The Paris Apartment

Mimi

Morning. I’m sitting on the balcony watching the light seep into the sky. The joint I stole from Camille hasn’t helped me relax: it’s just making me feel sick and even more jittery. I feel . . . I feel like I’m trapped inside my own skin. Like I want to claw my way out.

I hurry out of the apartment and run down the twisting stairway to the cave, not wanting to meet anyone on the way. It’s full of the detritus from the party last night: broken glass and spilled drinks and dropped accessories from people’s costumes—wigs and devil’s forks and witches’ hats. I normally like it better down here, in the dark and the quiet: another place to hide away. But right now I can’t be here either because his Vespa is there, leaning against the wall.

I don’t—can’t—look at it as I pull my bicycle from the rack beside it.

He always went out on that Vespa. I wanted to know about his life, I wanted to follow him into the city, see where he went, what he did, who he met with, but it was impossible because he used that bike to go everywhere. So one day I went down into the cave and I stabbed a small hole into the front wheel with the very sharp blade of my canvas-cutting knife. That was better. He wouldn’t be able to use it for a few days. I only did it because I loved him.

That afternoon I saw him leave on foot. My plan had worked. I went after him, followed him into the Metro and got onto the next carriage. He got off in this really shitty part of town. What the hell was he doing there? He went and sat down in this greasy-looking kebab place. I sat in a shisha bar across the road and ordered a Turkish coffee and tried to look like I fitted in among all the old guys puffing away on their rose-scented tobacco. Ben was making me do things I never normally would, I realized. He was making me brave.

Ten minutes or so later a girl came and joined Ben. She was tall and thin, a hood up over her head, which she only took down once she was sitting opposite him. I felt my stomach turn over when I saw her face. Even from across the street I could see that she was beautiful: dark chocolate hair with a sharp fringe that looked so much better than my home-cut one, a model’s cheekbones. And young: probably only my age. Yes, her clothes were bad: a fake-looking leather jacket with that hoodie underneath and cheap jeans, but they somehow made her seem even more beautiful by contrast. As I watched them together I could actually feel my heart hurting, a hot coal burning behind my rib cage.

I waited for him to kiss her, to touch her face, her hand, to stroke her hair—anything—waited for the worse pain I knew would come when I saw him do it. But nothing happened. They just sat there talking. I realized it seemed quite formal. Like they didn’t actually know each other that well. There was definitely nothing between them to suggest they might be lovers. Finally he passed her something. I tried to see. It looked like a phone or a camera, maybe. Then she got up and left, and he did too. They went in different directions. I still couldn’t work out why he’d been talking to her, or what he might have given her, but I was so relieved I could have cried. He hadn’t been unfaithful to me. I knew I shouldn’t have doubted him.

Later, back in my room, I thought of that night in the park, how we’d shared that cigarette. The two of us in the dark by the lake. The taste of his mouth when I’d kissed him. I thought about it when I lay in bed at night, fingers exploring. And I whispered those words I heard in the darkness by the lake. Je suis ta petite pute. I’m your little whore.

This was it, I knew it. This was why I’d waited so long. I was different from Camille. I couldn’t just screw around with random guys. It had to be something real. Un grand amour. I had thought I’d been in love before. The art teacher, Henri, at my school—Les Soeurs Servantes du Sacré Coeur. I’d known we had a connection from the beginning. He’d smiled at me in that first lesson, told me how talented I was. But later, when I sent him the paintings I had made of him, he took me aside and told me they weren’t appropriate—even though I’d worked so hard on them, on getting the proportions right, the tone: just like he’d taught us. And when I sent them to his wife instead, but cut up into little pieces, they made some kind of formal complaint. And then—well, I don’t want to go into all that. I heard they left for another school abroad.

I didn’t know where this part of me had been hiding. The part that could fall in love. Actually: I did. I’d been keeping it locked away. Deep down inside me. Terrified that sort of weakness would make me vulnerable again. But I was ready now. And Ben was different. Ben would be loyal to me.

Down in the cave, I tear my eyes away from his Vespa. I feel like there’s a metal band around my ribs stopping me from taking in enough air. And in my ears still this horrible rushing sound, the white noise, the storm. I just need to make it stop.

I yank my bike free and haul it up the stairs. I can feel the pressure building inside me as I wheel it across the courtyard, as I push it along the cobbled street . . . all the way down to the main road where the morning rush-hour traffic is roaring past. I jump onto the saddle, look quickly in each direction through the tears blurring my eyes, push straight out into the street.

There’s a screech of brakes. The blare of a horn. Suddenly I’m lying on my side on the tarmac, the wheels spinning. My whole body feels bruised and torn. My heart’s pounding.

That was so close.

“You stupid little bitch,” the van driver screams, hanging out of his open window and gesturing at me with his cigarette. “What the fuck were you doing? What the hell were you thinking, pulling out into the road without looking?”

I yell back, my language even worse than his. I call him un fils de pute, son of a whore, un sac a merde, a bag of shit . . . I tell him he can go fuck himself. I tell him he can’t drive for shit.

Suddenly the front door of the apartment building clangs open and the concierge is running out. I’ve never seen that woman move so fast. She always seems so old and hunched. But maybe she moves more quickly when you’re not looking. Because she’s always there when you least expect to see her. Appearing around corners and out of shadows, lurking in the background. I don’t know why we even have a concierge. Most places don’t have them any longer. We should have just installed a modern intercom system. It would be much better than having her around, snooping on everyone. I don’t like the way she watches. Especially how she watches me.

Without saying anything she puts out her hands, helps me to stand up. She’s much stronger than I ever would have guessed. Then she looks at me closely; intensely. I feel like she’s trying to tell me something. I look away. It makes me think she knows something. Like maybe she knows everything.

I throw off her hand. “Ça va,” I say. I’m OK. “I can get up on my own.”

My knees are still stinging like a kid’s who has taken a tumble in the playground. And my bike chain has come off. But that’s the worst of it.

It could have ended so differently. If I hadn’t been such a coward. Because the truth is, I was looking. That was the point.

I knew exactly what I was doing.

It was so close. Just not close enough.

Sophie

I descend the staircase with Benoit trotting at my heels. As I pass the third floor I pause. I can feel her there behind the door, like something poisonous at the heart of this place.

It was the same with him. His presence upset the building’s equilibrium. I seemed to see him everywhere after that dinner on the terrace: in the stairwell, crossing the courtyard, talking to the concierge. We never talk to the concierge beyond issuing instructions. She is a member of staff, that sort of divide must be respected. Once I even saw him following her into her cabin. What could they be speaking about in there? What might she be telling him?

When the third note came, it wasn’t left in the letterbox. It was pushed beneath the door of the apartment, at a time when I suppose my blackmailer knew Jacques would be out. I had returned from the boulangerie with Jacques’ favorite quiche, which I have bought for him every Friday for as long as I can remember. When I saw the note I dropped the box I was holding. Pastry shattered across the floor. It sent a thrill through me that I knew had to be fear but for a moment felt almost like excitement. And that was just as disturbing.

I had been invisible for so long, any currency spent long ago. But these notes, even as they frightened me, felt like the first time in a very long while that I had been seen.

I knew I could not stay in the building for a moment longer.

Outside the streets were still white with heat, the air shimmering. At the cafés tourists clustered at pavement tables and sweated into their thé glacés and citron pressés and wondered why they didn’t feel refreshed. But in the restaurant it was dim and cool as some underwater grotto, as I had known it would be. Dark paneled walls, white tablecloths, huge paintings upon the walls. They had given me the best table, of course—Meunier SARL has supplied them with rare vintages over the years—and the air-conditioning sent an icy plume down the back of my silk shirt as I sipped my mineral water.

“Madame Meunier.” The waiter came over. “Bienvenue. The usual?”

Every time I have eaten there with Jacques I have ordered the same. The endive salad with walnuts and tiny dabs of Roquefort. An aging wife is one thing; a fat wife is another.

But Jacques was not there.

“L’entrecôte,” I said.

The waiter looked at me as though I had asked for a slab of human flesh. The steak has always been Jacques’ choice.

“But Madame,” he said, “it is so hot. Perhaps the oysters—we have some wonderful pousses en Claire—or a little salmon, cooked sous vide . . .”

“The steak,” I repeated. “Blue.”

The last time I ate steak was when a gynecologist, all those years ago, prescribed it for fertility; doctors here still recommend red meat and wine for many ailments. Months of eating like a caveman. When that didn’t work came the indignity of the treatments. The injections into my buttocks. Jacques’ glances of vague disgust. I had inherited two stepsons. What was this obsession with having a child? I could not explain that I simply wanted someone to love. Wholehearted, unreserved, requited. Of course, the treatments didn’t work. And Jacques refused to adopt. The paperwork, the scrutiny into his business affairs—he would not stand for it.

The steak came and I cut into it. Watched as the blood ran thin and palest pink from the incision. It was then that I looked up and saw him, Benjamin Daniels, in the corner of the restaurant. He had his back to me, though I could see his reflection in the mirror that ran along the wall. Something elegant about the line of his back: the way he sat, hands in his pockets. The posture of someone very comfortable in their own skin.

I felt my pulse quicken. What was he doing here?

He glanced up and “caught” me watching him in the mirror. But I suspected he knew I was there all along, had been waiting for me to notice him. His reflection raised the glass of beer.

I looked away. Sipped my mineral water.

A few seconds later, a shadow fell across the table. I looked up. That ingratiating smile. He wore a crumpled linen shirt and shorts, legs bare and brown. His clothes were entirely inappropriate for the restaurant’s formality. And yet he seemed so relaxed in the space. I hated him for it.

“Hello Sophie,” he said.

I bristled at the familiarity, then remembered I had asked him not to call me “Madame.” But the way he said my name: it felt like a transgression.

“May I?” He indicated the chair. To do anything other than agree would have been rude. I nodded, to show I didn’t care either way what he did.

It was the first time I had been so close to him. Now I saw that he wasn’t handsome, not in the traditional sense. His features were uneven. His confidence, charisma: that was what made him attractive.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’m reviewing the place,” he said. “Jacques suggested it at dinner. I haven’t eaten yet but I’m already impressed by the space—the atmosphere, the art.”

I glanced at the painting he was looking at. A woman on her knees: powerfully built, almost masculine. Strong limbs, strong jaw. Nothing elegant about her, only a kind of feral strength. Her head thrown back, howling at the moon like a dog. The splayed legs, the skirt rucked . . . it was almost sexual. If you could get close enough to sniff it, I imagined it wouldn’t be paint you smelled but blood. I felt suddenly very aware of the sweat that might have soaked into the silk beneath my arms on the walk over here, hidden half-moons of damp in the fabric.

“What do you think?” he asked. “I love Paula Rego.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” I said.

He pointed to my lip. “You have a little—just there.”

I put the corner of the napkin up to my mouth and dabbed. Took it away and saw that the thick white linen was stained with blood. I stared at it.

He coughed. “I sense—look, I just wanted to say that I hope we haven’t got off on the wrong foot. The other day—when I commented on your accent. I hope I didn’t seem rude.”

“Mais non,” I said. “What would make you think that?”

“Look, I took French studies at Cambridge, you see, I’m just fascinated by such things.”

“I was not offended,” I told him. “Pas du tout.” Not at all.

He grinned. “That’s a relief. And I enjoyed the dinner on the roof terrace so much. It was kind of you to invite me.”

“I didn’t invite you,” I said. “That dinner was all Jacques’ idea.” Perhaps it sounded rude. But it was also true. No invitation would be offered without Jacques’ say-so.

“Poor Jacques, then,” he said, with a rueful smile. “The weather that night! I’ve never seen anyone so furious. I actually thought he was going to try and take the storm on, like Lear. The look on his face!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I should have been appalled, offended. No one made a joke at my husband’s expense. But it was the surprise of it. And he’d pulled such an accurate impression of Jacques’ outraged expression.

Trying to regain my composure I reached for my water, took a sip. But I felt lighter than I had in a very long time.

“Tell me,” he said, “what is it like being married to a man like Jacques Meunier?”

The sip caught in my throat. Now I was coughing, my eyes watering. One of the waiters ran forward to offer assistance: I waved him away with a hand. All I could think was: what did Ben know? What could Nicolas have told him?

“Sorry.” He gave a quick smile. “I don’t think my question came out quite right. Sometimes I can be so clumsy in French. What I meant was: being married to such a successful businessman. What’s it like?”

I didn’t answer. The look I gave him by way of reply said: you don’t frighten me. Except I was frightened. He was the sender of the notes, I was certain of it now. He was the one collecting those envelopes of cash I left beneath the loose step.

“I just meant,” he said, “that should you ever want to give an interview, I’d be so interested to talk to you. You could talk about what it is to run such a successful business—”

“It’s not my business.”

“Oh, I’m sure that isn’t true. I’m sure you must—”

“No.” I leaned across the table to emphasize the point, tapped out each word with a fingernail on the tablecloth. “The business is nothing to do with me. Comprenez-vous?” Do you understand?

“OK. Well.” He looked at his watch. “The offer still stands. It could be . . . more of a lifestyle piece. On you as the quintessential Parisienne, something like that. You know where I am.” He smiled.

I just looked at him. Perhaps you don’t understand who you’re dealing with, here. There are things I have had to do to get to where I am. Sacrifices I have had to make. People I have had to climb over. You are nothing compared to all that.

“Anyway,” he stood. “I better be going. I have a meeting with my editor. I’ll see you around.”

When I was sure he had gone I called the waiter over. “The 1998.”

His eyes widened. He looked as though he was about to offer an alternative to such a heavy red in that heat. Then he saw my expression. He nodded, scurried away, returned with the bottle.

As I drank I remembered a night early in my marriage. The Opéra Garnier, where we watched Madame Butterfly beneath Chagall’s painted ceiling and sipped chilled champagne in the bar in the interval and I hoped Jacques might show me the famous reliefs of the moon and the sun painted in pure gold on the domed ceilings of the little chambers at each end. But he was more interested in pointing out people, clients of his. Ministers for certain governmental departments, businessmen, significant figures from the French media. Some of them even I recognized, though they didn’t know me. But they all knew Jacques. Returning his nod with tight little nods of their own.

I knew exactly what sort of man I was marrying. I went into the whole thing clear-eyed. I knew what I’d be getting out of it. No, our marriage would not always be perfect. But what marriage is? And he gave me my daughter, in the end. I could forgive anything for that.

Now, I pause for a moment on the landing outside the third-floor apartment. Stare at the brass number 3. Remember standing in this exact spot all those weeks ago. I’d spent the rest of the afternoon at the restaurant, drinking my way through the 1998 vintage as all the waiters no doubt watched, appalled. Madame Meunier has gone mad. As I drank I thought about Benjamin Daniels and his impertinence, about the notes, the horrible power they had over me. My rage blossomed. For the first time in a long time I felt truly alive. As though I might be capable of anything.

I came back to the apartment as dusk was falling, climbed the stairs, stood on this same spot and knocked on his door.

Benjamin answered it quickly, before I had a chance to change my mind.

“Sophie,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

He was wearing a T-shirt, jeans; his feet were bare. There was music playing on the record player behind him, a record spinning round lazily. An open beer in his hand. It occurred to me that he might have someone there with him, which I hadn’t even considered.

“Come in,” he said. I followed him into the apartment. I suddenly felt as though I was trespassing, which was absurd. This was my home, he was the intruder.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“No. Thank you.”

“Please—I have some wine open.” He gestured to his beer bottle. “It’s wrong—my drinking while you don’t.”

Somehow he had already managed to wrong-foot me, by being so gracious, so charming. I should have been prepared for it.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want any. This is not a social visit.” Besides, I could still feel my head swimming from the wine I had drunk in the restaurant.

He grimaced. “I apologize,” he said. “If this is about the restaurant—my questions—I know that was presumptuous of me. I realize I crossed a line.”

“It’s not that.” My heart was beating very fast. I had been carried here by my anger, but now I felt afraid. Voicing this thing would bring it into the light, would finally make it real. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

He frowned. “What?” He hadn’t expected this, I thought. Now it was his turn to be on the back foot. It gave me the confidence I needed to go on.

“The notes.”

He looked nonplussed. “Notes?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The notes—the demands for payment. I have come to tell you that you do not want to threaten me. There is little I will not do to protect myself. I will . . . I will stop at nothing.”

I can still hear his awkward, apologetic laugh. “Madame Meunier—Sophie—I’m so sorry but I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. What notes?”

“The ones you have been leaving for me,” I said. “In my letterbox. Under my door.”

I watched his face so carefully, but I saw only confusion. Either he was a consummate actor, which I wouldn’t have put past him, or what I was saying really didn’t mean anything to him. Could it be true? I looked at him, at his bemused expression, and I realized, in spite of myself, that I believed him. But it didn’t make sense. If not him, then who?

“I—” The room seemed to tilt a little: a combination of the wine I had drunk and this new realization.

“Would you like to sit down?” he asked.

And I did sit, because suddenly I wasn’t sure that I could stand.

He poured me a glass of wine without asking, this time. I needed it. I took the offered glass and tried not to hold the stem so tightly that it snapped.

He sat down next to me. I looked at him—this man who had been a thorn in my side since he arrived, who had occupied so much space in my thoughts. Who had made me feel seen—with all the discomfort that came with that—just when I thought I had become invisible for good. Invisible had been safe, if occasionally lonely. But I had forgotten how exciting it could feel to be seen.

I was in a kind of trance, perhaps. All the wine I had drunk before coming here to face him. The pressure that had been building in me for weeks as my blackmailer taunted me. The loneliness that had been growing for years in secrecy and silence.

I leaned over and I kissed him.

Almost immediately I pulled away. I could not believe what I had done. I put a hand up to my face, touched my hot cheek.

He smiled at me. I hadn’t seen this smile before. This was something new. Something intimate and secret. Something just for me.

“I—I need to leave.” I put my wine glass down and as I did I knocked his beer bottle to the ground. “Oh, mon Dieu. I’m sorry—”

“I don’t care about the beer.” And then he cradled my head in his hands and pulled me toward him and kissed me back.

The scent of him, the foreignness of it, the alien feel of his lips on mine, the loss of my self-control: these were all a surprise. But not the kiss itself, not really. In some part of myself I had known I wanted him.

“Ever since that first day,” he said, as though he were echoing my own thoughts, “when I saw you in the courtyard, I’ve wanted to know more about you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, because it was. But what made it feel less so was the way he was looking at me.

“It’s not. I’ve been hoping to do that ever since that night at your drinks party. When it was just the two of us in your husband’s study—”

I thought of the outrage I had felt, finding him in there looking at that photograph. The fear. But fear and desire are so tangled up in one another, after all.

“That’s absurd,” I said. “What about Dominique?”

“Dominique?” He seemed genuinely confused.

“I saw you two together at the drinks.”

He laughed. “She could eye-fuck a statue. And it was convenient for me to be able to distract your husband from the fact that I was lusting after his wife.”

He reached out and pulled me toward him again.

“This can’t happen . . .”

But I think he heard my lack of conviction because he grinned. “I hate to say it. But it already is happening.”

“We have to be careful,” I whispered a few minutes later as I began unbuttoning my shirt. As I revealed the lingerie that had been bought at great expense but hardly ever seen by eyes other than my own. Revealed my body, denied so much pleasure, kept and kempt for a man who barely glanced at it.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, as though worshipping at my feet. Pushed down the tight wool of my trousers, finding the thin lace of my knickers with his lips, opening his mouth against me.

Nick

I didn’t sleep well last night, and not just because of the bass from the party in the cave thumping up the stairwell all night. In the bathroom I shake two more little blue pills into my hand. They’re about the only thing keeping me functioning right now. I toss them back.

I wander out into the apartment. As I pass the iMac the screen flickers to life. Did I jolt it? If so I didn’t notice. But there it is. The photograph of Ben and me. I stand frozen in place in front of it. Drawn to it in the same way, I suppose, that a self-harmer is drawn to run the razor blade over the skin of their wrist.

After that dinner on the rooftop everything was different. Something had shifted. I didn’t like the way Papa had favored Ben. I didn’t like the way Ben’s eyes slid away from mine when he talked about our Europe trip. I also very much didn’t like the fact that every time I suggested we go for a drink, he was too busy. Had to rush off to see his editor, to review some new restaurant. Avoiding my calls, my texts, avoiding my eye when we met on the stairs.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t what I'd planned when I had offered him the apartment. He had been the one to get in touch with me. His email had blown open the past. I had taken a huge risk, inviting him here. I had assumed we had an unspoken agreement.

I walk across to the wall behind my iMac, run my hands over the surface. Feel the thin crack in the plaster. There’s a second staircase here. A hidden one. Antoine and I used to play in it when we were kids. Used it to hide from Papa, too, when he was in one of his dangerous moods. I am ashamed to admit this, but there were a couple of times when I used it to watch Ben, peering into his apartment, into his life. Trying to work out what he was up to. Wondering what he could be writing so busily on his laptop, who he was calling on his mobile—I strained to hear the words, but caught nothing.

Though he snubbed me, it seemed he did have time for the other residents of this place. I found them in the cave one afternoon when I came down to do my washing. Heard the laughter, first. Then Papa’s voice: “Of course, when I inherited the business from their mother it was a mess. Had to make it profitable. Have to be creative now, with a wine business. Especially when the estate’s no longer producing and it’ll all turn to vinegar soon. Have to find ways to diversify.”

“What’s going on?” I called. “A private tasting?”

They stepped out of the wine cellar like two naughty schoolboys. Papa holding a bottle in one hand, two glasses in the other. Ben’s teeth when he smiled were tinted from the wine he’d drunk. He held one of the few remaining magnum bottles of the 1996 vintage. A gift from my father, it seemed.

“Nicolas,” Papa drawled. “I suppose you’ve come to break up the party?”

Not: Would you like to join us, son? Care for a glass? In all the time I have lived under his roof my father has never suggested the two of us do anything like their cozy little wine tasting. It was salt in the wound. The first proper betrayal. I’d told Ben what sort of man my father really is. Had he forgotten?

Ben grins out at me from the photograph on the screensaver. And there I am grinning away next to him, like the fool that I was. July, Amsterdam. The sun in our eyes. Talking to Jess has brought it all back. That evening Ben and I spent in the weed café. Telling him all about my birthday, the “gift” from Papa. How it was like a catharsis. How I felt cleansed, purged of it all.

Afterward, Ben and I wandered out into the darkening streets. Just kept walking, chatting. I wasn’t sure where we were going; I don’t think he had a clue either. Somewhere along the way we’d left the touristy part of town and the crowds behind: these canals were quieter, more dimly lit. Elegant old houses with long windows through which you could see people inside: talking over glasses of wine, eating dinner, a guy typing at a desk. This was somewhere people actually lived.

You couldn’t hear anything other than the lapping of the water against the stone banks. Black water, black as ink, the lights from the houses dancing on it. And the smell, like moss and mold. An ancient smell. No queasy clouds of weed to walk through, here. I was sick of the reek of it. Sick, too, of the crush of other people’s bodies, the chatter of other people’s conversation. I was sick even of the two other guys: their voices, the stink of their pits, their sweaty feet. We’d spent too long together that summer. I’d heard every joke or story they had to tell. With Ben it was different, somehow—though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

This quiet: I felt like I wanted to drink it in like a cold glass of water. It felt magical . . . And telling Ben all that stuff about my dad—you know when you’ve eaten something bad and after you vomit you feel empty but also kind of cleansed, almost better than before in some indefinable way?

“Thanks,” I said again. “For listening. You won’t tell anyone, will you? The other guys?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “This is our secret, mate. If you like.”

We were walking along a part of the canal now that was even darker; I think a couple of the lamps had stopped working. It was deathly quiet.

You know those moments in life that seem to happen so smoothly it feels like they’ve been scripted in advance? This was like that. I don’t remember any conscious decision to move toward him. But the next thing I knew, I was kissing him. It was definitely me that made the first move, I know that—even if it was like my body moved before my brain had worked out what it was going to do.

I’d kissed plenty of people. Girls, I mean. Only ever girls. At house parties, or drunk after a formal, a college ball. Fooled around. And it wasn’t unpleasant. But it had never felt any more intimate or exciting than, I don’t know, a handshake. It didn’t disgust me, exactly, but the whole time it was happening I’d found myself thinking about the logistical things—like whether I was using my fingers and tongue right, feeling a little queasy about how much saliva was being passed back and forth between us. It felt like a sport I was practicing, maybe trying to get better at. It never felt like something exciting, something that made my pulse quicken.

But this—this was different. It was as innate as breathing. It was strange how firm his mouth seemed after the softness of the girls’ I’d kissed—I wouldn’t have thought there would be a difference. And it seemed so right, somehow. Like it was the thing I had been waiting for, the thing that made sense.

I took hold of the chain around his neck, the one I had watched so many times appear and disappear beneath the line of his shirt, the one with the little figure of the saint hanging from it. I gave it a little tug, pulled him closer to me.

And then we were moving backward into the darkness—I was pushing him into some secret corner, falling to my knees in front of him, again every movement so fluid, like it had all been written out in advance, like it was meant to be. Unzipping his fly and taking him in my mouth, the warmth and hardness, the secret scent of his skin. My knees stung where I knelt on the rough cobblestones. And even though I had never allowed myself to think about this, I must have thought about it, somewhere in my subconscious, somewhere in my deepest thoughts hidden even from myself, because I knew exactly what I was doing.

He smiled, afterward. A sleepy, lazy, stoned smile.

But for me, after that rush of euphoria, there was an immediate descent. I’ve never had a comedown like it. My knees hurt, my jeans were damp from something I’d knelt in.

“Fuck. Fuck—I don’t know what happened there. Shit. I’m just . . . I’m so wasted.” Which was a lie. I had been stoned, yes. But I’d never felt more clear-headed in my life. I’d never felt more alive, either—electric, wired—so many different things.

“Mate,” he said, with a smile. “It’s nothing to be worried about. We were a bit pissed, a lot stoned.” He gestured around us, shrugged. “And it’s not like anyone saw.”

I couldn’t believe how relaxed he was about it. But maybe at the back of my mind I’d known this about him; this side of him. I’d once heard someone at Cambridge describe him as an “omnivore”; wondered what that meant.

“Don’t tell anyone,” I told him. I was light-headed with fear, suddenly. “Look, you don’t understand. This—it has to stay just between us. If it somehow got back . . . look, my dad, he wouldn’t get it.” The thought of him finding out was like a punch to the gut, it winded me just thinking about it. I could see his face, hear his voice. Could still remember what he’d said when I told him I didn’t want that birthday gift, what was in that room: What’s wrong with you, son? Are you a faggot? The disgust in his voice.

He actually might kill me, I thought. If he suspected. He’d probably prefer that to having a son like me. At the very least, he’d disinherit me. And while I didn’t know how I felt about taking his money, I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet.

After Amsterdam I decided I never wanted to see Benjamin Daniels again. We drifted apart. I had a string of girlfriends. I left for the States for nearly a decade, didn’t look back. Yeah, there were a couple of guys there: the freedom of thousands of miles of land and water—even if I still always seemed to hear my father’s voice in my head. But nothing serious.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t think about that night later. In a way, I know I’ve been thinking about it ever since; trying not to. And then, all those years later: Ben’s email. It had to mean something, him getting in touch like that, out of the blue. It couldn’t just be a casual catch-up.

Except after that dinner on the terrace, when he’d so impressed Papa, I barely saw or spoke to him other than in passing. He even had time for the concierge, for God’s sake, but not me—his old friend. He was ensconced here practically rent-free. He’d taken what he needed and then cut loose. I began to feel used. And when I thought about how shifty he was each time I approached him I felt a little frightened, too, though I couldn’t put my finger on why. I thought of Antoine’s words about Papa disinheriting us on a whim. It had seemed like madness at the time. But now . . . I began to feel that I didn’t want Ben here after all. I began to feel that I wanted to take back the invitation. But I didn’t know how to do it. He knew too much. Had so much he could use against me. I had to find another way to make him leave.

The computer’s timer must have run out; the screen of my iMac goes black. It doesn’t matter. I can still see the image. I have been haunted by it for over a decade.

I think about how I nearly kissed his sister last night. The sudden, shocking, wonderful resemblance to him when she turned her head just so, or frowned, or laughed. And also the resemblance of the moment: the darkness, the stillness. The two of us held apart from the rest of the world for just a beat.

That night in Amsterdam. It was the worst, most shameful thing I had ever done.

It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. That was how I used to see it, anyway. Until he came to stay.

Jess

I wake in darkness. There’s a heavy weight on my chest, a horrible taste in my mouth, my tongue dry and heavy like it doesn’t belong to me. For a few long moments, everything that happened to me before now is a total blank. It feels like peering forward and staring into a black hole.

I grope around, trying to make out my surroundings. I seem to be lying on a bed. But which bed? Whose?

Fuck. What happened to me?

Gradually I remember: the party. That disgusting drink. Victor the vampire.

And then I see something I recognize. Some little green digits, glowing in the blackness. It’s Ben’s alarm clock. Somehow I’m back here, in the apartment. I blink at the numbers. 17:38. But that can’t be right. That’s the afternoon. That would mean I’ve been asleep for—Jesus Christ—the whole day.

I try to sit up. I make out two huge, glowing, slit-pupiled eyes a few inches from my nose. The cat is sitting on me—so that’s the weight on my chest. It starts kneading its claws into my throat in painful little darts. I push it away: it hops off the bed. I look down at myself. I’m fully clothed, thank God. And I remember now, in flashes of memory: Victor was the one who got me down here after I blacked out in Mimi’s apartment. Not the date-raping predator I suddenly thought he might be. In fact he’d seemed scared by the state I was in—left as quick as he could. I suppose at least he tried to help.

A flicker of memory. I found something last night. Something that felt important. But at first everything that happened only comes back to me in hazy, disjointed fragments. There are big missing patches like holes in a jigsaw. I know my dreams were really trippy. I recall an image of Ben shouting at me through a pane of glass; but I couldn’t see his face clearly, the glass seemed warped. He was trying to warn me of something—but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. And then suddenly I could see his face clearly but that was much, much worse. Because he didn’t have any eyes. Someone had scratched them out.

Now I remember the paintings under Mimi’s bed. Jesus Christ. That’s what I found last night. Those tears in the canvas, like she’d ripped them all apart in some kind of frenzy. The slashes, the holes where the eyes should have been. And Ben’s T-shirt, wrapped around them.

I haul myself out of bed, stumble into the main room. My head throbs. I might be small, but I’m not a cheap date—one drink is not enough to get me in that much of a state. It might not have been Victor, but I’m pretty sure of one thing: someone did this to me.

A loud trilling, so loud in the silence it makes me jump. My phone. Theo’s name flashes up on the screen.

I pick up. “Hello?”

“I know what that card is.” No niceties, no preamble.

“What?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”

“The card you gave me. The metal one, with the firework on it. I know what it is. Look, can you meet me at quarter to seven? So—in about an hour? The Palais Royal Metro station; we can walk from there. Oh, and try and look as smart as possible.”

“I don’t—”

But he’s already hung up.

Mimi

I put the stuff in her drink last night. It was so easy. There was ketamine going around and I got hold of some, shook the powder into her glass until it dissolved and asked one of Camille’s friends to give it to the British girl with the red hair. He seemed only too pleased to do it: she’s quite pretty, I suppose.

I had to do it. I couldn’t have her there. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about it . . . I’ve been so careful my whole life about drugs—apart from that night in the park. And then to inflict them on someone else without them even knowing. That wasn’t cool. It’s not her fault she made the mistake of coming to this place. That’s the worst part. She’s probably not even a bad person.

But I know I am.

Camille comes out of her room wearing a silk slip, black rings of smudged makeup around her eyes. This is the first time she’s surfaced all day.

“Hey. Last night was craaaazy. People really enjoyed it, don’t you think?” She looks at me closely. “Putain, Mimi, you look like shit. What happened to your knees?” They still hurt from where I hit the tarmac in front of that van; the concierge insisted on dabbing some antiseptic onto the grazes. She grins. “Someone had a good night, non?”

I shrug. “Oui. I suppose so.” Actually it was probably one of the worst nights of my life. “But I didn’t . . . sleep well.” I didn’t sleep at all.

She looks at me more closely. “Ohhh. Was it that kind of no sleep?”

“What do you mean?” I wish she’d stop looking at me so intently.

“You know what I mean! Your mystery guy?”

My heart’s suddenly beating too fast in my chest. “Oh. No. It wasn’t anything like that.”

“Wait,” she grins at me. “You never told me. Did it work?”

“What do you mean, did it work?” I feel like she’s crowding me, the smell of Miss Dior and stale cigarette smoke suddenly overpowering. I need her out of my space.

“The stuff we picked out. Mimi!” She raises her eyebrows. “You can’t have forgotten? It was only, like, two weeks ago!”

Already it feels like it happened to someone else. I see myself like a character in a film, knocking on the door to Camille’s room. Camille sitting on the bed painting her toenails, the room stinking of nail polish and weed.

“I want to buy some lingerie,” I told her.

Maman always bought all my underwear. We went together, every season, to Eres and she would buy me three simple sets: black, white, nude. But I wanted something different. Something I had picked myself. Only I didn’t have any idea where to go. I knew Camille would.

Camille’s eyebrows shot up. “Mimi! What’s happened to you? That new look and now . . . lingerie? Who is he?” She smiled slyly. “Or she? Merde, you’re so mysterious I don’t even know if you actually prefer girls.” A smirk. “Or maybe you’re like me and it depends what mood you’re in?”

Could she really not know who it was? To me it seemed so obvious. Not just that I was into him, but that he and I had a special connection. It felt like it was obvious to the outside world, to everyone who saw us.

“Come,” she said, jumping up, throwing her foam toe dividers to one side. “We’re going now.”

She dragged me into Passage du Desir in Châtelet. It’s a sex shop—one of a chain—on a big busy shopping street alongside shoe and clothes shops because, I guess, this is France and screwing is, like, a thing of national pride. You see couples coming out carrying bags over their arms, smiling secret smiles at each other, women striding in there on their lunch breaks to buy vibrators. I’d never gone into one before. In fact every time I’d passed one of their stores I’d blushed at the window displays and looked away.

I felt like everyone in there was looking at me, wondering what this blushing loser virgin was doing among all that latex fetish wear and lube. I lowered my head, trying to hide behind my new fringe. I had horrific images of Papa walking past and somehow spotting me inside, dragging me out by my hair: calling me une petite salope in front of the whole street.

Camille dug out boxes with things called “love kits” in: whole lingerie and suspender sets for ten euros. But I shook my head; they weren’t sophisticated enough. She grabbed a huge, bright pink dildo with obscene protruding veins, waved it in front of me. “Maybe you should get one of these while we’re here.”

“Put it back,” I hissed, ready to die of shame. Yeah, we have that expression in French too: mourir de honte.

“Masturbating is healthy, chérie,” Camille said, way louder than she needed to. She was enjoying this, I could tell. “You know what’s not healthy? Not masturbating. I bet that school your papa sent you to told you it’s a sin.”

I’ve told Camille about the school, just not why I had to leave. “Va te faire foutre,” I said, giving her a shove.

“Ah, but that’s exactly what you need to do. Go fuck yourself.”

I dragged her out of there. We went into a classier place where the shop assistants with their chignons and their perfect red lipstick looked at me sideways. My men’s shirts, my big boots, my home-cut fringe. A security guard tailed us. That would be enough normally. I’d leave. But I needed to do this. For him.

“I want to pick out something too,” Camille told me, holding a silk harness up against herself.

“You own more stuff than this entire shop.”

“Oui. But I want something more sophisticated, you know?”

“Who’s it for?” I asked her.

“Someone new.” She gave a secretive smile. That was weird. Camille’s never mysterious about anything. If she has a new fuck-buddy on the scene the whole world has normally heard about it about thirty minutes after their first screw.

“Tell me,” I said. But still she refused to say. I didn’t like this new, mysterious Camille. But I felt too high with the thrill of my purchase to think much about it. I couldn’t wait.

Next to shelves of designer sex toys we browsed through racks of lace and silk, felt the fabric between our fingers. The lingerie had to be perfect. Some of it was too much: crotchless, buckles and straps, leather. Some of it Camille rejected as “stuff your maman would buy”: flowers and silk in pastel colors—pink, pistachio, lavender.

Then: “I’ve found it, the one for you.” She held it up to me. It was the most expensive set of all the ones we’d looked at. Black lace and silk so fine you could hardly feel it between your fingers. Chic but still sexy. Grown-up.

In a changing room with velvet drapes I tried the set on. I held up my hair and half closed my eyes. I was feeling less embarrassed now. I’d never looked at myself like this before. I thought I’d feel stupid, gauche. I thought I’d worry about my small tits, my slight pot belly, my bow legs.

But I didn’t. Instead I imagined revealing myself to him. I pictured the look on his face. Saw him sliding it off me.

Je suis ta petite pute.

After I’d changed I took it over to the desk and told the shop assistant to ring it up. I liked how she tried to hide her surprise as I took out my credit card. Yeah: fuck you, bitch. I could buy everything in here if I wanted.

All the way back to the apartment I thought about the bag over my arm. It weighed nothing, but suddenly it was everything.

For the next few nights I watched him through the windows. They’d got later and later, these writing sessions: fueled by the pots of coffee he’d make on his stove and drink looking out of the windows onto the courtyard. It was something important, I could tell. I could see how fast he typed, hunched over the keyboard. Maybe he’d let me read it one day soon. I’d be the first person he shared it with. I watched him bend down and stroke the cat’s head and I imagined I was that cat. I imagined one day I would lie there on his sofa with my head in his lap and he would stroke my hair like he did that cat’s fur. And we’d listen to records and we’d talk about all the plans we’d make. I saw the image of us there together in his apartment so clearly it was like I was watching it. So clearly that it felt like a premonition.

Nick

A hammering on the door of my apartment. I jump with shock.

“Who is it?”

“Laissez-moi entrer.” Let me in. More hammering. The door shudders on its hinges.

I go to open it. Antoine shoves his way past me into the room in a cloud of booze and stale sweat. I take a step back.

He pushed his way in here like this only two weeks ago: “Dominique’s cheating on me. I know she is. The little slut. She comes back smelling of a different scent. I called her yesterday in the stairwell and I heard her ringtone coming from somewhere in this building. Second time I rang she’d switched it off. She’d told me she was having a pedicure in Saint-Germain. It’s him, I know it. It’s that English connard you invited to live here . . .”

And me thinking: could it be true? Ben and Dominique? Yes, there had been flirtation at that drinks, on the roof terrace. I hadn’t read anything into it. Ben flirted with everyone. But could this be an explanation for why he had been avoiding my eye, avoiding my calls? Why he had been so busy?

Now Antoine snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Wakey wakey, petit frère!” He doesn’t say it affectionately. His eyes are bloodshot, breath rank with wine. I couldn’t believe the change when I came back after those years away. When I left, my brother was a happy newlywed. Now he’s an alcoholic mess whose wife has left him. That’s what working for our father does to you. “What are we going to do about her?” he demands. “The girl?”

“Just calm down—”

“Calm down?” He stabs the air in front of me with a finger. I take another step back. He may be a mess but I’ll always be the younger brother, ready to duck a punch. And he’s so like Papa when he’s angry. “You know this is all your fault, don’t you? All your mess? If you hadn’t invited that cunt to live here. Coming here and thinking he could just . . . just help himself. You know he used you, right? But you couldn’t see that, could you? You couldn’t see any of it.” He frowns, mock-thoughtful. “In fact, now I think about it, the way you looked at him—”

“Ferme ta gueule.” Shut your mouth. I take a step toward him. The anger is sudden, blinding. And when I’m next aware of what I’m doing I realize my hand is around his throat and his eyes are bulging. I loosen my fingers—but with an effort, as though some part of me resists the instruction.

Antoine puts up a hand, rubs at his neck. “Hit a nerve there, didn’t I, little bro?” His voice is hoarse, his eyes a little frightened, his tone not as flippant as he’d probably like it. “Papa wouldn’t like that, would he? No, he wouldn’t like that at all.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. Ashamed. My hand aches. “Shit, I’m sorry. This isn’t helping anything, us fighting like this.”

“Oh look at you. So grown-up. Embarrassed about your little hissy fit because you like pretending that you’re sorted, don’t you? But you’re just as fucked-up as I am.” When he says the word “fucked”—a harsh foutu in French—a huge gob of spit lands on my cheek. I put my hand up, wipe it off. I want to go and wash my face, scrub at it with hot water and soap. I feel infected by him.

When Jess spoke about Antoine last night I saw him through a stranger’s eyes. I was ashamed of him. She’s right. He is a mess. But I hated her saying it. Because he’s also my brother. We can do our family members down as much as we like. But the second an outsider insults them our blood seethes. At the end of the day I don’t like him—but I love him. And I see my own failures in him. For Antoine it’s the booze, for me it’s the pills, the self-punishing exercise. I might be a little more in control of my addictions. I might be less of a mess—in public anyway. But is that really something to boast about?

Antoine’s grinning at me. “Bet you wish you’d never come back here, huh?” He takes another step closer. “Tell me, if it was all so great rubbing shoulders with the high-flyers in Silicon Valley, why did you come back? Ah, oui . . . because you’re no better than the rest of us. You try and pretend you are, that you don’t need him, his money. But then you came crawling back here, like we all do, wanting to suck a little more from the paternal teat—”

“Just shut the fuck up!” I shout, hands forming fists.

I take a long breath: in for four, out for eight, like my mindfulness app tells me. I’m not proud of myself losing my temper like this. I’m better than this. I am not this guy. But no one can get under my skin like Antoine. No one else knows exactly what to say and how to say it for maximum impact. Except my father, of course.

But the worst part is that my brother’s right. I came back. Back to the paterfamilias like some seasonal bird returning to the same poisoned lake.

“You’ve come home, son,” Papa told me, as we sat together up on the roof terrace on my first night back. “I always knew you would. We’ll have to make a trip to the Île de Ré, take the boat out one weekend.”

Maybe he’d changed. Mellowed. He didn’t taunt me over the money I’d lost on the investment—not yet. He even offered me a cigar, which I smoked, though I loathe the taste. Maybe he’d missed me.

It was only later that I realized it wasn’t that at all. It was just more proof of his power. I had failed at finding a life apart from him.

“If you want any more of my money,” he told me, “you can come back under my roof so I can keep an eye on you. There’ll be no more gallivanting around the world. I want a return on my investment. I want to know you’re not pissing it all up the wall. Tu comprends? Do you understand?”

Antoine is pacing up and down in front of me. “So what are we going to do about her?” he asks, with drunken belligerence.

“Keep your voice down,” I say. “She might understand something.” The walls have ears in this place.

“Well what the fuck is she still doing here?” He kicks at the doorframe. “What if she goes to the police?”

“I’ve handled that.”

“What do you mean?”

“It helps to have friends in high places.”

He understands. “But she needs to go.” He’s muttering to himself now: “We could lock her out. It would be so easy. All we’d need to do is change the combination on the front gate—she wouldn’t be able to get in then.”

“No,” I say, “that wouldn’t—”

“Or we could make her leave. Little girl like that? Wouldn’t be hard.”

“No. If anything we’d just force her into going to the police again on her own . . .”

Antoine lets out something between a roar and a groan. He’s a total liability. Family, huh? Because blood is always thicker than water, in the end. Or, as we say in French: la voix du sang est la plus forte. The voice of blood is the strongest. Summoning me back here to this place.

“It’s better that she stays here,” I say, sharply. “You must see that. It’s better that we can keep an eye on her. For the time being we simply have to hold our nerve. Papa will know what to do.”

“Have you heard from him?” Antoine says. “Papa?” His tone has changed. Something needy in it. When he said “Papa” for a second he sounded like the little boy he once was, the little boy who sat outside his mother’s bedroom as Paris’ best physicians came and went, unable to make sense of the illness eating away at her.

I nod. “He got in touch this morning.”

I hope you’re holding the fort there, son. Keep Antoine under control. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Antoine scowls. He’s Papa’s right-hand man in the family business. But right now, for the time being, I’m the trusted one. That must hurt. But that’s the way it’s always been, our father pitting the two of us against each other in a struggle for scraps of parental affection. Except on the few occasions we unite against a common enemy.