‘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