Page 89 of You Had Me at Chateau
I decide to keep the email to myself. There must be some kind of mix-up.
‘I should wait until tomorrow,’ I tell him. ‘Them’s the rules, right?’
Tom grins.
‘I’ve got two presents, so you can have one today if you follow me,’ he replies.
‘Okay,’ I say with a heavy sigh, grabbing my cocktail and half-eaten Scotch egg, and following him through the house. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the garage,’ he tells me.
‘Ooh, have you got me a BMW too?’ I joke.
‘Could you drive one even if I did?’ he laughs. ‘But no. I just put it in there because it’s the only part of the house without people in it.’
‘Fair enough,’ I reply with a laugh.
‘In there,’ Tom says, pointing to the garage.
‘I know where the garage is,’ I laugh.
‘Yeah, I know, I’m saying go in there. I’ll wait here,’ he continues.
‘Is this something awful? Is something going to go off or go “boo” or… I don’t know?’ I ask suspiciously.
‘It’s nothing bad,’ he insists. ‘Merry Christmas.’
I give him a sceptical look but my curiosity gets the better of me.
‘I will throw your present in the pond if this is a prank,’ I warn him.
I step into the dark garage but pause for a moment.
‘Can I have the light on?’ I call back.
‘I’ll turn the light on when you close the door,’ he insists. ‘Humour me, it’s just because I haven’t wrapped it.’
‘It better be a car,’ I mutter under my breath.
The door clicks shut, the light flicks on, and there he is – Caleb, standing next to the deflated inflatable Santa Claus that Dad retired once he stopped warring with Mum.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, almost accusingly.
‘Tom invited me,’ he says simply.
‘How?’ I blurt.
‘He had my number, from when you used my phone to call him, so he gave me a ring,’ he explains, like it’s a perfectly normal thing. ‘We had a chat, about a few things, and then he invited me, so here I am.’
‘But why did you come?’ I reply. ‘Why didn’t you say no?’
‘Because I wanted to see you,’ he tells me.
I pull a face, somewhere between confused and irritated.
Caleb laughs, probably at my teenage-girl level of moodiness, and steps forward. He takes my cocktail and my Scotch egg, placing them on the side before taking my hands. ‘I owe you a few apologies,’ he begins, taking a deep breath. ‘That morning when Annabelle turned up, I saw a photo of myself online, taken from the château window. I assumed it was you who had taken it because, well, who else could it be? You told me you had seen me out of the window, and then a photo of me out of the windowwas leaked to the press, so I put two and two together, but I was always better at English than maths.’
‘Oh,’ is all I can say. ‘No, that wasn’t me. That was Henri, the guy who runs the place. He told me it was him, that he did it because you wouldn’t post promo stuff about the resort. I tried to come see you after, to tell you, but Annabelle was still there and you were kind of rude, so…’
