LITMIR.BIZ

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Ever.

      In front of us, two large fish are near the surface.

      ‘They’re catfish,’ he says, sounding delighted. ‘Feel free to put your hand in. It’s not like those whiskers will give you a nasty sting or anything.’

      The fish shoot away when his shadow falls across the water and he makes a noise of disappointment. ‘We’ll have to buy some fish food for them – poor wee things are probably starving.’

      Of course he’s going to feed something that wants to sting me. It reminds me of how hungry I am. I’m about to admit this but quickly think better of it. I can’t let him know he was right. Again.

      Outside of the main garden area, there’s so much greenery that I wouldn’t know where to start. Weeds and bramble bushes stretch out for miles. It looks like there might’ve been paths between them once, but they’ve long since disappeared into the undergrowth. You can imagine people setting out to explore it and never being seen again. It’s the kind of sight that makes me want to run back inside and not come out. At least inside you can get around without being attacked by angry-looking plants and whatever might be living in them, even if there are a few creaky floorboards and crumbling walls.

      Julian is looking around in awe. ‘We’ve got our own orchard.’

      ‘How can you tell?’ I squint in the direction he’s pointing. ‘There’s just a load of green things.’

      ‘Otherwise known as trees.’

      ‘Oh, ha ha. I meant the brambles and grassy stuff that’s taller than me.’

      He laughs. ‘They’re called weeds, Wendy. They tend to happen when a garden isn’t maintained for twenty years.’

      ‘This isn’t a garden. A garden is a little square of lawn with some flowers around the edges. This is Day of the Triffids, this is.’

      He looks at me but his sunglasses hide most of his face. ‘Call me presumptuous, but you’re not big on the outdoors, are you?’

      ‘I like the outdoors just fine,’ I mutter. ‘As long as it stays out and I stay in.’

      ‘How can anyone not like the outdoors?’ He takes a deep breath in again. ‘All that sunshine and fresh air.’

      ‘The vague smell of cowpats, the wet grass that’s soaked right through my shoes… and there’s a daddy longlegs crawling up my trousers.’ My voice gets higher as I bend down to slap it away. What is it with the French insect population attaching itself to my body today?

      ‘You don’t get places like this at home. Not where I live in the city, anyway. They’ve tried, but even the parks are surrounded by gridlocked traffic and angry people.’ He sighs happily. ‘Now this, this is the proper outdoors.’

      ‘Says the man whose hair looks like it will melt in direct sunlight.’

      ‘Gotta love hair insults coming from the girl with hair that looks like you borrowed it from a recycled mop.’

      I pull it back and try to smooth it down. ‘I was stuck in a wall all night!’

      ‘I slept in my car!’

      ‘You’re really pernickety about that, aren’t you?’

      ‘It’s an uncomfortable car and I’d already spent twelve hours driving it to get here yesterday.’

      ‘Yeah, well, it’s not made for comfort, is it? It’s made to show off how small your willy is.’ I feel a little spike of guilt as I say it. I’m being horrible to him. I’m not usually this unkind to complete strangers, even if he is one of the more irritating strangers I’ve met lately.

      He’s clearly got enough confidence in his willy size to ignore the insult. Instead, he picks up a fallen tree branch and uses it to start beating a path through the bramble bushes. ‘I really want to know what’s growing in that orchard. Stand back, and watch out for snakes.’

      ‘Snakes?’ I gulp.

      ‘They like undergrowth and places they won’t be disturbed. A garden that hasn’t been visited in twenty years is ideal.’

      ‘Are these snakes likely to be poisonous?’

      He glances back at me with a smirk. ‘Yep. Very poisonous, and very, very big.’

      I want to cry.

      Coming here was a terrible idea. This is why people have comfort zones. Because you don’t meet poisonous bloody snakes on the way to work in London.

      By the time we reach the orchard, I’ve been scratched by three hundred bramble bushes, bitten by a million mosquitoes, and stung by at least one horsefly. I’m sweating, thirsty, still starving, and Julian hasn’t even broken a sweat. He bashes a path through the brambles with ease, whereas I get tangled up just looking at them. Our land is an overgrown mess to me, but Julian is fascinated by it. He keeps stopping to point at things and saying names like I’m supposed to know what any of these weeds are called. Personally I’d call them all Steve and be done with it.

      The orchard is less overgrown than everywhere else, but you still need a scythe and a few axes to get through it.

      ‘Wow,’ Julian says.

      I’ve got to admit, he has a point. There’s green grass still visible through the weeds here, unlike the rest of the grounds, and there are rows and rows of trees, tree after tree stretching into the distance. The biggest ones are perfectly in line, and I picture whoever created this orchard, maybe Eulalie’s husband, maybe someone from decades before, out here with a tape measure, lining them up perfectly. Surrounding them are a hotch-potch of smaller trees, sprouting from anywhere and everywhere, no order to them at all, and I wonder if they’ve self-seeded from the fallen harvest of the bigger trees. There are still rotting shells on the ground, remnants of whatever fell last year, I guess, although looking up at the trees gives me no clue of what they’re growing. They’re covered in green spiky balls. Why does everything in this country look like it wants to hurt me?

      Even with the sunglasses hiding most of his face, I can tell Julian’s impressed as he looks around.

      ‘What are they?’ I ask him.

      He stretches a long arm up and pulls down a branch, and I absolutely don’t watch his forearms flexing as he runs a finger across one of the green, spiteful-looking things. He might be a git but I’ve got to admit he’s a nice-looking git.

      He smiles a soft smile and shakes his head. ‘Chestnuts. I should’ve known.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Le Château de Châtaignier. The Chestnut Castle.’

      ‘That’s what it means?’

      He nods.

      ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, stating the obvious. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the name might have a meaning, and I definitely couldn’t translate it. ‘Chestnuts as in… conkers?’ I think back to conker fights in the school playground. ‘Because they’re meant to keep spiders out of houses and so far they’re clearly doing a terrible job.’

      ‘Completely different thing. Those are horse chestnuts, these are sweet chestnuts – y’know, the roasting on an open fire at Christmas kind?’

      ‘Oh, right.’

      ‘They’re not common to this region. I expected this to be an apple orchard. That’s what Normandy is known for. I wouldn’t mind betting this is the only chestnut orchard around here. Someone named their château this for a reason.’ He looks at me. ‘This was someone’s livelihood once. There’s enough of a chestnut harvest here to sell for weeks in the autumn. This whole place looks like it was set up to be self-sufficient with all the different areas and the outbuildings.’

      ‘You can tell that under all the weeds?’ I ask, trying not to be impressed that he knows this sort of thing.

      He

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