The chateau next door

What secrets do you hold, you mysterious house of my dreams?

I have a shocking confession to make. I have never watched Escape to the Chateau. Before you close your laptop in disgust, it’s not for a lack of wanting to. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would love Escape to the Chateau, because I love property programmes. My idea of heaven might just be a double bill of A Place in the Sun: Home or Away on Channel 4, in those heady pre-Netflix days when ad breaks gave you a chance to grab a snack and pee, and the houses in Spain or Greece or Italy always seemed impossibly idyllic. Imagine, a house painted white to reflect the Mediterranean sun! No carpets because it never gets cold! Bidets as a style choice! And shouting at the TV because, on reflection, Bob and Sue decided that they would stay in rainy Birmingham because learning Spanish was just a bit much, at our age. Tsk, Bob and Sue, you could have had it all. Anyway, I digress.

My excuses for not watching ETTC are twofold. Number one: I’m not sure it’s available on French TV… although my mother-in-law loves it, so that can’t actually be true. Perhaps I’m just feeling reluctant to watch it in French. Number two: when we escaped to our farm, we also escaped to a chateau next door. And although it’s not ours, it’s the first sight I see every time I come down the drive. It’s beautiful, and imposing, and incredibly mysterious. It’s a writer’s dream.

The chateau with its exclusive entrance, just for owls

At the moment the chateau is occupied by a parliament of owls. We often see their silhouettes in the night sky, heading home after a hunt, in through the gaps to the tower at the top of the chateau. Some of the windows are open to the air but most of the painted white shutters stay ominously closed. On one return home, one shutter had creaked open and, although the practical part of my brain said that it was probably the wind, the romantic, impractical part immediately thought of ghosts and long-lost lovers and wives locked in the attic. I pictured someone peering out at the world, someone trapped in time, unsure how they came to be there, confused by the noise of the road in the distance and burning their last candle over their last sheet of parchment.

Speaking of candles, the chateau has no electricity. It has never had electricity. What must this mean? How many years must it be since a person actually lived there? It’s got to be at least a century. A century ago, who lived in our house? Did the ghosts of our house’s past work in service for the rich folk in the chateau? How the mind spins. I have a suspicion that we have a key, somewhere, buried in the pile of keys we were given in the sale of the house, but it’s not our house, so I suppose using the key would be breaking and entering. But a rebellious part of me can’t help but wonder.

Straight horizons have never been my forte. What do you think - should I break in?

At the moment, this post is more questions than answers, but I would love to find out more. Where should I even begin? People of Substack, share your wisdom. Who used to live in the chateau next door? And who will live there in one hundred years? Let’s write the novel together. It’s going to be a bestseller.