The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters Read online

  His mouth curves up. ‘That might be the first and only thing we’ll ever agree on.’

  ‘Well, reaching an agreement on tea is a pivotal point in any cohabitation.’

  I put a cup of tea on the table and get the last croissant. I rip the brown paper bag it’s in and spread it out in front of him like a plate. ‘I got that from Kat this morning. Don’t tell me it’s not the best croissant you’ve ever eaten. She makes them just before she leaves on her rounds and keeps them warm with food warmers in her cart. She uses local Normandy butter which she buys off the butter maker she fancies at the market twice a week.’

  ‘I don’t know how I’d have slept tonight without knowing that.’ Despite the sarcasm, he attacks the croissant like a starving man, and I think about all those boxes of protein powder in his car. All right, eating cakes at the speed I eat them can’t be healthy, but surely replacing every meal with a drink that looks like something you’d give a constipated dog can’t be good either.

  I take my own cup of tea and sit down at the table opposite him. His hand is still shaking as he eats and it makes me want to lean across and give it a gentle squeeze, just hold it steady for a moment. I wrap my hands around my cup instead, suddenly feeling cold despite the sunshine outside.

  ‘Jules?’ I wait for him to look up and give him my most sheepish look. ‘Thanks for the teabags. I’ll be better prepared next time I come here.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he mumbles around a mouthful of croissant. ‘I’m sorry for being so petty. I hate pettiness and I’ve done nothing but it since I got here. Take whatever you want of mine, it’s just stuff, stuff doesn’t matter to me.’

  That’s an odd thing to hear coming from someone with a car filled to the brim with stuff.

  ‘And lets face it, I’ve probably got six more in the car anyway,’ he says, making me wonder if he can read my thoughts.

  ‘Take anything you want of mine too,’ I say. ‘I mean, I know you’ve got enough to feed and clothe and entertain an army for the next two years, but if there’s anything… croissants or fresh bread or something… just take it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I expect him to add something sarcastic but he doesn’t.

  When he’s finished his croissant, he leans back in his chair with his cup of tea, his injured hand in his lap. ‘I keep meaning to thank you for all the cleaning and stuff you’re doing. I mean, this room looks fantastic, everything’s all sparkly and the floors are so shiny now you could eat your breakfast off ‘em.’

  ‘This is an amazing kitchen,’ I say. ‘It deserves to be appreciated. Eulalie would’ve hated to see it in the state it was in when we got here.’

  ‘You like to cook though? You said something the other day about making cakes.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s kind of how Eulalie and I first bonded. She used to cook a lot, and I was trying to get an apprenticeship in a bakery at the time so I was always making stuff. It became an unofficial bake-swap thing. We were neighbours so she’d knock on my door with a bit of whatever she’d made, and I’d take her round a couple of cakes in return. The flats are tiny and you can always smell what your neighbours are cooking, so if I was home and could smell her baking, I’d start something too, and we’d surprise each other with a swap when it was done.’

  He’s watching me with a gentle look on his face, a look that makes all his features seem softer, even his designer-stubbled jawline, which has got a bit scruffier in the past few days. ‘I didn’t know you were neighbours.’

  ‘Yeah. I moved in about six years ago. She was already living there. I thought she was crazy. Here’s this ninety-year-old woman living on the seventh floor of a crappy block of flats with a lift that only works when the mood catches it right, and she’s hopping up and down the stairs like a kangaroo. She invited herself in to help me unpack. She found my boxes of books and went through them, I had loads of cookery books and chick-lit novels, both of which were her passion. She lent me her cooking books and borrowed my sappy romantic novels. We went from library to baking swap shop to best friends, really. In recent years, she couldn’t stand in the kitchen for long periods of time, so she’d dictate her old family recipes to me and I’d make them for her and we’d sit and eat together. She had all her marbles but her body was giving out on her – nothing frustrated her more than that.’

  ‘She sounds fun,’ he says, sounding genuinely interested in Eulalie herself, not just her money and château.

  ‘She was. She was fearless. She’d have wrapped her bare hands around a snake too.’

  He laughs so hard he nearly spills his tea. ‘I’m not fearless. And I’d have been less keen to pick it up if it had been a viper or something. Don’t go thinking I’m brave because I knew it couldn’t hurt me.’

  I nod at his hand. ‘It has hurt you.’

  ‘Nah, this’ll be good as new in a few days. It might take a while to get rid of the stink in the kitchen though.’

  ‘I was going to try using the Aga this afternoon. A batch of cakes will overpower it soon enough.’ I watch him for a moment. ‘Is there anything you want? I’d like to cook you something as a thank you for getting yourself bitten because of me…’

  ‘I’ve already told you I don’t like cake.’

  ‘I know, I just meant, like, a tarte tatin or something. There’s fruit in it, that’s healthy.’

  He smiles but it turns sad too quickly. ‘Don’t feel like you owe me, okay? I should’ve had gloves on, it was my own fault, don’t worry about it. I’m not about to drop dead, no matter how much you might like me to.’

  ‘Hey.’ I nudge his foot under the table and shake my head when he looks at me. ‘I wouldn’t like that. Really.’

  ‘Wow. That’s quite a turnaround. So the way into a woman’s affections is to get a snake to tear your hand apart. I bet most guys are missing that memo.’

  ‘It’s a shame it didn’t tear your awful sense of humour apart while it was at it.’ I poke my tongue out at him and he grins. ‘And I thought it “wasn’t that bad”? If it is, Jules, you should go to a hosp—’

  ‘Wend, it’s fine. Don’t worry about me. I’m gonna finish my tea and go back to figuring out how the generator’s connected.’

  ‘Is that what were you doing when I screamed for help?’

  ‘I was in the electric cupboard upstairs trying to make sense of the system. It looks like it was installed fifty years ago by someone who had no clue how electricity worked.’

  ‘See? I should be thanking you for all the work you’re doing too. I couldn’t do that stuff.’

  He smiles. ‘Maybe we’re more helpful to each other than we think we are.’

  When I go to bed that night, I find I’m waiting for Julian to come in. It’s not that I want him to sleep with me, or annoy me for half the night, but I haven’t seen him since earlier on, and I’d kind of like to know he’s still alive after the snake bite.

  It doesn’t take long before the familiar flash of his torch appears from the landing. He’s quiet when he comes in and lays his sleeping bag on top of the covers, and maybe it’s my imagination, but he doesn’t wriggle and jostle me half as much as usual, and he doesn’t bother to turn the big light on.

  I wait until he turns the torch off and settles down.

  ‘Thank you for rescuing me from the snake today,’ I say to the ceiling in the darkness.

  I feel the bed dip as his weight shifts. I think he’s looking at me but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking back. ‘You’re welcome.’

  After a few minutes of silence, he says, ‘Thanks for patching me up and… taking care of me afterwards. You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I repeat his own words.

  ‘Goodnight, Wendy.’

  He doesn’t start singing. Instead, he curls in on himself so his back is facing me, and I want to ask him if he’s okay but force myself not to. I don’t care if he’s okay. It would’ve been better for everyone if that s
nake had been poisonous.

  Really, it would.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘How are you still alive?’ Kat says. ‘I mean, how do you not just keel over from how hot he is?’

  ‘You should’ve gone to Specsavers,’ I say, dipping the end of my croissant into my cup of coffee.

  Kat’s come early on her bakery round to have breakfast with me and teach me the proper way to eat a croissant, which is either to slather it with local butter that we won’t have until she can flirt with Theo, her French butter man, at this Saturday’s market, or dip it in coffee. She provided the croissants, I provided the coffee and a batch of hazelnut brownies I made yesterday. We’re sitting on the steps of the château, watching Julian cutting back weeds at the side of the house. Well, she’s watching Julian. I’m watching a bird pecking at a maggot in a fallen apple and trying to convince myself maggots are a more interesting sight.

  ‘Don’t you want to jump on him and shag him senseless?’

  ‘No,’ I say, although admittedly the thought has crossed my mind. More than once. ‘He’s just a body. There’s literally nothing more to him. There’s muscle and being a git. That’s all there is.’

  ‘Yeah, but look at the body. He’s gorgeous. Don’t you just want to touch it?’

  I think about his warm shoulders under my hands yesterday when I made him sit down. Smooth skin, solid curves, that little patch of freckles… ‘No.’ I hide my red face behind my cup of coffee. ‘I’ve met gorgeous men before. They’re all the same. Julian’s got the personality of an orangutan. Actually, that’s not fair on orangutans, they’re probably quite lovely compared to him.’

  ‘When he looks like that, he can have the personality of a piece of seaweed.’ She fans a hand in front of her face.

  I shake my head. ‘I’m thirty-three. If I’m interested in a guy, which I am not, he’s got to be more than a walking bicep. Guys like Julian only care about themselves and their looks. You couldn’t have a relationship with him. It’d be a constant threesome with his mirror.’ I doubt myself as I say it. Despite what I thought at first, he doesn’t seem vain at all. I’ve never even seen him look in a mirror.

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ she says, still looking at him. ‘He seems nice. He’s been sweet and polite every day when I’ve been here for breakfast. You can tell he’s got a heart of gold under all that gorgeous muscle.’

  ‘You can’t tell that,’ I say a bit too quickly. Maybe a heart of gold is exactly what I’m worried about. ‘He’s sarcastic and nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is. And he’s so bloody well put together, isn’t he? I’m not a put-together person and I have trouble trusting anyone who is. It’s not natural. All that perfectly coiffed stubble along that sharp jawline, the smooth hair, the perfect abs…’ I find myself distracted and stare even harder at the maggot in the apple.

  ‘I would not be complaining about those abs.’

  ‘Do you want him to come and join us? You only need to spend a few minutes with him to realise his good looks end at his six-pack.’

  She stares distractedly in his direction. ‘That’s not even a six-pack. It’s more like an eight-pack… And that “v” of his hips. And that accent. Oh my God.’

  I go to shout him over but she stops me.

  ‘No, no, don’t do that. I’m just appreciating a good-looking bloke but I’m not even slightly interested. Besides, he’s a model, and I’m short and dumpy. He wouldn’t look twice at me.’

  ‘I don’t think even he’s that shallow,’ I say. ‘And believe me, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You’re really pretty, and a lovely person. Any guy would be lucky to have you.’

  She blushes at that.

  ‘So, this guy at the market…’ I venture, getting the feeling that, despite her drooling over Julian, Kat’s only got eyes for one man.

  ‘Oh, now he’s gorgeous.’ Her eyes light up as she says it. ‘He hasn’t got a body like that, not that I’ve seen under his uniform unfortunately, but he’s got these green eyes that sparkle when he talks, not that I can understand more than a few words, and he’s got blond hair that flops over and he has to keep pushing back, and I just want to run my hands through it. But it’s not about looks with him… I feel something when I’m talking to him… a connection.’

  ‘Even though you can’t understand each other?’

  ‘I can understand some parts, but I get so flustered and distracted by him that I forget the basic French I do know, and he goes off on a tangent, telling me about his cows or whatever, and I don’t understand enough to follow it. I just like him talking to me. I get the feeling he’s pleased to see me, and not just because I buy loads of butter off him every week.’

  ‘He sounds adorable. Is he single?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems stupid to ask him. First of all, he’s so lovely that he must have a girlfriend, and secondly, we barely understand each other – what kind of relationship could we ever have?’

  ‘One that made good use of Google Translate?’

  She laughs.

  ‘I’m serious,’ I say. ‘I know we barely know each other, but anyone who makes you smile like that has to be worth pursuing. At least find out if he’s single or not.’

  ‘I’d rather not know.’ She shakes her head. ‘He’s better as just a daydream and a fun flirtation on market days. If I find out he’s married, it won’t even be fun to daydream about him any more.’

  I bite my lip as I watch her watching Julian. Kat’s bright and happy and secure in herself. She’s strong and confident in her job, proud of carving out a niche and having a successful career doing exactly what she wants to do. She’s the kind of person I wish I was. Any guy would be lucky to have her, and yet at the first hint of a man, she loses every ounce of confidence. This is why relationships are more trouble than they’re worth. Because love tells lies. Men tell lies. Love, lust, gorgeous men – those are all things that overwrite common sense in your brain and get you into situations you’d never be in if you’d kept your wits about you.

  ‘So, why aren’t you interested in guys?’ Kat asks, making me jump.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You said earlier you weren’t interested. Why not? Bad relationship?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ I say, thinking back. Relationship would be the wrong description. Lying conman would be closer to the right one. ‘I just… I think you can’t trust anyone. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself. Relationships make life more complicated. There’s no need for them.’

  ‘You’ve had your heart broken.’

  ‘I have not,’ I say. If only a broken heart had been the only problem that particular relationship had left me with. ‘I just don’t care about relationships. I don’t want my life entwined with someone else’s.’

  ‘Aww, that means you haven’t met the right person yet.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you start. That’s what Eulalie always used to tell me. She was always trying to set me up. She was all about the happy, sappy love bollocks. It’s exactly that – bollocks.’

  ‘Two minutes ago, you were trying to set me up!’

  ‘Well, relationships can work great for other people. Just not for me.’

  She makes a noise of sympathy. ‘Well, I’ve always said cake is better than most men anyway. If you can make a cake, you’ll never need a man.’

  ‘That should be a slogan on the side of your cart.’

  She laughs. ‘Ah, that’s my dream. Not just to be mobile, but to have a proper little bakery with a giftshop selling handmade crafts, like coasters and coffee mugs, and wall hangings with slogans like that on them. I love making things like that.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘Money. Time. Commitment. Being mobile is a niche that works for me. If I was to get a shop, there’s already a boulangerie in this village and the baker has been here for years, and his customers are loyal to him. If I got a market stall, I’d have to stop doing my morning round so I’
d lose my regular customers. The list of reasons why not is endless, and the reality is it’s nothing more than a pipe dream.’

  ‘I had to let some of those go too,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t make you feel good.’

  ‘No, but you console yourself with cakes and get on with it, don’t you?’ She pops another square of hazelnut brownie into her mouth. ‘Speaking of, these things are amazing. Where did you learn to make these?’

  ‘Eulalie,’ I say. ‘It was one of her recipes.’

  ‘Well, they’re delicious. If you ever want to make some cash while you’re here, you could make a couple of batches of these and come with me on my round. They’d go down a storm with my customers.’

  ‘Nah.’ I almost laugh at how ridiculous an idea that is, even though a little flame ignites in my stomach at the idea of Kat, a professional baker, not only liking something I’ve made but thinking it’s good enough to sell. ‘I’m just here on holiday. My job is waiting at home. I’ll be gone in less than three weeks.’ And with that, the flame is snuffed out instantly. I will never get to bake anything in my job. I’ll never get customers who appreciate me like Kat does. I will only ever get people glaring at me because I’m in the way.

  That whole life seems a million miles away from here. Fresh croissants on the terrace of your own French castle in the early morning sunshine, days of, well, nothing but cleaning so far, but when things are looking a bit better in the château, I’m sure it’ll be days of lazing around in the Normandy sun, reading books from the huge library inside. And then it’ll be back to England. Soggy cornflakes in a damp flat, staring out at the drizzle, fighting my way to work among other angry commuters, and spending my days standing in supermarket aisles, alternately trying to convince customers that I’m not trying to poison them, that they don’t have to buy whatever I’ve got samples of, and that they can only have one sample, no matter how hungry they are.

  ‘So, is he single?’

  ‘Julian?’ I think about what I know of him so far. He’s never mentioned having a girlfriend, and now I come to think about it, he doesn’t seem to be keeping in touch with anyone. His phone is always near the plug in the kitchen, he isn’t permanently attached to it like most people are. It’s always just sitting there on the unit. I’ve seen him pick it up, glance at it and put it down again straight away, but I don’t think he’s spoken to anyone yet. The château is pretty hollow and voices echo through it. If he had a girlfriend, he wouldn’t have buggered off to France and not even called her, would he? ‘I doubt it. I can’t imagine anyone having such a persecution complex that they’d willingly date him,’ I say, even though having a cup of tea with him in the kitchen yesterday wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience and it’s easy to imagine him being a good date.