The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters

by Jaimie Admans

  ‘If I was, it would be so I could surprise him with a shove into the moat,’ I grumble, clambering over a tangle of strawberry runners to get back to solid ground.

  She grins and waves a fresh baguette at me. ‘Wendy, you have a tan. In the couple of weeks I’ve known you, you’ve told me repeatedly how much you hate the outdoors, and you suddenly look like you’ve had a week in the Maldives.’

  ‘The sun shines through the windows while I’m cleaning the rooms.’

  ‘Or you’ve been spending more and more time outside with a certain garden-loving Scottish guy…’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ I stumble onto the crumbling concrete of the driveway and take the baguette off her. ‘Good morning to you too, Miss Marple.’

  ‘It’s okay to like him, Wend—’

  ‘I’m not out here waiting for him, I’m up to my knees in spiteful weeds because I’m picking berries, I was planning on making a strawberry and raspberry crumble later.’ I show her my basket of strawberries to prove it. ‘He can jog off the edge of the earth for all I care.’

  ‘If you really thought that, you wouldn’t be so eager to feed him. He looks like he needs to get a few cakes down his neck.’

  I go to say something sarcastic in response, but I can’t disagree with her, and if there’s been an upsurge in my baking lately, it’s because I’m testing the Aga, not because I want Jules to eat something decent. The Aga has a different definition of cooking times to a regular oven. It takes some getting used to, that’s all.

  I tear off a piece of her gorgeous baguette, the smell of freshly baked bread filling the air as we wander back towards the château. ‘God, these are amazing,’ I say as I stuff yet another piece into my mouth. ‘Every day they taste better than the day before.’

  She blushes at that, which thankfully takes her mind off me and Julian. He’s been occupying far too many of my thoughts lately. I need to think about something else, especially if that something is how good Kat’s bread is.

  ‘You’re protecting yourself,’ Kat says after a few moments silence.

  ‘I’m eating a baguette!’ I protest with my mouth full.

  ‘Just because one relationship didn’t work out, doesn’t mean they all won’t. You don’t need to try so hard to dislike him. He’s not going to hurt you just because someone else did.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with that. I dislike him because…’ It shouldn’t be this hard to think of a reason. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway, and he’s never going to get a chance to hurt me because—’

  ‘Because if you already think the worst of him, he can’t disappoint you?’

  ‘No,’ I huff.

  ‘I’ve been flirting with Theo for at least a year,’ she says, looking across the grass rather than at me. ‘You and Julian pushing me the other day is the first time I’ve ever really spoken to him, and it’s not just because I didn’t want to ruin the fun flirtation if he was married or something. I know what it’s like to put up barriers, to convince myself that focusing on my career is the most important thing, and that if I grow old alone then it’s a necessary sacrifice for doing what I love. I keep terrible hours for the round. I’m up at three o’clock to start baking and I go to bed by seven every night. Even if I knew Theo was single, how could I start a relationship with those hours? After you two left on Saturday, he came over and chatted to me again. He started telling me that he’s up at the crack of dawn to milk his cows, that sometimes he leaves home at four in the morning to drive to the furthest markets. He talked really slowly and I understood almost everything, and every excuse for it not working out crumbled away. And that was because of you and Julian.’

  ‘You can’t blame us for that,’ I say, feeling abnormally tearful.

  ‘I’m not, I’m thanking you. Because even if it doesn’t work out with Theo, I want to try, even though my last relationship didn’t end well and I’ve been single for more years than I care to admit.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was seeing someone for seven years, it ended, I ran away.’

  ‘Oh, come on. After all your psychoanalysing of me, you’ve got to give me more than that. Please?’

  She sighs. ‘Looking back, I can see the signs were there. We’d been together seven years but there was no commitment. I kept waiting for him to ask me to marry him, or at least to move in together. I was too shy to ask him and, with hindsight, it was because I knew what answer I’d get. When I finally plucked up the courage to break it off, there was no feeling from him, no attempt to save it, just a sense of inevitability that we’d been biding our time until one of us managed to end it.’

  ‘That’s why you haven’t talked to Theo properly?’

  ‘I just thought that if that’s what you get after investing seven years with someone, what’s the point? I’d be better off concentrating on my career.’

  ‘So this was back in England, before you moved here?’

  ‘I thought ending it was the hardest thing I’d have to do,’ she says with a laugh. ‘But he was a delivery driver for the bakery I worked at. Turned out the hardest thing I had to do was keep seeing him each morning, so I did the brave, sensible, adult thing and ran away to a different country.’

  ‘Wow. I didn’t know any of that,’ I say, looking over at her. She’s my age but she seems so comfortable and settled and happy with her life. In comparison, I feel like I’m floundering around in the dark since I came here. I feel better knowing that even Kat hasn’t always had things together. ‘So why here? I mean, it’s a beautiful place but it’s not exactly on the map.’

  ‘Honestly? You’re probably thinking some twist of fate, a big neon flashing sign saying “go here, it’s your destiny”?’

  ‘Something like that…’

  She shrugs. ‘I was on a budget and the hotel a few miles away had the cheapest rooms on the travel website.’

  I giggle, tearing off another piece of baguette and crunching through the crust. Whatever the reason, I’m glad she came here, and not just because of the amazing bread she makes.

  ‘I never intended to stay. I only had two weeks off work, but by the end of the first week, I didn’t want to go home. They were trying to encourage new people into the area and selling off land ridiculously cheap, and before I even realised what I was doing, I’d bought a plot. It was fate inasmuch as the pastry chef at the hotel spectacularly quit in the middle of the dining room that same week, full-on throwing his hat on the floor and stamping on it, leaving the owners in the lurch. I happened to mention what I did and they hired me on the spot. I stayed there while my parents sold my flat at home for me and I used the money to build a house on the bit of land I’d bought.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say again. ‘I had no idea. That was really brave.’

  ‘Nah, brave would’ve been staying and facing the fact my relationship ended. But it worked out for the best in the end. Three years later and I don’t regret a thing. Maybe it was fate, in a way. I wasn’t enjoying my job and I lived in a horrible area. I would never have planned on moving to France or becoming a mobile baker, but I love every second of it now, even the early starts.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Jules, he likes mornings.’

  She raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You can’t go two seconds without thinking about him, can you?’

  ‘I can’t not think about him. I live with him, he’s bloody everywhere,’ I mutter as we walk up the steps.

  ‘You have forty rooms. If you didn’t want to see him, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘But we’ve got no electricity. It’s like the house is doing everything in it’s power to force us together, like Eulalie always said it did in her romantic old stories.’

  ‘Are you sure they were just stories?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, letting us in the front door. ‘Trust me, the only thing living in these walls are termites, not magical romance powers.’

  ‘It’s such a gorgeous house. It bleeds decadent glamour and l’amour.’ She
throws her arms wide and spins in the entranceway. ‘It makes you believe in old-fashioned love and Prince Charming and Disney films. Anything could happen here.’

  ‘My money’s on a surprise drowning if he gets near enough to the moat and doesn’t see me coming.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Kat says, running her hands along the walls of the empty servants’ quarters as I make us a cup of tea. ‘So, what about you? I told you my story. What’s yours?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘Come on, Wend. What are you running away from?’

  ‘I’m not. Do you know what it took for me to come here? I’ve spent years building up a safe and steady routine, then one bloody letter from beyond the grave, and it all goes to hell in a handbasket. I’m not running away. If I was running away, I’d be going home. This is what I want to run away from.’

  ‘A safe and steady routine is fine, until one day it’s not. Maybe this is exactly what you needed. Maybe Eulalie knew that when she sent you here. You and Julian.’

  ‘She didn’t send Julian here, he just turned up.’

  ‘Conveniently at exactly the same time you did. Maybe there’s more to these walls than you think.’

  ‘Yeah, dead rats and some kind of fungus that eats through wood. Jules is talking about getting a specialist in before the whole place is infested.’

  ‘For someone who you’re so convinced only wants money out of this place, he’s certainly doing a lot of things that say the complete opposite.’

  I poke my tongue out at her. ‘You don’t know him like I do. If he is, it’ll all be about future market value and improving the price he thinks he’s going to get when he loopholes his way into selling it without my consent,’ I say, even though, if I’m honest, nothing about Jules has made me think it lately, especially the Jules with his hair loose and a huge hoody on the other night. He seemed thankful to be here and like he really was pinching himself.

  ‘Try that without your voice shaking and I might believe you,’ Kat says.

  ‘It’s true.’ I try to ignore how unsteady my voice sounds. ‘He’s a knobkettle.’

  ‘That defence mechanism of calling him names is only going to hold up for so long, you know.’

  Deep down, I think I know that. But I put my trust in someone before, even when people warned me not to, and I lost everything through my own stupidity. It’s easier to believe Jules is a money-grabbing git like my ex than to let myself trust anyone again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’m sitting on the window seat in the library again one evening. There’s a book open on my lap, but instead of reading it, I’m watching some impressive storm clouds roll in over the Normandy countryside. That’s the thing about the view here – no matter what else you’re doing, it makes you stop and look at it. The sky is an angry mix of grey and black and there’s a crack of lightning in the distance and a rumble of thunder as the heavens open, rain beating down on the château. I settle back and watch it falling down in sheets, running down the windowpane and obscuring my view. It’s loud up here in the library because it’s so close to the roof, and it makes me look up and wonder if I’m about to get wet. We have no idea what shape the roof is in, but according to Julian, there’s damp running down the inside of the tower walls, which means it’s probably leaking.

  With a bit of luck, it’ll drown the bats. Or at least encourage them to find a new home. If they don’t move out soon, they can just have the towers. We’ve got forty rooms. We don’t need towers too.

  This is the first rain we’ve seen since we got here. Over two weeks in August without rain. That would never happen in Britain.

  From somewhere below, I hear Julian shout ‘Shit!’ The château doors clatter open and he skids down the steps towards his car. Guess who forgot to put the top up.

  But instead of putting the top up, he goes to the boot and struggles to get something out of it, something huge that keeps flapping in the wind. The rain on the window is making it impossible to see so I close my book and make my way down the multiple flights of stairs towards the courtyard.

  Outside, the wind is like being trapped in a wind tunnel, and by the old British standard of raining cats and dogs, here it’s raining hippos and rhinoceroses. I stand in the nice dry doorway and watch Julian struggling, but I can’t work out what he’s doing. Other than swearing. A lot.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I shout, but the wind is so loud that he doesn’t hear me. He’s got what looks like a gigantic waterproof sheet which he’s trying to spread across the top of his roofless car. And he really is struggling, bless him. Oh God, what’s wrong with me? ‘Bless him’ is strictly reserved for cute toddlers and noisy kittens, it’s not something you say about gorgeous Scotsmen.

  He’s drenched too. He hasn’t got a jacket on and his T-shirt is soaked through already, and he’s only been outside a few minutes. The wind is strong enough that it’s got underneath the sheet and lifted it like a parachute, and every time he tries to fix a corner, the wind is ripping it out of his hands and flapping him in the face with it. He looks like he’s fighting a losing battle.

  I don’t even realise I’m going to help until I’m splashing through the courtyard with wet gravel digging into my feet. I get to the other side of the car and grab a corner of the plasticky sheet so hard it makes him jump.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I shout again.

  ‘Bloody hell, Wend!’ He puts a dripping hand on his wet chest. ‘Go back inside, you’ll get soaked!’

  ‘I’m already soaked and I’ve only been out here for five seconds! What are you trying to do?’ I have to scream to be heard over the wind.

  ‘Cover the car with this tarpaulin to keep the rain out!’

  ‘Call it stating the obvious, but have you considered putting the top up?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he shouts back. ‘It’s broken. Go back inside, I can manage!’

  I clutch the tarp tighter as it tries to make a break for freedom in a particularly vicious gust of wind. ‘Just tell me what to do!’ I wave the corner at him, damp string wrapping itself round my wrist. ‘Where do I tie this?’

  ‘You need the next string along. Tie it to the wing mirror. Seriously, Wend, you don’t have to be out here, I’ve done this alone many times. Don’t worry about me.’

  I look up at him and yank the sheet even harder, feeling along the edge for the next bit of string I need. There’s that ‘don’t worry about me’ thing again, the thing that serves only one purpose – to make me worry about him. In my head, I kick myself. I shouldn’t be worrying about him. I shouldn’t care if he’s out here getting soaked. And yet, I feel positively gleeful when my fingers close around the correct string and I yank the sheet between us and pull it flat over the car.

  The sky is so dark that it may as well be midnight, rain is pouring and the wind is so strong it’s like being hit by a flying elephant. The sheet is twisting and flapping so much that I’m surprised it hasn’t ripped clean in two. It’s simple once I’ve understood what he’s trying to do. With one string tied around the car’s mirror, it’s easy to see that one ties around each door handle, and there are two little hooks screwed into the bonnet that are for knotting it around. The sheet covers the car perfectly, and once it’s flat, Julian goes to each string on his side and ties it into position expertly.

  When the tarp is taut across the car and raindrops are bouncing off it, I can’t take my eyes off Jules as he checks each knot. Something about seeing him out here trying to cover his car in the pouring rain makes me wonder if he’s not so perfect after all. Even someone as dishevelled as me doesn’t have a car that needs a sheet of tarp over it in the rain. All right, I don’t have a car, but still.

  Julian comes round to stand beside me. ‘Shit, Wend, you’re soaked.’

  ‘Says the man who literally looks like he’s standing in a waterfall,’ I say, pretending I’m not looking at the way his wet shirt is clinging to his abs.

  ‘Ah, I
love a bit of rain. When it’s not destroying my car, that is.’

  ‘You going inside?’ I ask, wondering why exactly we’re still standing in the courtyard when there are flashes of lightning dancing on the nearest low mountain.

  ‘Yeah,’ he mumbles, but instead of going back across the courtyard, he turns around and takes a deep breath. ‘Don’t you just love the smell of rain on dry concrete?’

  I inhale too. ‘Hmm. Smells like the pneumonia we’re both going to catch from being out here for ages.’

  ‘It’s a summer rain and it’s been, like, thirty degrees today. No one’s gonna die from this. Think of the plants. They’ll be ecstatic. It’s hasn’t rained for weeks, they’ll be sucking this up like Audrey Two sucking blood from a finger.’

  Trust Julian to think of the plants. He’d probably put an umbrella up for the bats too, knowing him. Best not remind him of the leaking towers.

  He suddenly puts an arm around my shoulders and turns me to face him, grabs my hand and starts dragging me through some kind of demented waltz across the courtyard.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I squeak at him, even though his eyes are sparkling behind his wet glasses and the smile on his face is so innocent and childlike that I’m smiling back involuntarily.

  ‘A rain dance!’

  I giggle as he pulls me through another turn. ‘It’s going to be a struck-by-lightning dance if you’re not careful!’

  He laughs before waltzing us towards the steps up to the château. When he lets me go, I run up them and stand in the doorway, but he doesn’t come in. Instead, he bounces up the concrete steps one at a time, splashing in the puddles that have quickly formed.

  ‘Julian, you’re a maniac!’ I shout down to him, but I’m laughing as I say it. This is a rare glimpse into something fun and childlike in him. It’s a side I’ve not seen before, and watching a grown man play in puddles shouldn’t be called adorable, but it is.

  ‘Well, it’s not like I could get any wetter, is it?’