The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters Read online

  ‘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

  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

  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.