The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters

by Jaimie Admans

  It will be a nightmare with him involved. He’ll march in and take whatever he wants. There’s a lot of antique-looking furniture lying around. He could gut the place and what right would I have to stop him? None. The only thing my co-ownership means is that he can’t sell the château without my consent, but he’s so good at loopholes, I even wonder how watertight that might be.

  If there’s any hint of truth in that treasure riddle… it would be worth looking. While I’m in here and he’s out there.

  Chapter Four

  It’s a good plan until it gets completely dark outside. Although there are plenty of lights in the château, most of them fancy crystal chandeliers, I can’t get any of them to switch on. The electricity supply has probably been cut off after so many years of the place being empty. Which is just great when you’re treasure hunting in the dark. I didn’t think to bring a torch with me, and after using my phone’s flashlight to poke around a couple of rooms, the battery has died, and without an electricity supply, I can’t charge it.

  It’s getting quite dangerous actually. It’s pitch-black inside now and there aren’t even any streetlamps to let in light from outside like there are at home. I have no way of telling where I’m going or what I’m looking at, my legs are covered in bruises from walking into things, and this is an old house that makes a lot of creaking noises. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t keep looking at shadows and trying to work out the difference between the noise of a pipe expanding and an axe murderer coming to kill me.

  Just as I’m thinking of giving up until morning, I see something. I’m on one of the lower floors, although I have no idea exactly where. I’ve lost track of how many sets of stairs I’ve gone up and down. I’m in a small room, much smaller than the others in the house, and as I’m about to walk out, a glint of silver catches my eye. I crouch down to the floor and try to see through the wooden boards in the way. There’s a hole at the base of the wall that’s been boarded up, and whatever that silver thing is, it’s hidden between the walls.

  It would be a good hiding place for treasure…

  I scoot backwards and kick out one of the boards. It’s so old that it crumbles under the heel of my shoe, and I scramble to clear enough space to get my arm through.

  I stretch my hand in, trying not to think about the cobwebs that cling to me. It’s still out of reach though, and I break more wood away and try again, getting further, to my shoulder this time, but still not far enough. Only one of the wooden boards crumbles, leaving a slim gap into the wall cavity; the other one is rock solid and I need a crowbar to prise it off, but it’s too dark to go hunting for tools.

  Right, come on, Wendy. Enough pratting around. If Loophole-git McNephew was in here, he’d be through that hole by now with the promise of treasure, and you wouldn’t be getting a sniff of it. I’ve got to get this before he does.

  I look at the gap. It doesn’t look completely impossible. I mean, if I breathe in and squash my boobs down a bit… surely I could get in there with just a bit of squeezing. What could possibly go wrong?

  I’m stuck.

  I am stuck halfway into a wall in a French château, my phone is not only dead but in the upstairs room where I left it, and no one knows I’m here. No one is going to come looking for me.

  And I locked out the only person within a five-mile radius.

  Well, this is just great, isn’t it?

  I wriggle and struggle, trying every way I can think of to free myself, but I have to face facts.

  I am going to die here.

  Within hours of arriving, I will disprove Eulalie’s belief that this place will give anyone who lives here a happily ever after.

  It should be renamed The Château of the Grim Reaper.

  I’m going to starve to death. Unless the spiders eat me first.

  Or that noise upstairs actually is an axe murderer.

  I lose track of time as I lie there waiting for death to take me, trying to work out what will kill me first. Starvation? Dehydration? Choking to death on dust, or suffocation by cobweb? Being cannibalised by French spiders?

  I’ll wait until morning and then start shouting for help. There’s got to be a neighbour somewhere nearby who might hear. Maybe Nephew McGit will hear and phone the fire brigade to break in and cut me free. Even letting him in is better than dying. Probably.

  I must have dozed off eventually, despite the wooden board digging into my stomach, because the next thing I’m aware of is laughter. Laughter with a Scottish twang to it. And a shutter noise and flash of light.

  ‘Did you just take a photo of me?’ I shout at him, so annoyed that I suck in a mouthful of cobweb and choke on it.

  He’s laughing so hard he can barely catch his breath to answer me. ‘I came in here to find nothing but a pair of legs sticking out of a wall. Of course I took a photo. Hold on a sec while I put it on Instagram.’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ I kick out at him and miss. ‘You bloody loophole git!’

  ‘Or Julian, as people tend to call me,’ he says. ‘And it’s nice to see you don’t believe there’s any treasure and you weren’t looking for it.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  He laughs again. ‘No? Then what exactly are you doing halfway inside a wall? Please do tell, because I can’t wait to hear the explanation for this.’

  I huff and roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. ‘There’s something in here.’

  ‘Something that might be treasure?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I’m sure he can hear how sulky I sound, even though everything is muffled through the wall.

  ‘Ah-ha! So you do think there’s something in that riddle!’

  ‘No. I just saw something… and I thought… it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Let me guess, you thought you’d lock me out to get a head start, and if you found anything, you’d hide it and pretend you hadn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay then,’ he says cheerfully as his footsteps head away. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘No, wait!’ I shout after him. ‘I might need a bit of help here.’

  I imagine him folding his arms across his chest. ‘Why should I help you when you can’t even answer a question honestly?’

  ‘What, the treasure?’ I sigh. ‘Oh, come on, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing!’

  ‘I wouldn’t have made you sleep in your car all night!’

  ‘It’s August in France, for bollocks’ sake. What were you worried about? Freezing to death in a freak ice storm?’

  ‘It’s just not a very nice thing to do.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I mutter, sounding the least sorry I’ve ever been. ‘Besides, I’ve been stuck in a wall all night. I think I got my comeuppance, don’t you?’

  He laughs. ‘I don’t know. I could leave you there a while longer to find out…’

  ‘Julian!’

  ‘Julian what?’

  I huff, more annoyed at my own stupidity than at him. ‘Julian, please, you’re my only hope.’

  ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Hold still. I’ll use this hammer to pull the other board out.’

  ‘Where did you get a hammer from?’

  ‘Hanging on the other wall. This is some kind of tool cupboard.’

  Great. It’s a shame I didn’t see that last night. I could’ve used the hammer to pull the silver box closer and not got into this mess in the first place.

  I don’t dare to take a breath as he prises the other board away and I can finally move for the first time in hours. I scramble and push myself backwards to get out of the wall, bringing a cloud of dust with me. Julian holds out his hand to help me up but I smack it away and struggle to my feet by myself. I don’t need Nephew-git’s help with anything else, ever.

  Every part of me is stiff and aching from being stuck in place for so long, I’m covered in dirt and debris from the floor, and I’ve got cobwebs in places I didn’t know cobwebs could exist. I pull my hair
out of the plait it’s in and shake it so hard that I start coughing and spluttering again.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ He holds a bottle out to me.

  No, not from him. But the only tap I found in the château yesterday spurted brown goo at me and, of course, I didn’t bring any of my own.

  I choke a garbled agreement and grab the bottle off him, not intending to be quite so snatchy.

  I know he’s watching me as I pour water down my parched throat and I try to block him out. It’s not easy. Through the curtain of my hair, I can see his brown boots crossed over each other where he’s leaning against the wall, and despite the musty, damp wood smell in this room, his aftershave has somehow overpowered it. I glance up and he’s still looking at me. ‘You haven’t poisoned this, have you?’ I ask, wondering if he’s waiting for me to drop dead, and if it’s a question I should have considered before I poured half of it down my throat.

  ‘I suppose you’ll have to wait and see,’ he says with a shrug.

  I start gagging and try to spit out what I’ve already swallowed, but he starts laughing. ‘I’m joking, Wendy. I considered it but I left the cyanide at home. Thought the French police might have something to say about it if I got searched on the ferry.’

  ‘Then why are you looking at me?’ I snap, annoyed at myself for falling for it.

  ‘I’m not. I’m looking at the centipede in your hair.’

  I scream and start slapping wildly at my head.

  He laughs that infuriating laugh again. ‘Bloody hell, it’s only a wee centipede. I’ll get it if you hold still.’

  It’s not easy to stay still when every inch of your skin is crawling, but I try to stop flapping around as he strides across the room and reaches his big hand out. I squeeze my eyes shut and let him extract the wriggly thing from my hair.

  Instead of stamping on the centipede like I thought he would, Julian crouches down and sets it back inside the hole I’ve just escaped from. ‘Couldn’t you have killed it?’

  ‘Why should I kill it? It’s been in this house a lot longer than you have. Why does it deserve to die because you’ve invaded its home?’ He stands back up and faces me.

  I go to snap something in response but my eyes lock on to his blue ones and my train of thought stops abruptly. He’s right, isn’t he? Why should I be angry at him for not killing an animal, even an insect with far too many legs? It’s kind of nice, actually. I’ve never met anyone who would think twice about stamping on an insect before.

  I try not to look at the hint of chest showing under the charcoal-grey shirt that’s so far open he may as well not be wearing one. I’ve never been particularly taken with muscular men, but no one can deny that his chest curves in all the right places.

  ‘Wendy?’ He clicks his fingers like it’s not the first time he’s said it.

  When I look up, he’s smirking again and there’s laughter in his blue eyes. He knows exactly what my attention was on. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I said, how far did you get in your search last night? Did you find anything interesting before you attacked the helpless, unsuspecting wall?’

  ‘Not very,’ I mutter, glaring at him, mostly because there’s no point in even trying to pretend I wasn’t looking for it. I’m just as bad as him. ‘We’ve got no electricity so it was pointless after dark. We’ll have to phone the electric company and get them to switch us back on. I expect it’s been shut off after so many years of the place being empty.’

  ‘Nah. No way does a place this far out in the countryside get electricity from the grid. There’ll be a generator outside somewhere that probably needs a good oil-up. I’ll see if I can find it later.’

  I hadn’t even thought of that. And I’d thought I was being clever to deduce that the electric had been cut off. He’s undoubtedly right. Again. ‘How did you get in here anyway?’

  ‘I went for a walk and met our neighbour. Lovely old chap, lives at a farm about three miles down the road. Doesn’t speak a word of English, of course, but turns out he was good friends with Eulalie and her husband, and when she left, she gave him the spare key so he could keep an eye on things in exchange for grazing his sheep in our empty pastures.’

  ‘If he doesn’t speak a word of English, how did you get all of that?’

  ‘I speak fluent French.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ I mutter as I pull my hopefully insect-free hair back. You could fit what I remember of French on the bottom of an ant’s foot. Bonjour. Uno, dos, tres… Oh wait, that’s not even French, is it? I should’ve picked up a phrasebook at the train station yesterday.

  ‘So, this treasure then…’ He nods towards the wall. ‘Shall I see if I can reach it or would you like another try?’

  ‘I think I’ve crawled into enough holes for one day, thank you.’

  He smirks again and I look away, trying to concentrate on the room I couldn’t see in the dark last night. He’s right about this being a tool room of some kind. There are work benches around the walls and mops and buckets and a broom propped up in one corner, an array of tools attached to the far wall. It’s only a tool room and it’s bigger than my entire flat at home.

  Julian reaches the box with no trouble and I frown at the back of his head as he pulls it out. Is there anything he doesn’t make look easy? I’d obviously nudged it closer with all my struggling. That’s definitely it.

  ‘So…’ I watch in anticipation as he stays crouched on the floor, smoothing his hand across the top of the dirty silver box. We could be holding a fortune here and he’s bloody feeling the indentation of whatever French wording is etched on the top.

  ‘Oh yeah, this is definitely treasure.’ He looks up at me with that smirk again. ‘Congratulations, you’ve found a bonafide French rat box.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  His face screws up in revulsion as he opens it. ‘You know. You put the rat poison in, the rats go into the box, eat the poison and can’t get back out again, so they snuff it in there. Well done, you’ve found the twenty-year-old bones of a dead rat. Here.’

  He hands the open box to me and I shriek and stumble away. ‘Seriously? I nearly died for a dead rat?’

  He bursts out laughing as he fits the lid securely back on the box. ‘Nothing like a bit of melodrama first thing in the morning. I didn’t realise getting stuck in a wall was such a near-death experience.’

  ‘I was alone! It was scary! I didn’t think anyone could get in to help me!’

  ‘Yeah, well, if you will insist on acting like a child and shutting the door in people’s faces. The solicitor never did say how old you are but I assume it’s in the single digits. Did someone have to sign a permission slip for you to come here?’

  ‘At least I’m not wearing a shirt that was clearly made for someone much younger. You must’ve got that from the children’s department,’ I say, even though he looks better than he did in the suit the other day.

  ‘Which is a step up from your current fashion choices, which seem to be showcasing the contents of a floor that hasn’t been cleaned since the nineties.’

  I start brushing off the grime that’s ingrained in my clothes, trying to ignore him as he starts undoing the buttons of his shirt. ‘Why are you doing that?’

  ‘Well, if you have such a big problem with my shirt then it’s only fair I take it off. If you wanted a proper gawp at my abs you should’ve just said so.’ He slides the shirt off his tanned shoulders, flexing his bloody huge biceps and rolling his six-pack.

  My eyes don’t know where to look first and I force myself to turn away so I don’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘Okay, so…’ he says after a long silence. ‘Thanks for saving my life, Julian. Sorry for locking you out and for the crick in your neck from making you sleep in the car all night just so I could get a head start on the treasure hunting and keep it all from you.’

  ‘It wasn’t because of that.’

  He doesn’t say anything but I can practical
ly hear the raised eyebrow.

  ‘Fine,’ I mutter. ‘Sorry. And thank you for rescuing me.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I’m always happy to help idiots in distress.’ He claps his hands together. ‘There, now that’s settled and it’s daylight, I’m going to have a look round the grounds and see what’s growing on our fifteen acres.’

  I hate the emphasis he puts on ‘our’. He’s doing it on purpose. ‘I was just about to do that.’

  ‘No, you were going to stay stuck in that wall until the end of time. Maybe after a few weeks of starvation, you’d have lost enough weight to free yourself.’

  I turn around and glare at him, the shirtless git. His mention of starvation has made me remember how hungry I am. Now he’s in, there’s nothing to stop me going out to get food. Surely the village can’t be far away.

  ‘Seeing as you trying to kill me with that look of pure hatred has failed, shall we go and have a look round together? I’m not sure I can trust you not to fall down a well or something.’

  I glare at him even harder but he continues smirking with his smug face and laughing eyes.

  That feeling of being alone out here earlier? That was a good feeling. I miss that feeling.

  Chapter Five

  Outside, the early morning sun is high in the sky and I squint up at it like a mole seeing daylight for the first time. It makes my eyes sting and start watering. Julian slides his sunglasses out of his jeans and puts them on. Of course, I didn’t think to bring sunglasses with me.

  He stands at the top of the main steps and takes a deep breath, looking around. Past our courtyard, driveway, and the little access lane, there’s nothing but fields and trees for miles in front of us, the rolling green of Normandy hillsides. There’s no road, no traffic noise, nothing but the occasional squawk of a bird.