The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters Read online

  He’s laughing. ‘It’s a little bit funny.’

  ‘Not when there’s a twenty-foot poisonous snake in the kitchen!’

  He looks at me like I’ve lost the plot. ‘It’s two foot, tops. Pretty small for a grass snake, aren’t you, matey? And it’s not poisonous, and just to be pedantic about it, if it was, it would be venomous, not poisonous. There’s a difference.’

  ‘You seem to have underestimated the seriousness of this situation.’

  ‘Yes. I can see the headlines now.’ He slides his hand out as if revealing a newspaper headline. ‘Hysterical woman overreacts to worm.’

  ‘That is not a worm.’

  He’s still chuckling as he takes a couple of steps into the kitchen. How can he be so calm about this? You can’t laugh when there’s a snake in your house. ‘You haven’t even got shoes on. It could bite your feet.’

  ‘He’s not gonna bite me, are you, mate?’ Julian says to the snake.

  The snake finally takes its eyes off me and twists its slithery body around to hiss at him. I’d bloody hiss at him too if he called me mate.

  He takes a couple of steps closer to it.

  ‘For God’s sake, use a broom or something to chase it out.’

  ‘I’m not going to use a broom, I’ll terrify it.’

  ‘Oh yeah. You’ll terrify it. What the bloody hell do you think it’s doing to me?’

  ‘It’s harmless. Poor wee thing, it’s more scared of you than you are of it. It’s probably after a frog to snack on and it’s taken a wrong turn and got lost.’

  ‘It’s unacceptable to get lost in my kitchen!’

  He takes a couple more slow steps towards the snake, which amps up its hissing and pulls its head back like it’s about to strike.

  ‘Look, there’s a shovel in the laundry room, at least use it as a shield or something.’

  He looks up at me, not even watching the snake. ‘If I do that, it’ll run. Would you prefer me to put it outside and know it’s gone, or would you like it to go and hide under a cupboard or something where we’ll never find it, so you’ll always know it’s there, ready to attack you at any moment? The choice is yours.’

  ‘Just get rid of it,’ I mutter. ‘Please.’

  ‘Gee, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.’

  He takes a few steps nearer to it and crouches down, putting one hand flat on the floor with his palm open. ‘Come on, mate, come and investigate me so I can grab you without scaring you.’

  The snake hisses, flipping its tail against the floor.

  ‘It’s rattling,’ I say. ‘Like a bloody poisonous rattlesnake.’

  ‘It’s a grass snake,’ he says again, but I’m pretty sure I can’t trust his judgement because he’s got an open hand on the floor right in front of a snake.

  Even the snake sticks its tongue out at him.

  He sighs and inches towards the snake with both his palms open. ‘Come on, mate, no good can come of this.’

  ‘He’s calling a snake “mate”,’ I say to no one in particular, looking up at the ceiling as if some divine power might provide an answer as to why it ever became okay to address vicious snakes like they’re old friends.

  ‘You’re gonna make me grab you, aren’t ya, matey?’ He’s inching closer to it, still crouched, looking like he’s ready to grab it.

  The snake rears back again and strikes at his hand, and at the same moment Julian lunges for it, closing his fingers around it just under the hissing head. His other hand goes to its lower body.

  ‘Urgh, what is that smell?’

  ‘They release scent to protect themselves from predators,’ he says as its tail end wraps around his hand, probably trying to squeeze it like a boa constrictor. ‘This poor thing thinks I’m going to hurt him, don’t you, mate?’

  A shudder goes through me at the sight of that scaly body twisting itself around his fingers.

  ‘I’ll just take him outside.’

  ‘Bloody snake rescuer,’ I mutter under my breath, even though it’s kind of sweet that he’s so nice to animals, even snakes. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t called him now. I could’ve dealt with it. I could’ve set the kitchen on fire or something. We’ve got forty rooms, we could afford to lose one.

  My knees are still shaking as I lower myself into a sitting position on the unit, still a bit concerned that the snake will escape Julian’s grasp and come back to get me. Either that or it’s got family in here waiting to seek revenge.

  I listen as he goes up the steps on the other side of the house and out into the overgrown garden, then the sound of the door closing behind him, the echo of his bare feet on the stone tiles as he walks back to the kitchen.

  ‘Gone,’ he says as he comes into the room. ‘Slithered away into the brambles quite happily. Nothing to worry about, it was probably just chasing food and got lost, or it could’ve been a female looking for a place to lay her eggs.’

  ‘Eggs?’ I gulp.

  He laughs. ‘Don’t worry about it, I’m sure she didn’t. You had the back door open so it came in.’

  ‘Yeah, I was trying to air the place out a bit, there’re no windows down here.’

  ‘Well, for future reference, with the garden as overgrown as it is, leaving that door open is an invitation to anything that might be living in it.’

  ‘Okay, thank… Jules, you’re bleeding.’

  He glances down at his hand as blood drips onto the floor. ‘Yeah, my snakey mate got me as I went to grab him. Sorry, I’ll clear that up now.’

  I jump down off the unit and go over to him. ‘You’ve been bitten by a snake, don’t apologise for bleeding.’

  I slip my fingers around his bare forearm and lift it to get a better look at his hand. There are two holes at the base of his thumb pumping out blood. I suck in air through my teeth and pull gently on his wrist, trying to get him over to the sink. ‘Come on, you need to get that rinsed out.’

  ‘I’m covered in eau de grass snake. You don’t want to come near me. I stink.’

  ‘You’ve just been bitten by a snake to save it biting me. I don’t care what you smell like, Jules. You’re hurt.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says as he follows me across the room and I turn the tap on. ‘It’s just a scratch. I’ve had worse from a gorse bush.’

  I use my grip on his wrist to hold his hand under the running water. ‘It’s not just a scratch. You’ve got two massive holes in your hand.’

  ‘They look worse than they are. Snakes’ teeth hook into the skin and pull backwards so it tears. Lots of blood, not much damage.’ He uses two fingers on his other hand to do a demonstration.

  I shudder. ‘What if it was poisonous?’

  ‘It wasn’t venomous, it was a grass snake.’

  ‘Well, grass snakes could be different here!’

  ‘Yeah, they hiss in a French accent.’

  ‘I’m serious. Don’t you think you should go to hospital to be on the safe side?’ I look up at his smirking face. ‘You could have poison spreading through your veins right now. You could be dying!’

  He looks at me with a quirked eyebrow and a half-smile. ‘Then you’ll get what you want, won’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want you to die! I mean, I’d quite like to kill you sometimes, but… You’ve been bitten because of me. Because I called you for help.’

  ‘I came to help the snake. God knows what you’d have done to the poor thing given half a chance.’

  I sigh and change the angle of his hand under the tap, concentrating on the swirl of blood going down the plughole.

  ‘I’m fine, Wend,’ he says. ‘I just need to disinfect it and stick a plaster on. It’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

  He reaches over and turns the tap off. ‘There’s a first aid kit in the car, I’ll go and get it and—’

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Without even thinking, I press my hands against his back and pus
h him over to one of the kitchen chairs, his skin warm under my fingertips as I make him sit down. ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re going to sit there and not pass out.’

  ‘Seriously?’ he says, raising his eyebrow again. ‘It’s a couple of scratches.’

  ‘You look pale.’

  ‘Everything looks pale under this lighting.’

  ‘I don’t care, okay? You’ve got a snake bite. You sit there and try not to bleed to death. I’ll go and get the first aid kit.’ I grab a towel off the kitchen unit and wrap it around his hand.

  He’s watching me like I’ve got a screw loose.

  ‘Keys?’ I demand, holding my open hand out towards him. I’m convinced he’s going to argue given the look of amusement on his face.

  ‘On the table by the door,’ he says. ‘There’s a compartment on the right-hand side of the boot. You might have to move a few things out of the way, but it’s in there. Green box with a white cross on it, in case you’ve never seen one before.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ I mutter as I walk out and go up the stairs.

  I grab his car keys off the table and unlock the shiny red sports car as I walk down the steps towards it, muttering to myself about snake sympathisers. I know he thinks I’m overreacting, and maybe I am overreacting, but I’ve never seen anyone get bitten by a snake before, and I’ve never seen such tiny marks bleed so much.

  I’ve never really looked at his car, but it’s still got the top down so I can’t resist a nosey in as I go past. Every seat other than the driver’s is full. There’s a backpack on the passenger side, and suitcases in the back, clothes on hangers hanging over the backs of the seats, a stack of books in one footwell, baseball caps and toiletries in the other. I shake my head. He really needs a bigger car.

  When I open the boot, things literally spring out at me. It’s stuffed fuller than a tube train at rush hour, and I have no clue how I’m supposed to get to the first aid box. I start taking things out. A set of weights, kettle bells, another massive torch, an industrial-sized toolkit, and tea. There’s box after box of PG Tips, I count out six of the biggest boxes and put them on the gravel. Either he drinks a lot of tea or he’s planning to stay here until Christmas. More and more boxes of that protein thing he drinks, tin after tin of Heinz baked beans, Marmite, HP Sauce, all kinds of kitchen utensils from a tin opener to a knife sharpener, water purification tablets, duct tape, batteries, binoculars, and a tennis racquet. Who does he expect to play tennis with? One of the sheep from the Mr Adelais’s farm?

  I’m surprised not to find an emergency flare and a rubber dinghy. He’s prepared for everything else, he may as well prepare for being shipwrecked too.

  I eventually get the first aid kit out and start trying to put everything back into the boot. How did he pack everything so neatly? I pack it back in a higgledy-piggledy mess with corners of PG Tips boxes sticking out everywhere, and I have to force the boot down and lean my whole bodyweight on it to get it to click shut.

  ‘So, are you expecting the apocalypse this week or next?’ I say as I walk back into the kitchen.

  ‘Never hurts to be prepared,’ he says with a grin.

  ‘Prepared? You could survive a nuclear war with nothing but your car. Glasgow must be looking pretty bare right now because you’ve literally brought half of it with you.’

  ‘You’re only jealous because you didn’t bring anything.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  He’s still sitting at the table, but the blood has gone from the floor. ‘You were meant to be sitting quietly, not mopping up.’

  ‘I’m fine, Wend. And you’ve only just cleaned this place up, it wasn’t fair to leave you blood and grass snake stench to mop up too.’

  I nod towards his hand. ‘You’ve nearly bled through the towel.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Sorry.’

  I cock my head to the side as I look at him. I can’t work him out. He can be cocky and arrogant sometimes, and yet there are times when he seems so quiet and introverted, and that’s twice now he’s apologised for… what? Bleeding? Having an injury? An injury he only got through rescuing me. ‘It’s just an old towel I found in a cupboard and put through the wash yesterday,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is how much that’s bleeding.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ He nods towards the box in my hand. ‘There’s disinfectant in there and wound wash that’ll flush it out. There’s second skin stuff that’ll close the holes. Don’t worry about it. Get on with whatever you were doing, I’ll sort myself out.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I repeat without even thinking about it. ‘You’ll never manage to do all that with your left hand. Come on, up. Let me wash it out properly.’

  He’s quiet for a second, like he’s trying to figure out if there’s an ulterior motive, before he gets up and goes to the sink again. I take the bloodied towel off him and throw it towards the bin. I use his wrist to direct his hand under the water, and when I take hold of it this time, his hand is shaking. The bite is obviously hurting more than he’s letting on.

  I open the first aid box and find it just as packed as his car was. He could open a hospital with the stuff in here. I find a spray of wound wash and use it to flush the two holes, then dry it off and use disinfectant on a cotton wool ball. It must be stinging because I see his eyes squeeze shut a few times.

  As I’m working, he uses the other hand to reach across the unit. ‘Stand still.’

  Instead of answering, he puts something down on the unit in front of me. ‘Help yourself.’

  I look up to see the PG Tips box. ‘Why?’

  He looks down at the hand I’m holding and shakes his head with a shrug.

  ‘Seriously, all I’ve done today is get you bitten by a snake. It’s an odd thing to reward with tea.’

  ‘I’m really clumsy,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m always walking into things, cutting myself, stubbing my toes. No one has ever patched me up before, not even people who like me.’

  ‘Can’t imagine there are many of those around,’ I mutter.

  He looks down at me with an eyebrow raised.

  Maybe now is not the best time to insult him. He could take that box away just as easily.

  ‘So, all I have to do to get your stuff is cause you grievous bodily harm and then stick a plaster on it? That’s good to know. Stay there while I go and sharpen my knives.’

  It makes him laugh and I use the opportunity to spread the little spatula of second skin across the snake bite. It must sting because his laugh is abruptly cut off and his hand is still shaking. I don’t say anything about it, but I don’t let go of his wrist while we stand there waiting for it to dry either.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He knocks his shoulder against mine gently.

  ‘You’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake and you’re asking if I’m okay?’

  ‘It wasn’t poisonous.’

  ‘How do you know that for sure? Are you an expert at recognising snakes?’

  ‘Firstly, can you smell how bad my hands stink? That’s a grass snake defence mechanism. And secondly, I grew up in a house with a woodburning fire. My father kept piles of logs in a shelter outside. It was always me who went out to get them, and I disturbed many a grass snake hibernating over winter in among them. Trust me, that was a grass snake.’

  ‘Hmm.’ All snakes look the same to me. Poisonous and creepy.

  ‘What do you care if it wasn’t, anyway? If I’m dead by morning, I have no family that my inheritance would pass on to, so the château would revert back to you alone.’

  ‘I care because if you were going to die, a snake bite wouldn’t be nearly slow and painful enough.’ I look up at him and grin, knowing that we both know I don’t mean it.

  He laughs. ‘See? That’s the Wendy I’ve come to expect.’

  I suddenly feel unsure of that being a good thing. I don’t know if he’s joking or not, but it suddenly feels like a very bad thing if he isn’t.

  He knocks his
shoulder against mine again. ‘So, are you okay?’

  ‘Why do you keep asking me that? I’m not the one who got bitten.’

  ‘No, but you’re really scared of snakes. I could see that. I don’t get it but that doesn’t make it any less real to you. It must have been pretty traumatic.’

  ‘Not as traumatic as seeing you naked the other day,’ I snap, but inside I think that’s actually quite sweet. I don’t feel like he’s trying to belittle me for being scared of something he’s not scared of, but that he genuinely understands the definition of a phobia.

  He doesn’t say anything, and I feel horrible for being nasty again. He’s been bitten by a snake to save me and I can’t even answer one question without being a sarcastic cow. ‘I’m fine,’ I say quietly. ‘This is dry. Sit down and let me bandage you up.’

  He lets me push him back into a chair and my fingertips linger on his shoulders for too long, unable to drag my eyes away from a patch of freckles there, something I have no doubt he considers an imperfection, but to me they make his back look even sexier.

  I sit opposite him and pull his hand over so I can press a wound pad across the bite and wrap a bandage around it, crisscrossing over his thumb and sticking it to itself. ‘There, all done.’

  He looks at the covered wound for a moment before he says anything. ‘Okay. Er, thanks, I didn’t expect… I mean, you didn’t have to…’

  He goes to get up but I stop him. ‘Have you eaten today?’

  ‘I’m fi—’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re fine. You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’ve gone pale, and it’s not just the lighting. Sit down because I’m not letting you out of this kitchen until you’ve had a cup of tea and something to eat.’

  ‘Okay, Bossy,’ he says with both eyebrows raised.

  Even so, amazingly, he sits back down. Him obeying me surprises me so much that I’m unprepared, and I’m suddenly rushing around the kitchen, tidying up the first aid bits and refilling the kettle. ‘How do you like your tea?’

  ‘Strong, one sugar.’ He pauses for a minute. ‘How do you like yours? Just in case I ever have a lobotomy and make you one.’

  I find myself smiling at him. ‘Strong, one sugar.’