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

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.’