A Year in the Château

by Sarah Long

  ‘Can I have your attention, please. Now that it’s just us, Mary and I have something to tell you. First of all, though, congratulations to the chefs. Beth and Nicola, you’ve done us proud. What a dream team you are!’

  ‘Thanks, Dougie,’ said Beth, who was cuddled up with Simon on the controversial pink love seat that Leo hadn’t yet managed to relegate to the barn. ‘Though I must admit it just goes to prove what we already know about the French – they can’t cook! They don’t need to – the reputation for fine food comes from the ingredients. All we had to do was put the birds in the oven! The rest of it we just unpacked.’

  ‘So what’s your news, Dougie?’ said Will. ‘Is it that we’ve overspent the Christmas budget, in which case, we already know it!’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Well, not entirely unrelated.’

  ‘Tell us!’ Simon heckled.

  ‘Very well,’ said Dougie, glancing over at Mary. ‘You may recall that in the summer, before . . . before the accident . . .’ He overcame his awkwardness. ‘ . . . before the accident, Mary and I took a trip home, to see her mother and so on. What we didn’t tell you at the time was that we had decided to put our house on the market, which we did. And now, the good news is, we have a buyer! Contracts were exchanged last week, and so you see, we will have a welcome cash injection for our renovations.’

  ‘Good man!’ said Will. ‘It also means there’s no going back for you now!’

  ‘I admit we weren’t entirely sure at the beginning,’ said Mary. ‘We wanted to keep the house as an insurance policy. But we couldn’t bear to leave the château now – it’s our home. And you lot are our family.’

  She was becoming a little weepy, and Fizz jumped up to give her a hug.

  ‘Nice of you to hand over all your money, Dougie,’ said Simon with a grin.

  ‘It will be reflected in the accounts and apportioning of ownership, of course,’ said Dougie, ‘but it means we now have the liquidity to put all our plans into action.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Leo. ‘And it looks like I’m in the money as well. Madame de Courcy’s nephew adored what I’ve done in the dining room. Turns out he owns a chain of restaurants in Paris and wants to refurbish them, using me as their designer!’

  ‘This calls for more champagne,’ said Simon, downing his calvados and standing up to head for the cellar. ‘Happy Christmas, everyone! Will, you need to get your arse onto that piano stool – it’s time for a good old singalong.’

  *

  After all the noise and celebration, the château was restored to quietness in the early, dead days of January. The snow melted and the house guests departed, leaving the residents to clear away the decorations and think about the future. The plans for the apartments were resurrected and Will – who had declared himself clerk of works – drew up a shortlist of builders recommended by their roofer. It was finally happening. They would each have their own suite of rooms – at last, Fizz could have her bathroom – while keeping the grand reception rooms for shared use, as originally intended.

  One afternoon, they were all gathered round the dining table, poring over the plans, when Jean-Louis appeared on the doorstep with a large cardboard cake box.

  Nicola smiled as she opened the door to him.

  ‘How did I know it would be you?’ she said.

  ‘Telepathy – you know we have our understanding . . . May I come in?’

  They went through to the dining room, where Beth’s eyes lit up at the sight of the cake box.

  ‘Jean-Louis, you read my mind,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking I could manage a sweet finish. I’ll go and put the kettle on!’

  Jean-Louis placed the box on the table and opened it to take out a well risen puff pastry pie, along with two golden cardboard crowns.

  ‘This is a galette des rois. We always serve it today, the sixth of January, for the feast of epiphany. Inside there is a frangipane almond filling, and also a fève, a china charm you must take care not to swallow. Whoever finds the fève in their tart can wear the crown – they are the king or queen, and they must choose a partner to wear the other crown.’

  The tart was delicious, with the marzipan still faintly warm from the boulangerie oven. Nicola had noticed the galettes des rois, of varying sizes, lined up in the windows of the town’s bakeries. She’d never bought one, as she knew they contained marzipan, which made her think of fruit cakes from her childhood, with their thick hard layer of bright yellow, chemical-tasting gunge that she would peel off and discard before eating the icing. This galette was something else, though. The French had reclaimed marzipan.

  Fizz found the fève, so wore the crown, giving the other one to Will. It was a childish custom, thought Nicola, and allowed herself to imagine one day in the future, when her grandchild might be sitting here, eyes shining as they found the charm and claimed their crown.

  After tea, Nicola asked Jean-Louis if he had time to take a walk with her. She had barely been out for the last few days, the weather had been so unpleasant, and she pulled on a hat and scarf, along with the fake fur coat she kept hanging in the hall. Dom used to call it her rock chick coat.

  The sky was watery grey, but it wasn’t raining. They fell into step and headed down to the lake, kicking through the dirty slush, which was all that remained of the Christmas snow. Nicola led the way to the corner of the field where they’d installed a swing seat that she’d spotted at Chris’s shop. It had a bed-sized wooden base suspended from its frame, with antique heavy iron chains – part of Chris’s recent shipment from India. During the summer, they kept cushions on the seat, but today Nicola sat on the hard wooden surface as it was. Jean-Louis sat down beside her, and pushed the ground with his foot, so the seat swung backwards and forwards in a gentle rocking motion.

  Nicola spoke first.

  ‘Do you know, it’s exactly a year since we first came up with this idea. To move to a big house in the country – I mean, the French château thing came later.’

  ‘It has been a year of enormous change for you,’ Jean-Louis said simply.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You could not have envisaged what was to follow.’

  ‘No.’

  She turned to him. ‘Jean-Louis, I can’t change what has happened, but I can choose what happens next.’

  He looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

  His face lit up in delight but Nicola held up her hand.

  ‘I don’t want us to live together.’

  His face fell.

  ‘I will stay at the château and you will live in your house,’ she continued. ‘But we will visit each other. On a very regular basis. I want to be with you, Jean-Louis – that’s all I want.’

  And with that, finally Jean-Louis leaned in for the kiss he had been waiting for since the first time he saw her.

  EPILOGUE: EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  ‘He’s magnifique!’ Beth said to Simon, as the mayor stood up, his tricolour sash straining over his impressive stomach.

  They were crammed into the local mairie, a tiny room in a stone cottage with standing room only at the back. The door was open so the crowds outside could watch the action.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are welcome to this international celebration,’ the mayor boomed in his rich baritone. ‘Never in my tenure as mayor of this village have I had the honour to unite two young people from the land of our friends across the channel. And may I say, I commend their choice. As we know, France is the land of love, and what more auspicious start to a marriage than to have it formalised here, in this beautiful part of God’s own country.’

  ‘I thought England was God’s own country?’ Dougie whispered to Mary.

  ‘Or Kerala. Or New Zealand. Or Wales. The idea is widely adopted.’

  Nicola was sitting on the front row, with a prime view of Maddie looking like a proper English rose in her sprigged muslin dress. John stood proudly beside her, wearing a blue and yellow tie to match his EU-emblazon
ed socks.

  They fell silent under the mayor’s disapproving frown and sat through the monotonous repetition of formalities, phrased in the tortuous bureaucratic language the French excelled in.

  ‘And now, let the fête commence!’ said the mayor. He pressed the play button on an ancient CD player, and the mournful strains of ‘God Save the Queen’ filled the room, followed by the rousing sound of the ‘Marseillaise’. Both anthems were greeted with tumultuous applause.

  The happy couple filed out first, all radiant smiles. Maddie paused to gather up her daughter, Lily, who was cradled in Fizz’s lap near the entrance, ready for a quick exit if necessary.

  ‘What an extraordinary occasion,’ said Simon to Will amid the jostling of photographers outside. ‘I’m going to have a French country wedding scene in my book – it’s simply irresistible.’

  He looked at Nicola posing beside Maddie and to his relief felt nothing more than warm friendship.

  *

  It was a short drive back to the château; the cars formed a procession, all honking their horns in celebration, in the local tradition. A marquee decorated with Michaelmas daisies was set out in the field – an unnecessary precaution, as it turned out, under the September sun, but Maddie had been adamant there was no way she would let it rain on her parade. They formed a receiving line, with Nicola standing between John’s parents, who could not look more English – Geraldine with her wobbly mother-of-the groom fascinator and Geoffrey in the morning suit he insisted on wearing despite the informality of the occasion. ‘I’ve got the damned thing; may as well get some use out of it,’ he’d declared, showing the same aversion to unnecessary expenditure as his son, which Nicola admitted was a good thing now they had a family to consider.

  It was six months since Maddie and John had made the move to France, following an idyllic Easter visit when they had been so reluctant to return to London that they decided they wouldn’t. In that time, John had leaped into father-provider mode and converted the barn – the scene of Nicola’s discovery of Dom’s secret lover, now referred to as the Flora Letters – into an idyllic love nest for the young family. Will and Simon had worked alongside him, but his real partner in the project was Jean-Louis, the pair of them presenting a fine blond duo in their matching blue boiler-suits.

  Lily came into the world under the gentle care of nuns who ran the nearby maternity clinic. They defied Maddie’s NCT indoctrination about breastfeeding by taking the baby away at night so the new mother could sleep, and bringing her back for her morning feed. Nicola had to give them credit for that – Maddie’s milk did not dry up as a result of a few hours respite and it seemed a far more sensible approach than the evangelical zeal of the breast-or-bust militants.

  ‘It’s funny how you and Maddie and the baby ended up living together after all,’ said Beth, after seeking Nicola out among the marquee full of champagne drinkers. ‘In spite of all your protestations.’

  ‘Completely different circumstances,’ said Nicola. ‘Separate roofs, for a start, and as you know, it won’t be forever. Just a gap year, and then they’ll be bored with us and desperate to get back to the real world. They’ll need to – they won’t find work here – but they’ll always have the barn for holidays. In fact, they’ve told us we can rent it out as a holiday let when they’re not here – bring in some extra income for our château fund. It’s such a delight to have them here and to know they’ll always have the place to come back to.’

  Fizz wandered up to them, a glass of fizzy water in her hand, her bump clearly visible beneath her billowing kaftan.

  ‘Here she comes, Mrs I-Don’t-Want-Children,’ Beth teased her. ’At least you don’t have to suffer the agony of giving up drinking, as you already had.’

  ‘It’s a woman’s right to change her mind,’ said Fizz. ‘I’m getting some lessons in from Maddie, but I’m definitely not going to use disposable nappies – they’re an ecological disaster.’

  ‘Always the moral high ground,’ said Beth as Fizz walked off to have her fecundity admired by a couple of John’s aunts. ‘I do love her, though. And you’ll have her baby to dandle on your knee just as Lily disappears back to London. Though I must say I’m glad they’re moving into the other barn. Far more peaceful for the rest of us.’

  Shifting circumstances meant they had rethought their plans for separate apartments within the château. With Will and Fizz converting a barn for themselves, there would only be six of them in the château, and they had become so used to sharing the space, there was little appetite for breaking it up. So instead, they’d used Will and Mary’s money to renovate the kitchen and put in three new bathrooms, which was just perfect.

  Simon came to join them, balancing three canapes in his hand.

  ‘I’m glad to be back in the land of decent food,’ he said, slipping his arm round Beth’s waist. ‘You wouldn’t believe what they served up last week; thought I was back in the 1970s. I kept expecting them to dish up Goblin meat puddings and Angel Delight.’

  He had just returned from a residential writing course at a damp house set deep in the Welsh countryside.

  ‘Apart from the food, how did you find it?’ Nicola asked. ‘Has it reignited your muse?’

  ‘Pretty good, actually, even if it did feel like a massive self-help session at times. Mostly good people – I touted the château to them as a venue for a writers’ retreat, which could be a nice little earner for us. There were a couple of tossers, as you’d expect. Most notably the ex-adman – you’d have loved hearing him on the first day when we had to introduce ourselves. “I’m not exactly a beginner,” he told us. “Last year I self-published a fable.”’

  Beth and Nicola snorted in delight.

  ‘Are you discussing the fables of La Fontaine?’ asked Jean-Louis, arriving with a bottle of champagne to top up their glasses.

  ‘I don’t know, did he self-publish them?’ asked Simon, but Jean-Louis had turned his attention to Nicola.

  ‘Cherie, you look ravissante today,’ he murmured. ‘I’m loving this fête, but I cannot wait until everyone has left and we can escape upstairs.’

  ‘Hey, put her down!’ said Gus, slapping Jean-Louis affectionately on the back. ‘You don’t want to upset your ready-made family.’

  Jean-Louis lowered his head in mock apology.

  ‘Excuse me, mon fiston, but your mother is a very beautiful woman.’

  ‘So she is,’ Gus agreed. ‘And on that topic, I’m just going to have a word with that equally beautiful cousin of John’s. I honestly can’t believe she’s related to him.’

  Nicola smiled as she watched him exercising his charm on a pretty girl with a nose ring and a grapevine tattoo arranged aesthetically up her arm.

  ‘Are you happy with the day?’ asked Jean-Louis. ‘I think it is a big success.’

  ‘I’m happy with everything,’

  ‘And you still don’t want us to present ourselves before monsieur le maire?’

  He gestured towards the mayor, who was in full anecdote before a crowd of admirers.

  ‘Quite sure. We are perfect as we are. Why would we want to become an old married couple when we can keep up a lifetime of loving courtship. We have the château when we are feeling sociable, and your house when we want to be alone.’

  ‘Je suis d’accord,’ said Jean-Louis, as Bruno Mars’s ‘The Way You Are’ started playing through the sound system.

  He offered her his arm.

  ‘Shall we dance?’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sarah Long is a London-based author of three previously published commercial fiction novels and one hilarious memoir about her ten years living in Paris. She is a married mother of three.

  Also by Sarah Long:

  And What Do You Do?

  The Next Best Thing

  Le Dossier

  Invisible Women

  Also Available. . .

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Zaffre

  This ebook edition published in 2020 byr />
  ZAFFRE

  80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

  Copyright © Sarah Long, 2020

  Cover design by Alexandra Allden

  Cover illustration © Lucy Truman

  The moral right of Sarah Long to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78576-477-6

  Paperbook ISBN: 978-1-78576-476-9

  This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

  Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk