‘Maybe she’d have left it to both of us if she’d known I existed.’
I glare at him, but he’s probably not wrong. Eulalie would have loved a nephew, even if he lived miles away in Scotland. She might’ve had a grudge against her brother, but that wouldn’t have extended to his children and grandchildren. If she’d known this Julian existed, she’d have been asking me to teach her how to use Skype and enquiring if pensioners got a discount on rail fares to go up and meet him.
‘So, what do you want to do with the old place then? Should we sell? We’d get half a million euros each. Even with the exchange rate, we’d do pretty well out of it. I don’t know about you but half a million euros wouldn’t go amiss in my life.’
‘It’s not for sale. Eulalie left it to me because she knew I wouldn’t sell it,’ I say, every bit of softness I was feeling towards him disappearing in an instant at the mention of money. Of course that’s all he’s bloody interested in, like all bloody men.
‘What do you intend to do with it then?’
‘I don’t know. This has come as a shock to me. But I will never sell it, no matter how much it’s worth. It’s nothing to do with money. Eulalie loved that château. She talked about it all the time, I just never had a clue that it was an actual place.’
‘And this whole riddle-y, treasure-y thing… She was a looney, right? That’s just the nonsensical ramblings of a mad old fogey? Lost a few marbles?’
‘No, she hadn’t lost any bloody marbles, she was…’ I trail off as I realise what he’s doing. He’s trying to wheedle information out of me without asking outright if there’s some kind of treasure hidden at the château. ‘I mean, she had a vivid imagination and was prone to fantasies. She told so many grand stories, you could never be sure of what was real and what wasn’t…’
‘And you obviously think there’s something in it.’
‘I doubt it. If Eulalie had treasure of any kind, she wouldn’t have lived in the flat she did. She had no money. She lived hand to mouth on her pension.’ This isn’t a lie. Eulalie’s riddle is surely just another one of her stories. If she had money hidden away anywhere, she would have used it years ago.
‘Are you going to open your letter then?’
I raise an eyebrow at the cheek of him. ‘What, here? In front of you? My private letter, to me personally?’
‘She could’ve given you coordinates or something. It’s not right if you have an unfair advantage.’
‘An unfair advantage to what?’
‘Finding the treasure, of course.’
Oh, for God’s sake. The money-obsessed git. ‘There is no bloody treasure.’
He nods. ‘Right.’
I bet he gets punched a lot. He seems like the kind of person who would get punched a lot.
‘I’ll remind you of that when I find it before you and use it to buy you out.’
‘I won’t sell.’
‘I’d make you an offer you can’t refuse.’ He raises an eyebrow in a way he probably thinks is sexy. A three-day seminar on the history of plumbing would be sexier. Really, it would.
‘I doubt that. Some people aren’t soulless bastards obsessed with money.’
He lets out a laugh that sounds genuine, making his eyes crinkle up. ‘Wow. You really don’t like me, do you?’
I plaster on a false smile. ‘Put it this way, if you were on fire and I had a bottle of water, I’d drink it.’
That makes him laugh even harder and I frown at him, unsure whether he’s being patronising or just has a terrible sense of humour. ‘On that note, goodbye,’ I say, pushing past him and stalking off down the street, hoping he doesn’t follow me this time.
Of course, I’ve gone the wrong way and have to hide behind a corner until he leaves before I can double back and find the train station for the next train home.
I don’t know what’s got into me today. I can’t believe I called him a soulless bastard. I’ve never said anything like that to a stranger before.
Men bring out the worst in me. Particularly this one, obviously.
There’s a little thrill of excitement growing in me as I sit on the train home. I try to stamp it down because this doesn’t change anything. Owning a château in France makes no difference to my life.
Well, part owning with Nephew-git McLoophole. If there’s a loophole for him, hopefully there’s a way for me to loophole him right back out again.
It’s raining as I rush home but I’m so caught up in everything that’s just happened I don’t notice myself getting wet until it’s too late to bother with an umbrella. I can’t get home quick enough and it’s nothing to do with the rain. I’m desperate to read Eulalie’s letter. There must be some answers in it, maybe an explanation about why she never told me it was a real place, and something about this ridiculous treasure riddle. She wasn’t the joking type, and her will is a pretty odd place to start making jokes.
At home, the lift is out of order again and my wet shoes squeak against the stained floor as I drag myself up the stairs. As I go into my own flat, I look at the battered door next to mine, wishing she was still there, that she’d come out with a batch of hot cakes because she’d heard me coming in, that she’d offer an explanation for how any of this château thing can be real.
Inside, the smell of mould hits me like a wall and I open a window and let in the rain and the stink of stale curry from the Indian takeaway three doors down. The smells combine to make a stench that slithers through the flat like low-hanging fog.
Why would anyone live here if they could afford to live somewhere better? Why would she stay here if she owned a castle in France?
Maybe she was like me – she just didn’t need anything more.
It’s fine. It’s nice, even, if you don’t look too hard or think about things too much. The rent is reasonable for being near London, the smell of the Indian almost goes away if you keep the windows shut, and the mildew isn’t that noticeable after a while. This is Britain, after all. Everyone has some level of damp problems.
Maybe Eulalie had the right idea. Why try to make things better when everything is already good enough? When people get ideas above their station, they invest money in businesses that are doomed to fail and their hearts in people who are doomed to break them – that’s when things go wrong. If you have enough to get by then why try for more? Getting by is fine. That’s probably why Eulalie didn’t live at her château, or sell it for the money. What did the solicitor say it had? Forty rooms? Forty rooms is ridiculous. No one needs forty rooms. It would be a nightmare. I have one bedroom, one kitchen-slash-living room, and one bathroom, and it’s all I can do to keep it clean. And what would you even do with all those acres of land? Fifteen acres is mad. You’d need six circuses to cover half of it.
The numbers on my alarm clock are blinking 3.31 and, instead of sleeping, I’m reading the letter for the six hundred and ninetieth time.
My dearest Wendy,
I know this will come as a surprise to you once I’m gone, and that’s exactly the way I wanted it. The Château of Happily Ever Afters is real. It’s real, and it’s yours.
Let my death be the push you need. You’re only young, but you live the life of an old woman. You live inside a comfort zone that’s getting smaller