The Chateau of Happily-Ever-Afters: a laugh-out-loud romcom!. Jaimie Admans

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Even as I think it, I know I can’t. I didn’t leave the flat before the crack of daylight, lie to my boss about being ill, take two trains and a painfully expensive taxi, and spend half the day travelling only to go home before nightfall.

      This is just a holiday. People take holidays all the time. People go to visit French châteaux all the time. All right, so they don’t usually own them and probably pay a pretty penny for the privilege, and that’s the point, isn’t it? You can’t be given a château and not visit it. That would be silly. This is like a free holiday.

      If only I was a person who liked holidays. What I like is routine, my usual day and everything being at its right time and place. I despise the disruption of holidays, the weeks of packing and planning and last-minute panics on the way to the airport. I met my ex on holiday. He wanted to go everywhere and try everything, and look how well that turned out. I haven’t been on holiday since. And that’s exactly the way I like it.

      Eulalie was always encouraging me to go somewhere. How fitting that my first holiday in years is at her beloved Château of Happily Ever Afters. Even as I stand here, I see her stories in the reality. She told me of going skinny-dipping in the moat and being caught by a group of local villagers. The moat might not look too appealing for swimming now, but decades ago? Maybe. She said there was a bridge, told me of the time the girl and the duke painted the iron railings white on a sunny day so hot that the paint had dried in the tin. The bridge railings are covered in cracked, peeling white paint now.

      The key is a weight in the pocket of my jeans, and I turn back to the building, a silent pull, like it’s inviting me inside. Eulalie believed this place was magic, that it would bring a happy ending to everyone who lived here. I’m not sure I believe in magic, and I definitely don’t believe in happy endings, but Eulalie wanted me to have this place. She wanted me to come here, and that’s more important than routines and comfort zones.

      I drag my suitcase up a crumbling set of steps to the gigantic front door. Something is carved in one of the stone pillars and I scratch lichen off to see what it says. Le Château de Châtaignier.

      Well, I guess it really is the right place. Eulalie never told me it had a real name. She’d christened it The Château of Happily Ever Afters and that was that. If she’d told me the real name, I could have Googled it. Would I? Maybe. Why was she so determined to keep it a secret? Why did she speak of her time here so often but never once tell me it was real?

      The key crunches in the lock and I have to shove all my strength against the double doors to prise them apart, the wood no doubt swollen after many winters of rain and summers of drying out. Old varnish flakes off as they creak open and I hold my breath and stay perfectly motionless for a few moments in case the whole lot falls down. Everything is still and the air is damp and stale. Most of all I notice the absolute silence, not even the hum of a refrigerator that I’m so used to at home.

      But one thing’s for certain: if this place really is capable of giving everyone who lives here a happy ending, there must be some ecstatic spiders about.

      Inside, the house has the smell and look of a building whose only occupants in the past twenty years have been of the eight-legged variety. Dust has settled like dirty СКАЧАТЬ