grass, is it? It’s in my bloody kitchen!’

  ‘Would you like me to call the government department of naming snakes and ask them to rename it a kitchen snake?’

  ‘Julian!’ I hiss. Now is not the time for sarcasm. Despite him turning up in the doorway, the snake hasn’t taken its horrible eyes off me. It can clearly smell fear. It probably picked me out as its target from the garden and waited until I was alone to come in and get me. ‘What are we going to do?’

  He looks at me in silence for a few moments and I feel like I’m being appraised. ‘You’re really scared of these things, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m always pleased to find a poisonous, murderous, slithery thing trapping me in my kitchen!’

  ‘Get up on the unit,’ he says, sounding completely calm.

  I hadn’t even thought of that, but it’s my only option. My knees are shaking so much that I struggle. I have to push my trembling foot against a drawer handle and launch myself up and backwards to safety on the countertop. ‘Is it going to follow me? Can they jump this high?’

  ‘No, but if you ask it nicely, it might get up and do the foxtrot for you.’ He’s watching me in amusement. He’s not even looking at the snake. It could’ve turned and attacked him in that time. Maybe it’s an anaconda, the kind that can swallow a human whole. I mean, okay, it’s a bit on the small side for swallowing humans, but it could definitely have a toe or something.

  ‘What am I going to do from up here?’ I’m standing on the unit, my head squashed sideways under the ceiling, clutching a cupboard door handle so I don’t fall off. Even from up here, there’s nothing I can use as a weapon.

  ‘You’re going to stay there where you’re safe while I take the snake outside. Watch out for that spider though.’ He points at the cupboard behind me, and I scream and jump, nearly overbalancing as I twist myself around to look at it.

  There’s nothing there. ‘Julian! It’s not funny!’