The Paris Apartment

Nick

Morning. I enter the building’s stairwell. I’ve been running for hours. I have no idea how long, actually, or how far I went. Miles, probably. Normally I’d have the exact stats, would be checking my Garmin obsessively, uploading it all to Strava the second I’d got back. This morning I can’t even be bothered to look. Just needed to clear my head. I only stopped because the agony in my calf began to cut through everything else—though for a while I almost enjoyed running through the pain. An old injury: I pushed a Silicon Valley quack to prescribe me oxycodone for it. Which also helped dull the sting when my investments started to go bad.

On the first floor I hesitate outside the apartment. I knock on the door once, twice—three times. Listen for the sound of footsteps inside while I take in the scuffed doorframe, the stink of stale cigarette smoke. I linger perhaps a couple of minutes but there’s no answer. He’s probably passed out in there in a drunken stupor. Or maybe he’s avoiding me . . . I wouldn’t be surprised. I have something I want—need—to say to the guy. But I suppose it’ll have to wait.

Then I close the door, start climbing the stairs, my eyes stinging. I lift the hem of my sweat-soaked T-shirt to rub at them, then carry on up.

I’m just passing by the third-floor apartment when the door is flung open and there she stands: Jess.

“Er—hi,” I say, pushing a hand through my hair.

“Oh,” she says, looking confused. “It looked like you were going upstairs?”

“No,” I say, “No . . . actually, I was coming to see how you were. I meant to say—sorry for running off yesterday. When we were talking. Did you have any luck tracking Ben down?”

I look at her closely. Her face is pale. No longer the sly little fox she seemed yesterday, now she’s a rabbit in the headlamps.

“Jess,” I say. “Are you all right?”

She opens her mouth but for a moment no sound comes out. I get the impression she’s fighting some sort of internal battle. Finally she blurts, “Someone was in here, very early this morning. Someone else must have a key to this apartment.”

“A key?”

“Yeah. They came in and crept around.” Less rabbit-in-the-headlamps now. That tough veneer coming back up.

“What, into the apartment? Did they take anything?”

She shrugs, hesitates. “No.”

“Look, Jess,” I say. “It sounds to me like you should speak to the police.”

She screws up her face. “I called them yesterday. They weren’t any help.”

“What did they say?”

“That they’d make a record,” she says with an eyeroll. “But then, I don’t know why I even bothered. I’m the fucking idiot who comes to Paris alone, barely able to speak the language. Why I thought they’d take me seriously . . .”

“How much French can you speak?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Hardly anything. I can just about order a beer, but that’s it. Pretty bloody useless, right?”

“Look, why don’t I come with you to the Commissariat? I’m sure they’d be more helpful if I spoke to them in French.”

She raises her eyebrows. “That would be—well, that would be amazing. Thank you. I’m . . . look, I’m really grateful.” A shrug. “I’m not good at asking for favors.”

“You didn’t ask—I offered. I told you yesterday I want to help. I mean it.”

“Well, thanks.” She tugs at the chain of her necklace. “Can we go soon? I need to get out of this place.”

Jess

We’re out on the street, walking along in silence. My thoughts are churning. That voicenote made me feel like I shouldn’t trust anyone in the building—including Ben’s old uni mate, friendly as he might be. But on the other hand, Nick’s the one who suggested going to the police. Surely he wouldn’t do that if he had something to do with Ben’s disappearance?

“This way,” Nick takes hold of my elbow—my arm tingles slightly at his touch—and steers me into an alleyway, no, more like a kind of stone tunnel between buildings. “A cut-through,” he says.

In contrast with the crowded street we left behind there’s suddenly no one else in sight and it’s much darker. Our footsteps echo. I don’t like that I can’t see the sky.

It’s a relief when we pop out at the other end. But as we turn onto the street I see it ends in a police barricade. There are several guys wearing helmets and stab vests, holding batons, radios crackling.

“Fuck,” I say, heart thudding.

“Merde,” says Nick, at the same time.

He goes over and speaks to them. I stay where I am. They don’t seem friendly. I can feel them looking us over.

“It’s the riots,” Nick says, striding back. “They’re expecting a bit of trouble.” He looks closely at me. “You OK?”

“Yeah, fine.” I remind myself that we’re literally on the way to talk to the police. They might be able to help. But it suddenly feels important to get something off my chest. “Hey—Nick?” I start, as we begin walking again.

“Yup?”

“Yesterday, when I spoke to the police, they said they wanted to take my name and address, for their records or whatever. I, er . . . I don’t want to give them that information.”

Nick frowns at me. “Why’s that?”

Because even though he had it coming, I think, what I did to that arsehole is technically still a crime.

“I—it’s not worth getting into.” But because he’s still looking at me oddly and I don’t want him to think I’m some sort of hardened criminal, I say: “I had a little trouble at work, just before I came here.”

More than a little trouble. Two days ago I walked into the Copacabana, smile on my face, as though my boss hadn’t flashed his dick at me the day before. Oh, I can play along when I need to. I needed that bloody job. And then at lunch before opening, while The Pervert was taking a crap (he went in there with a dirty magazine, I knew I had a while), I went and got the little key from his office and opened the till and took everything in it. It wasn’t loads; he was too wily for that, refilled it every day. But it was enough to get here, enough to escape on the first Eurostar I could book myself onto. Oh, and for good measure I heaved two kegs in front of the toilet door, one stacked on the other and the top one just under the door handle so he couldn’t turn it. Would have taken him a while to get out of that one.

So no, I’m not desperate to be on any official record of anything. It’s not like I think Interpol are after me. But I don’t like the idea of my name in some sort of system, of the police here comparing notes with the UK. I came here for a new start.

“Nothing major,” I say. “It’s just . . . sensitive.”

“Er, sure,” Nick says. “Look, I’ll give them my details as a contact. Does that work?”

“Yes,” I say, my shoulders slumping with relief . . . “Thank you, that would be great.”

“So,” he says, as we wait at some traffic lights, “I’m thinking of what I say to the police. I’ll tell them you thought there was someone in the apartment last night, of course—”

“I don’t think there was someone,” I interject, “I know.”

“Sure,” he nods. “And is there anything else you want me to say?”

I pause. “Well . . . I spoke to Ben’s editor.”

He turns to me. “Oh yes?”

“Yeah. This guy at the Guardian. I don’t know if it’s important but it sounded like Ben had an idea he was excited about, for an article.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. Some big investigative piece. But I suppose if he got mixed up in something . . .”

Nick slows down slightly. “But his editor doesn’t know what the piece was about?”

“No.”

“Ah. That’s a shame.”

“And look, I found a notebook. But it was missing this morning. It had these notes in it—about people in the building. Sophie Meunier—you know the lady from upstairs? Mimi, from the fourth floor. The concierge. There was this line: La Petite Mort. I think it means ‘the little death’—”

I see something shift in Nick’s expression.

“What is it? What does it mean?”

He coughs. “Well, it’s also a euphemism for orgasm.”

“Oh.” I’m not all that easy to embarrass but I feel my cheeks growing warm. I’m also suddenly really aware of Nick’s eyes on me, how near we are to each other in the otherwise empty street. There’s a long, awkward silence. “Anyway,” I say. “Whoever was creeping around this morning took the notebook. So there must be something in it.”

We turn into a side street. I spot a couple of ragged posters pasted to some hoardings. Pause for a moment in front of them. Ghostly faces printed in black and white stare out at me. I don’t need to understand the French to know what—who—these are: Missing Persons.

“Look,” Nick says, following my gaze. “It’s probably going to be tough. Loads of people go missing every year. They have a certain . . . cultural issue here. There’s this view that if someone goes missing, it may be for their own reasons. That they have a right to disappear.”

“OK. But surely they won’t think that’s what’s happened to Ben. Because there’s more . . .” I hesitate, then decide to risk telling Nick about the voicenote.

A long pause, while he digests it. “The other person,” he says. “Could you actually hear their voice?”

“No. I don’t think they said anything. It was just Ben talking.” I think of the what the fuck? “He was scared. I’ve never heard him like that. We should tell the police about that too, right? Play it for them.”

“Yes. Definitely.”

We walk in silence for a couple more minutes, Nick setting the pace. And then suddenly he stops in front of a building: big and modern and seriously ugly, a total contrast to all the fancy apartment blocks flanking it.

“OK. Here we are.”

I look up at the building in front of us. COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE, it says, in large black letters above the entrance.

I swallow, then follow Nick inside. Wait just inside the front door as he speaks in fluent-sounding French to the guy on the desk.

I try to imagine what it must be like to have the confidence Nick has in a place like this, to feel like you have a right to be here. To my left there are three people in grimy clothes being held in cuffs, faces smeared with what looks like soot, yelling and tussling with the policemen holding them. More protestors? I feel like I have much more in common with them than I do with the nice rich boy who’s brought me here. I jump back as nine or ten guys in riot gear burst into the reception and shove past me and out into the street, piling into a waiting van.

The guy behind the desk is nodding at Nick. I see him pick up a telephone.

“I asked to speak to someone higher up,” Nick says as he comes over. “That way we’ll actually be listened to. He’s just calling through now.”

“Oh, great,” I say. Thank God for Nick and his fluent French and his posh boy hustle. I know if I’d walked in here I’d have been fobbed off again—or, worse, bottled it and left before I’d spoken to anyone.

The receptionist stands and beckons us through into the station. I swallow my unease about heading farther into this place. He leads us down a corridor into an office with a plaque that reads Commissaire Blanchot on the door and a man—in his late fifties at a guess—sitting behind a huge desk. He looks up. A bristle of short gray hair, a big square face, small dark eyes. He stands and shakes Nick’s hand then turns to me, looks me up and down, and sweeps a hand at the two chairs in front of his desk. “Asseyez vous.”

Clearly Nick pulled some strings: the office and Blanchot’s air of importance tell me he’s some sort of bigwig. But there’s something about the guy I don’t like. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the pitbull face, maybe it’s to do with the way he looked at me just now. It doesn’t matter, I remind myself. I don’t have to like him. All I need is for him to do his job properly, to find my brother. And I’m not so blind that I can’t see I might be bringing my own baggage to all of this.

Nick starts speaking to Blanchot in French. I can barely pick up a word they’re saying. I catch Ben’s name, I think, and a couple of times they glance in my direction.

“Sorry,” Nick turns back to me. “I realize we were talking pretty fast. I wanted to get everything in. Could you follow any of it? He doesn’t speak much English, I’m afraid.”

I shake my head. “It wouldn’t have made much difference if you’d gone slowly.”

“Don’t worry: I’ll explain. I’ve laid out the whole situation to him. And basically we’re coming up against what I was telling you about before: the ‘right to disappear.’ But I’m trying to convince him that this is something more than that. That you—that we—are really worried about Ben.”

“You’ve told him about the notebook?” I ask. “And what happened last night?”

Nick nods. “Yes, I went through all that.”

“How about the voicenote?” I hold up my phone. “I have it right here, I could play it.”

“That’s a great idea.” Nick says something to Commissaire Blanchot, then turns to me and nods. “He’d like to listen to it.”

I hand over the phone. I don’t like the way the guy snatches it from me. He’s just doing his job, Jess, I tell myself. He plays the voicenote through some kind of loudspeaker and, once again, I hear my brother’s voice like I’ve never heard it before. “What the fuck?” And then the sound. That strange groan.

I look over at Nick. He’s gone white. He seems to be having the same reaction as I did: it tells me my gut feeling was right.

Blanchot turns it off and nods at Nick. Because I don’t speak French, or I’m a woman—or both—it feels like I barely exist to him.

I prod Nick. “He has to do something now, yes?”

Nick swallows, then seems to pull himself together. He asks the guy a question, turns back to me. “Yes. I think that’s helped. It gives us a good case.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Blanchot watching the two of us, his expression blank.

And then suddenly it’s all over and they’re shaking hands again and Nick is saying: “Merci, Commissaire Blanchot” and I say “Merci” too and Blanchot smiles at me and I try to ignore the uneasiness that I know is probably less to do with this guy than everything he represents. Then we’re being shown back out into the corridor and Blanchot’s door is closing.

“How do you think it went?” I ask Nick, as we walk out of the front door of the station. “Did he take it seriously?”

He nods. “Yes, eventually. I think the voicenote clinched it.” He says, his voice hoarse. He still looks pale and sickened by what he just heard, on the voicenote. “And don’t worry—I’ve given myself as a contact, not you. As soon as I hear anything I’ll let you know.”

For a moment, back out on the street, Nick stops and stands stock-still. I watch as he covers his eyes with his hand and takes a long, shaky breath. And I think: here is someone else who cares about Ben. Maybe I’m not quite as alone in this as I thought.

Sophie

I’m setting up the apartment for drinks. The last Sunday of every month, Jacques and I host everyone in our penthouse apartment. We open some of the finest vintages from the store in the cellar. But this evening will be different. We have a great deal to discuss.

I pour the wine into its decanter, arrange the glasses. We could afford staff to do this. But Jacques never wanted strangers in this apartment capable of nosing around through his private affairs. It has suited me well enough. Though I suppose if we did have staff I might have been less alone here, over the years. As I place the decanter on the low table in the sitting area, I can see him there in the armchair opposite me: Benjamin Daniels, exactly as he sat nearly three months ago. One leg crossed over the knee at the ankle. A glass of wine dangling from one hand. So at ease in the space.

I watched him. Saw him sizing the place up, the wealth of it. Or perhaps trying to find a flaw in the furnishings I had chosen as carefully as the clothes I wear: the mid-century Florence Knoll armchair, the Ghom silk rug beneath his feet. To signify class, good taste, the kind of breeding that cannot be bought.

He turned and caught me watching. Grinned. That smile of his: a fox entering the hen coop. I smiled back, coolly. I would not be wrong-footed. I would be the perfect hostess.

He asked Jacques about his collection of antique rifles.

“I’ll show you.” Jacques lifted one down—a rare honor. “Feel that bayonet? You could run a man straight through with it.”

Ben said all the right things. Noticed the condition, the detailing on the brass. My husband: a man not easily charmed. But he was. I could see it.

“What do you do, Ben?” he asked, pouring him a glass. A hot, late summer night: white would have been better. But Jacques wanted to show off the vintage.

“I’m a writer,” Ben said.

“He’s a journalist,” Nick said, at the same time.

I watched Jacques’ face closely. “What sort of journalist?” He asked it so lightly.

Ben shrugged. “Mainly restaurant reviews, new exhibitions, that sort of thing.”

“Ah,” Jacques said. He sat back in his chair. King of all he surveyed. “Well, I’m happy to suggest some restaurants for you to review.”

Ben smiled: that easy, charismatic smile. “That would be very helpful. Thank you.”

“I like you, Ben,” Jacques told him, pointing. “You remind me a little of myself at your age. Fire in the belly. Hunger. I had it too, that drive. It’s more than can be said for some young men, these days.”

Antoine and his wife Dominique arrived then, from the first-floor apartment. Antoine’s shirt was missing a button: it gaped open, the soft flesh pushing through. Dominique, however, had made what could be described as an effort. She wore a dress made of a knit so fine that it clung to every ripe curve of her body. Mon Dieu, you could see her nipples. There was something Bardot-like about her: the sullen moue of her mouth, those dark, bovine eyes. I found myself thinking all that ripeness would fade, run to fat (just look at Bardot, poor cow), anathema to so many French men. Fat in this country is seen as a sign of weakness, even of stupidity. The thought gave me a nasty sort of pleasure.

I watched her look at Ben. Look up and down and all over him. I suppose she thought she was subtle; to me she resembled a cheap whore, touting for a fare. I saw him gaze back. Two attractive people noticing one another. That frisson. She turned back to Antoine. I watched her mouth curve into a smile while she talked to him. But the smile was not for her husband. It was for Ben. A carefully calculated display.

Antoine was drinking too much. He drained his glass and held it out for a refill. His breath, even from a couple of feet away, smelled sour. He was embarrassing himself.

“Does anyone smoke?” Ben asked. “I’m going to go for a cigarette. Terrible habit, I know. I wondered if I might use the roof terrace?”

“It’s that way,” I told him. “Past the bookcase there and to the left, out of the doorway: you’ll see the steps.”

“Thanks.” He smiled at me, that charming smile.

I waited for the sensor lights to come on, which would be the sign that he had found his way to the roof terrace. They did not. It should have only taken him a minute or so to climb the steps.

As the others talked I got up to investigate. There was no sign of him out on the terrace, or in the other half of the room beyond the bookcase. I had that cold, creeping feeling again. The sense that a fox had entered the henhouse. I walked along the shadowed corridor that leads to the other rooms in the apartment.

I found him in Jacques’ study, the lights off. He was looking at something.

“What are you doing in here?” My skin was prickling with outrage. Fear, too.

He turned in the dark space. “Sorry,” he said. “I must have got confused with the directions.”

“They were quite clear.” It was difficult to remain civil, to suppress the urge to simply tell him to get out. “It was left,” I said. “Out of the doorway. The opposite direction.”

He pulled a face. “My mistake. Perhaps I’ve had too much of that delicious wine. But tell me, while we’re here—this photograph. It fascinates me.” I knew instantly which one he was looking at. A large black and white, a nude, hung opposite my husband’s desk. The woman’s face turned sideways, her profile dissolving into the shadows, her breasts bared, the dark triangle of her pubic hair between white thighs. I had asked Jacques to get rid of it. It was so inappropriate. So seedy.

“It belongs to my husband,” I said, curtly. “This is his study.”

“So this is where the great man works,” he said. “And do you work, yourself?”

“No,” I said. He must know that, surely. Women in my position do not work.

“But you must have done something before you met your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry,” he said, after the pause had grown so long it felt like a physical presence in the air between us. “It’s the journalist in me. I’m just . . . curious about people.” He shrugged. “It’s incurable, I’m afraid. Please, forgive me.”

I had thought it that first time I met him: that he wielded his charm like a weapon. But now I was sure of it. Our new neighbor was dangerous. I thought of the notes. My mystery blackmailer. Could it be a coincidence that they had arrived almost at the same time—this man, with his air of knowing—and the demand for money, threatening to reveal my secrets? If so, I would not allow it. I would not let this random stranger dismantle everything I had built.

I managed to find my voice. “I’ll show you to the roof terrace,” I told him. Followed him until he walked through the right door. He turned around and gave me a grin, a brief nod. I did not smile back.

I went back and joined the others. A few moments later Dominique stood up, announced that she, too, was going for a cigarette. Perhaps she was embarrassed by her husband drinking himself into a stupor on the sofa. Or—I thought of the way she looked at Ben when she arrived—she was simply shameless.

Antoine’s arm shot out; his hand gripped her wrist, hard. The wine glass in her hand jerked, a crimson splash landed on the pale knit of her dress. “Non,” he said. “Tu ne feras rien de la sorte.”

You’ll do no such thing.

Dominique glanced at me, then. Her eyes wide. Woman to woman. See how he treats me? I looked away. You have made your choices, chérie, just as I have made mine. I knew what sort of man my husband was when I married him; I’m sure it was the same for you. If not—well, you’re even more of a foolish little tart than I thought.

I watched as she wrenched her hand away from her husband’s grip and stalked off in the direction of the roof terrace. I imagined the two of them up there, could see the scene play out. The rooftops of Paris laid out before them, the illuminated streets like strings of fairy lights. Her bending forward as she lit her cigarette from his. Her lips brushing his hand.

They came back down a short while later. When he spotted them Antoine rose from the seat where he had been slumped. He lumbered over to Dominique. “We’re going.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to.”

He leaned in very close and hissed, loud enough for all of us to hear: “We’re going, you little slut.” Petite salope. And then he turned to Ben. “Stay away from my wife, you English bastard. Comprends-tu? Understand?” Like a final piece of punctuation he gestured with his full wine glass, and I could not tell if it was because he was drunk or if it was on purpose that it flew from his hand. An explosion of glass. Wine smattered up the wall.

Everything went very still and quiet.

Ben turned to Jacques: “I’m very sorry, Monsieur Meunier, I—”

“Please,” Jacques stood. “Do not apologize.” He stalked over to Antoine. “No one behaves like that in my apartment. You are not welcome here. Get out.” His voice was cold, heavy with menace.

Antoine’s mouth opened. I saw his teeth, stained by the wine. For a moment I thought he was about to say something unforgivable. Then he turned and looked at Ben. A long look that said more than any words could.

The silence that followed their exit rang like a tuning fork.

Later, while Jacques took a phone call, I went and took a shower in my bathroom. I found myself almost idly directing the shower head between my legs. The image that came to my mind was of the two of them: Dominique and Ben, up in the roof garden. Of all the things that might have occurred between them while the rest of us made small talk downstairs. And as my husband barked instructions—just audible through the wall—I had a silent orgasm, my head pressed against the cool tiles. The little death, it’s called. La petite mort. And perhaps that was only appropriate. A small part of me had died that evening. Another part had come alive.

Jess

It’s evening and I’m back in the apartment. Gazing out into the courtyard, looking up and down at the illuminated squares of my neighbors’ windows, trying to catch a glimpse of one of them moving around.

I’ve texted Nick a couple of times to ask if he’s heard anything from the police but I haven’t had anything back yet. I know it’s way too soon, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m grateful for his help earlier. It’s good to feel I have an ally in this. But I still don’t trust the police to do anything. And I’m starting to feel itchy again. I can’t just sit around waiting to hear.

I shrug on my jacket and step out of the apartment onto the landing, not knowing what I’m going to do but knowing I need to do something. As I pause, trying to decide what that is, I realize I can hear raised voices somewhere above me, echoing down the stairwell. I can’t resist following the sound upward. I start to climb the stairs, up past Mimi’s on the fourth floor, listening for a moment to the silence behind the door. The voices must be coming from the penthouse. I can hear a man speaking over the others, louder than the rest. But I can hear other voices now, too, they all seem to be talking at once. I can’t make out any of the words, though. Another flight of stairs and I’m on the top landing, with the door to the penthouse apartment in front of me and to my left that wooden stepladder leading up to the old maids’ quarters.

I creep toward the door of the penthouse apartment, wincing at every creak in the floorboards. Hopefully the people inside are too distracted by the sounds of their own voices to pay attention to anything outside. I get right up close to the door, then drop down and put my ear to the keyhole.

The man starts to speak again, louder than before. Crap—it’s all in French, of course it is. I think I hear Ben’s name and I go tense, craning to hear more. But I can’t make out a single—

“Elle est dangereuse.”

Wait. Even I can guess what that means: She is dangerous. I press my ear closer to the keyhole, listening hard for anything else I might understand.

Suddenly there’s the sound of barking, right up close to my ear. I stumble away from the keyhole, half-fall backward, try and scrabble my way to standing. Shit, I need to get out of here. I can’t let them see—

“You.”

Too late. I turn back. She stands there in the doorway, Sophie Meunier, wearing a cream silk shirt and black trousers, crazily sparkling diamonds at her earlobes—her expression so frosty that they might be tiny icicles she just sprouted there. There’s a small gray dog at her feet—a whippet?—looking at me with gleaming black eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“I heard voices, I . . .” I trail off, realizing that hearing voices behind someone else’s apartment door isn’t exactly a good excuse to go and eavesdrop. Silver-tongued Ben might be able to, but I can’t find a way of talking myself out of this one.

She looks like she’s trying to decide what to do with me. Finally, she speaks. “Well. As you are here, perhaps you will come in and join us for a drink?”

“Er—”

She’s watching me, waiting for an answer. Every instinct is telling me that going inside this apartment would be a very bad idea.

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.” I look down at my outfit—Converse, shabby jacket, jeans with a rip at the knee. “Am I dressed OK?”

Her expression says she thinks there’s nothing remotely OK about anything I’m wearing. But she says, “You’re fine as you are. Please, come with me.”

I follow her into the apartment. I can smell the perfume she’s wearing, something rich and floral—although really it just smells like money.

Inside, I stare. The apartment is at least double the size of Ben’s, perhaps bigger. A brightly lit, open-plan space bisected by a giant bookcase. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the rooftops and buildings of Paris. In the darkness the illuminated windows of all the apartment buildings surrounding us make a kind of tapestry of light.

How much would an apartment like this cost? Lots, that’s all I can guess. Millions? Probably. Fancy rugs on the floor, huge works of modern art on the walls: bright splashes and streaks of color, big bold shapes. There’s one small painting, nearest to me, a woman holding some kind of pot, a window behind her. I spot the signature in the bottom-right corner: Matisse. OK. Holy shit. I don’t know much about art but even I’ve heard of Matisse. And everywhere, displayed on side tables, are little figurines, delicate glass vases. I bet even the smallest would fetch me more than I earned in a whole year in that shitty bar. It would be so easy to slip one—

I’m suddenly aware of feeling watched. I look up and meet a pair of eyes. Painted, not real. A huge portrait: a man sitting in an armchair. Strong jaw and nose, gray at the temples. Kind of handsome, if a little cruel-looking. It’s the mouth, maybe, the curl to it. The funny thing is, he seems familiar. I feel like I’ve seen his face before but I can’t for the life of me think where. Could he be someone a bit famous? A politician, something like that? But I’m not sure why I’d recognize some random politician, let alone a French one: I don’t know anything about that stuff. So it must be from somewhere else. But where on earth—

“My husband, Jacques,” Sophie says, behind me. “He’s away on business at the moment but I’m sure will be . . .” a small hesitation, “eager to meet you.”

He looks powerful. Rich. Obviously rich, just frigging look at the place. “What does he do?”

“He’s in wine,” she says.

So that explains the thousands of bottles of wine in the cellar. The cave must also belong to her and her husband.

Next my eye travels to a strange display on the opposite wall. At first I think it’s some kind of abstract art installation. But on second glance I see it’s a display of old guns. Each with a sharp, knife-like protrusion attached to the end.

Sophie follows my gaze. “From the First World War. Jacques likes to collect antiques.”

“One’s missing,” I say.

“Yes. It’s gone for a repair. They require more upkeep than you might think. Bon,” she says, curtly. “Come through and meet the others.”

We walk toward the bookcase. It’s only now that I become aware of the presence of people behind it. As we skirt round it I see them facing each other on two cream-colored sofas. Mimi, from the fourth floor, and—oh no—Antoine from the first floor. He’s staring at me as though he is exactly as pleased to see me as I am him. Surely he’s the sort of neighbor you just give a wide berth and leave to their own devices? When I look back he’s still staring at me. It feels like something’s crawling down my spine.

It’s such a random grouping of people, nothing in common with each other beyond the fact that they live nearby: weird quiet Mimi, who can only be nineteen or twenty; Antoine, a middle-aged mess; Sophie in her silk and diamonds. What could they have been talking about just now? It didn’t sound like a polite, neighborly conversation. I can feel their eyes on me, feel like they’re all looking at me like I’m an unknown specimen brought into a laboratory. Elle est dangereuse. I’m sure I didn’t mishear.

“Perhaps you would like a glass of wine?” Sophie asks.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” She lifts the bottle and as the wine glugs out into a glass I see the gold image of the chateau on the front and realize it’s familiar, the match of the bottle I picked up from the cellar downstairs.

I take a long sip of my wine; I need it. I sense three pairs of eyes watching me. They’re the ones with the power in this room, the knowledge; I don’t like it. I feel outnumbered, trapped. And then I think: fuck it. One of them must know something about what happened to Ben. This is my chance.

“I still haven’t heard from Ben,” I say. “You know, I’m really starting to think something must have happened to him.” I want to shock them out of their watchful silence. So I say, “When I went to the police today—”

It happens so quickly, too quickly for me to see how it unfolded. But there’s a sudden commotion and I see that the girl, Mimi, has spilled her glass of wine. The crimson liquid has spattered over the rug, up one leg of the sofa.

No one moves for a second. Maybe, like me, the other two are watching as the dark liquid soaks into the fabric and feeling grateful that it wasn’t them.

The girl’s face is a livid, beetroot red. “Merde,” she says.

“It’s all right,” Sophie says. “Pas de problème.” But her voice is steel.

Mimi

Putain. I want to leave right now but that would cause another scene so I can’t. I have to just sit here and take it while they all stare at me. While she stares at me. The white noise in my head becomes a deafening roar.

Suddenly I can feel the sickness rising inside me. I have to leave the room. It’s the only way. I feel like I’m not quite in control of myself. The wine glass . . . I’m not even sure whether it was an accident or whether I did it on purpose.

I jump up from the sofa. I can still feel her watching me. I stumble down the corridor, find the bathroom.

Get a grip, Mimi. Putain de merde. Get a fucking grip.

I vomit into the toilet bowl and then look in the mirror. My eyes are pink with burst blood vessels.

For a moment I actually think I see him; appearing behind me. That smile of his, the way it felt like a secret shared just between the two of us.

I could watch him for hours. Those hot early-autumn nights while he worked at his desk with all the windows open and I lay on my bed with the fan blowing cool air onto the back of my neck and the lights off so he couldn’t see me in the shadows. It was like watching him on a stage. Sometimes he walked about shirtless. Once with just a towel wrapped around his waist so I could see the dark shadow of hair on his chest, that line of hair that arrowed from his stomach down beneath the towel: a man, not a boy. He hardly ever remembered to close the shutters. Or maybe he left them open on purpose.

I got out my painting materials. He was my new favorite subject. I’d never painted that well before. I’d never covered the canvas so quickly. Normally I had to stop, check, correct my mistakes. But with him I didn’t need to. I imagined that one day, perhaps, I would ask him to sit for me.

Sometimes I could hear his music drifting out across the courtyard. It felt like he wanted me to hear it. Maybe he was even playing it for me.

One night he looked up and caught me watching.

My heart stopped. Putain. I’d watched him for so long I forgot that he could see me too. It was so embarrassing.

But then he raised his hand to me. Like he did on that first day, when we saw him arriving in the Uber. Except then he was just saying hi, and it was to Camille too: mainly to Camille, probably, in her tiny bikini. But this time it was different. This time it was just to me.

I raised mine back.

It felt like a private sign to each other.

And then he smiled.

I know I have this tendency to get a little fixated. A little obsessed. But I reckoned he was obsessive too; Ben. He sat there and typed until midnight, sometimes later. Sometimes with a cigarette in his mouth. Sometimes I smoked one too. It felt almost like we were smoking together.

I watched him until my eyes burned.

Now, in the bathroom I splash cold water on my face, rinse the sourness of the vomit from my mouth. I try to breathe.

Why did I agree to come this evening? I think of Camille, throwing her little wicker basket over her arm, tripping out in the city earlier to hang out with friends, not a care in the world. Not trapped here like me, friendless and alone. How badly I longed to trade places with her.

I can hear him speaking, suddenly. As clearly as if he were standing behind me whispering in my ear, his breath warm against my skin: “You’re strong, Mimi. I know you are. So much stronger than everyone thinks you are.”

Jess

There’s a long silence after Mimi disappears. I take a sip of my wine.

“So,” I say at last. “How do you all—”

I’m interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door. It seems to echo endlessly in the silence. Sophie Meunier gets up to answer it. Antoine and I are left facing each other. He stares at me, unblinking. I think of him smashing that bottle in his apartment while I watched through the spyhole, how violent it seemed. I think of that scene with his wife in the courtyard.

And then, under his breath, he hisses at me: “What are you doing here, little girl? Haven’t you got the message yet?”

I take a sip from my glass. “Enjoying some of this nice wine,” I tell him. It doesn’t come out as flippant as I’d hoped: my voice wavers. I like to think I’m not scared of much. But this guy scares me.

“Nicolas,” I hear Sophie say, using the French pronunciation of the name. And then, in English: “Welcome. Come and join us—would you like a drink?”

Nick! Part of me feels relieved at his being here, that I’m not going to be stuck alone with these people. At the same time I wonder: what is he doing here?

A few moments later he appears around the bookcase behind Sophie Meunier, holding a glass of wine. Apparently living in Paris has given him more style than the average British guy: he’s in a crisp white shirt, open at the neck and setting off his tan perfectly, and navy trousers. His curling, dark gold hair is pushed back from his brow. He looks like someone from a perfume ad: beautiful, aloof—I catch myself. What am I doing . . . lusting after this guy?

“Jess,” Sophie says, “this is Nicolas.”

Nick smiles at me. “Hey.” He turns back to Sophie. “Jess and I know each other.”

There’s a slightly awkward pause. Is this just something rich people who live in apartments like this do, all hang out together? It’s not like any neighbors I’ve ever had. But then again I haven’t exactly lived in very neighborly places.

Sophie gives a wintry smile. “Perhaps, Nicolas, you could show Jess the view from the roof garden?”

“Sure.” Nick turns to me. “Jess, you want to come and have a look?”

I feel like Sophie’s trying to get rid of me, but at the same time it’s a chance to talk to Nick without the others listening. I follow him back past the bookcase, up another flight of stairs.

He pushes open a door. “After you.”

I have to step past him as he holds open the door, close enough that I can smell his expensive cologne, the faint tang of his sweat.

A blast of freezing air hits me first. Then the night sky, the lights below. The city spread out beneath me like an illuminated map, bright ribbons of streets snaking away in all directions, the blurry red glow of taillights . . . for a second it feels like I’ve stepped out into thin air. I reel back. No: not quite thin air. But there’s not much separating me from the streets five floors down beside a flimsy-looking iron rail.

Suddenly uplighters are humming on all around us: they must be on some kind of sensor. Now I can see shrubs and even trees in big stoneware pots, a big rose bush which still has some white blooms attached to it, statues not unlike the one that got smashed to pieces in the courtyard.

Nick steps up onto the terrace behind me. Because I’ve been rooted to the spot, staring, I haven’t given him any space; he has to stand pretty close behind me. I can feel the warmth of his breath on the back of my neck, such a contrast to the freezing air. I have a sudden crazy impulse to lean back against him. What would his reaction be if I did? Would he pull away? But at the same time I have an equally crazy urge to dive forward into the night. It feels like I could swim in it.

When you’re this high up, do you ever get the urge to jump?

“Yes,” Nick says, and I realize I must have spoken the question out loud.

I turn to him. I can barely make him out, just a dark silhouette stitched against the glow from the lights behind him. He’s tall, though. Standing this close I’m aware of the difference between our heights. He takes a tiny step back.

I look beyond him and notice that there’s an extra layer of building above us: the windows dark and small and dust-smeared, ivy wound all over them, like something from a fairytale. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a ghostly face appearing behind the glass.

“What’s up there?”

He follows my gaze. “Oh, it’ll be the old chambres de bonne—where the former maids’ quarters were.” That must be where the wooden ladder leads. Then he gestures back out at the city. “Pretty good view from up here, isn’t it?”

“It’s insane,” I say. “How much do you reckon a place like this costs? A couple million? More than that?”

“Er . . . I’ve got no idea.” But he must have some sort of idea; he must know what his own apartment is worth. It probably makes him feel awkward. I suspect he’s too classy to talk about this sort of thing.

“Have you heard anything?” I ask him. “From that guy at the police station? Blanchot?”

“Unfortunately not.” It’s strange, not being able to see his expression. “I know it’s frustrating. But it’s only been a few hours. Let’s give it time.”

I feel a swoop of despair. Of course he’s right, of course it’s too soon. But I can’t help panicking that I’m no closer to finding Ben. And no closer to working any of these people out.

“You all seem pretty friendly in there,” I say, trying to keep my tone light.

Nick gives a short laugh. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“But do you all get together often? I’ve never had drinks with my neighbors.”

I can hear his shrug. “No—not that often. Sometimes. Hey, do you want a cigarette?”

“Oh, sure. Thanks.”

I hear the click of his lighter and when the flame sparks I see his face lit up from beneath. His eyes are black holes, blank as that statue’s in the courtyard. He passes me my cigarette and I feel the quick warm touch of his fingers, then his breath on my face as I lean closer for him to light the tip. A shiver of something in the air between us.

I take a drag. “I don’t think Sophie likes me much.”

He shrugs. “She doesn’t like anyone much.”

“And Jacques? Her husband? The one in that massive portrait. What’s he like?”

He screws up his face. “A bit of a cunt, to be honest. And she’s definitely just with him for his money.”

I almost choke on my cigarette smoke. It was so casual; the way he said it. But with a real emphasis on the “cunt.” I wonder what he has against the couple. And if he’s clearly not a fan, what on earth is he doing coming for drinks in their apartment?

“How about that guy from the downstairs flat? Antoine?” I ask. “I can’t believe she’d invite him up here. I’m surprised she even lets him sit on her couch. And when I first arrived he told me to fuck off—talk about hostile.”

Nick shrugs. “Well . . . it’s no excuse but his wife just left him.”

“Yeah?” I say. “If you ask me she had a pretty lucky escape.”

“Look,” he says, pointing beyond me, “you can see the Sacré-Coeur, over there.” Clearly he doesn’t want to talk about his neighbors any more. We gaze together at the cathedral: illuminated, seeming to float above the city like a big white ghost. And in the distance . . . yes—there—I can see the Eiffel Tower. For a few seconds it lights up like a giant Roman candle and a thousand moving lights shimmer up and down its height. I’m suddenly aware of how huge and unknowable this city is. Ben’s out there somewhere, I think, I hope . . . Again, that feeling of despair.

I give myself a mental shake. There must be something else I can learn, some new angle to this I haven’t explored. I turn to Nick. “Ben never mentioned what he was looking into, did he?” I ask. “The thing he was writing? The investigative piece?”

“He didn’t say anything to me about it,” Nick says. “As far as I knew, he was still working on restaurant reviews, that kind of thing. But then that’s typical of him, isn’t it?” I think I hear a note of bitterness.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you have to ask whether anyone really knows the real Benjamin Daniels.” You’re telling me, I think. Still, I wonder exactly what he means by it. “Anyway, it’s what he always wanted to do.” He sounds different now, more wistful. “Investigative stuff. That or write a novel. I remember him saying that he wanted to write something that would have made your mum proud. He talked all about it on the trip.”

“You mean the one you took after uni?” The way he said “the trip” made it sound important. The Trip. I think of that screensaver. Some instinct tells me to press him on it. “What was it like? You went all across Europe, right?”

“Yeah.” His tone is different again: lighter, excited. “We spent a whole summer doing it. Four of us: a couple of other guys, Ben and me. I mean, we were really roughing it. Grotty trains with no air-con, blocked loos. Days, weeks, of sleeping sitting up in hard plastic seats, eating stale bread, hardly washing our clothes. And then when we did we had to use launderettes.”

He sounds thrilled. Babe, I think, if you think that’s roughing it you don’t know you’re born. I think of his minimalist apartment: the Bang & Olufsen speakers, the iMac, all that stealth wealth. I kind of want to hate him for it, but I can’t. There’s something melancholy about the guy. I remember the oxycodone I found in his bathroom.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

“All over,” he says. “We’d be in Prague one day, Vienna the next, Budapest a few days later. Or sometimes we’d just spend a whole week lying on the beach and hitting the clubs every night—like we did in Barcelona. And we lost a whole weekend to food poisoning in Istanbul.”

I nod, like I know what he’s talking about, but I’m not sure I could point to all those places on a map.

“So that’s what Ben was up to,” I say. “Sounds a long way from a one-bed in Haringey.”

“Where’s Haringey?”

I give him a look. He even pronounced it wrong. But of course a rich kid like him wouldn’t have heard of it. “North London? It’s where we come from, Ben and I. Even then he couldn’t wait to escape, to travel. Actually, it reminds me of something—”

“What?”

“My mum, she used to leave us on our own quite a lot, while she went out. She did shift work and she’d lock us in from about six, so we couldn’t get up to any trouble—it can be a rough part of town—and we’d be so bored. But Ben had this old globe . . . you know, one of those light-up ones? He’d spend hours spinning it round, pointing out the places we might go. Describing them to me—spice markets, turquoise seas, cities on mountaintops . . . God knows how he knew any of that. Actually, he probably made it all up.” I pull myself out of the memory. I’m not sure I’ve spoken to anyone else about all of that. “Anyway. It sounds like you had a ball. The photo on your screensaver, that was Amsterdam, right?”

I look at Nick but he’s staring out into the night. My question is left hanging in the chill autumn air.

Concierge

I’m watching the roof terrace from my position in the courtyard. I saw the lights come on a few moments ago. Now I see someone step close to the rail. I catch the sound of voices, the faint strains of music floating down. Rather a contrast with the sounds coming from a few streets away, the whine of police sirens. I heard it just now on the radio: the riots are beginning again in earnest tonight. Not that any of them up there will know or care.

The radio was a gift from him, actually. And only a few weeks ago I watched him up there on the roof terrace, too, smoking a cigarette with the wife of the drunk on the first floor.

As the figure next to the rail turns I realize it’s her, the girl staying in his apartment. She has somehow gained access to the penthouse. Invited in? Surely not. If she is anything like her brother I can imagine she may have invited herself.

In a couple of days she has gained access to parts of this building that I have never entered, despite working here for so many years. This is only to be expected. I am not one of them, of course. In all the time I have worked here I can only recall the great Jacques Meunier looking at me twice, speaking to me once. But of course to a man like that I am barely human. I am something less than visible.

But this girl is an outsider, too. Just as much as I am—maybe more so. Also apparently given to climbing, like her brother. Insinuating herself. Does she really know what she has got herself into here? I think not.

I see another figure appear behind her. It’s the young man from the second floor. I snatch in a breath. She really is very close to the rail. I only hope she knows what she is doing. Climbing so high, so quickly: it only makes for further to fall.

Nick

Telling Jess about it has brought it back—that thrill. The buzz of shunting between different cities, playing endless rounds of poker with a battered old deck of cards, drinking warm cans of beer. Talking shit, talking about the deep stuff—often a mixture of both. Something real. All my own. Something money couldn’t buy. It’s why I leapt at the chance to reunite with Ben, in spite of everything. It’s not the first time I’ve longed to go back there, to that innocence.

I catch myself. Talk about rose-tinted glasses. Because it wasn’t all innocent, was it?

Not when our mate Guy nearly OD-d in a Berlin nightclub and we found him pouring water into his face, had to save him from basically drowning himself.

Not when we had to pass a bribe to a Hungarian train guard, because our tickets had expired and he was threatening to dump us in the middle of a vast pine forest.

Not when we nearly got our throats slit by a gang in a back alley in Zagreb after they’d stolen all our remaining cash.

Not in Amsterdam.

I watch Jess now as she takes a drag on her cigarette. I remember Ben telling me about her in a Prague beer hall: “My half sister, Jess . . . She was the one who found Mum. She was only a kid. The bedroom door was locked, but I’d taught her how to trip a lock with a piece of wire . . . An eight-year-old should never have to see something like that. It . . . fuck—” I remember how his voice broke a little, “it eats me up, that I wasn’t there.”

I wonder what that would do to you. I study Jess, think of finding her yesterday, about to steal that bottle of wine. Or appearing in this apartment tonight, uninvited. There’s something reckless about her—it feels as though she might do anything. Unpredictable. Dangerous. And given this morning’s outing she’s clearly got issues with the police.

“I’ve never been anywhere outside the UK,” she says, suddenly. “Apart from here, of course. And look how well this is turning out.”

I stare at her. “What—this is the first time you’ve been abroad?”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “Haven’t had any reason to go before. Or the cash, for that matter. So . . . what was Amsterdam like?”

I think back to it. The stink of the canals in the heat. We were a group of young guys so of course we went straight to the red-light district. De Wallen, it’s called. The neon glow of the windows: orange, fuchsia pink. Girls in lingerie, pressing themselves against the glass, signaling that there was more to see if you were happy to pay. And then a sign: Live Sex Show in Basement.

The others wanted to do it: of course they wanted to. We were basically still horny kids.

Down a tunnel, down some stairs. The light growing dimmer. Into a small room. Smell of stale sweat, stale cigarette smoke. Harder to breathe, like the air was getting thinner, like the walls were pressing closer. A door opening.

“I can’t do this,” I said, suddenly.

The others looked at me like I’d lost it.

“But this is what you do in Amsterdam,” Harry said. “It’s just for fun. You’re not telling me you’re scared of a bit of snatch? And anyway, it’s legal here. So it’s not like we’ll get in any trouble, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I know,” I said. “I know but I just . . . I can’t. Look, I’ll—I’ll hang around . . . and meet all of you afterward.”

I could tell they thought I was a pussy, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t do it. Ben looked at me then. And even though he couldn’t know, I felt like somehow he got it. But that was Ben all over. Our de facto leader. The grown-up of our little group: somehow more worldly than the rest of us. The one who could talk his way into any nightclub, any hostel that claimed to be full—and out of situations too: he was the one who passed that bribe. I was so envious of that. You can’t learn or buy that sort of charm. But I had wondered if maybe just a little of that confidence, that sureness, might rub off on me.

“I’ll come with you, mate,” he said. Howls of disappointment from the others: “It’ll be weird if it’s just the two of us,” and “What’s wrong with you both? Fuck’s sake.”

But Ben slung an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s leave these losers to their cheap thrills,” he said. “How about we go find a weed café?”

We walked out into the street and instantly I felt like I could breathe easier. We wandered to a spot a couple of streets away. Sat down with our ready-rolled joints.

He leaned forward. “You all right, mate?”

“Yeah . . . fine.” I inhaled greedily, hungry for the weed haze to descend.

“What freaked you out so much?” he asked, a moment later, “about that place back there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not something I want to talk about. If that’s OK.”

We’d started with the weaker stuff. It didn’t seem to do all that much at first. But as it kicked in I felt something shift. Actually, now I think about it, maybe it wasn’t so much the weed. It was Ben.

“Look,” he said. “I get that you don’t want to talk. But if you need to get anything off your chest, you know?” He put up his hands. “No judgment here.”

I thought of that place, the girls. I’d kept it inside me for so long, my grim little secret. Maybe it would be a kind of catharsis. I took a deep breath. A long pull of my joint. And then I started talking. Once I started I didn’t want to stop.

I told him about my sixteenth birthday present. How my dad had told me it was time for me to become a man. His gift to me. Best of the best, for his son. He wanted to give me an experience I’d never forget.

I remember the staircase leading downward. Opening that door. Telling him I didn’t want that.

“What?” My dad had stared at me. “You think you’re too good for this? You’re going to throw this back in my face? What’s wrong with you, boy?”

I told Ben how I stayed. Because I had to. And how I left that place a changed person—barely a man yet. How it left its stain on me.

All of a sudden it was just spilling out of me, all my secrets, shit I had never told anyone, like this putrid waterfall. And Ben just sat listening, in the dark of the café.

“Christ,” he said, his pupils large. “That’s seriously fucked-up.” I remember that, clearly.

“I haven’t told anyone else about it,” I said. “Don’t—don’t tell the others, yeah?”

“It’s safe with me,” Ben said.

After that we started on the stronger stuff. Egging each other on. That was when it really hit. We’d look at each other and just giggle, even though we didn’t know why.

“We didn’t see all that much of the city,” I tell Jess, now. “So I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert. If you want a good weed café I could probably tell you that much.”

If only the night had ended there. Without what came next. Without the darkness. The black water of the canal.

Jess

“Hang on,” I say. “You told me you and Ben hadn’t seen each other for over a decade when you guys bumped into each other again?”

“Yes.”

“And that was after that trip, right?”

“Yeah. I hadn’t seen him since then.”

I let it sit a little, wait for him to continue, to explain the long stretch of time. Silence.

“I have to ask,” I say, “what on earth happened in Amsterdam?” I mean it as a joke—mainly. But it feels like there’s something there. The way his voice changed when he spoke about it.

For a moment Nick’s face is a mask. Then it’s like he remembers to smile. “Ha. Just boys being boys. You know.”

A gust of icy wind hits us, ripping leaves from the shrubs and tossing them into the air.

“Jesus!” I say, wrapping my arms around myself.

“You’re shivering,” Nick says.

“Yeah, well—this jacket’s not really designed for the cold. Primarni’s finest.” Though I highly doubt Nick knows what Primark is.

He stretches a hand out toward me, such a sudden motion that I jerk backward.

“Sorry!” he says. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You’ve got a leaf caught in your hair. Wait a second, I’ll get it out.”

“There’s probably all sorts in there,” I say, casting around for a joke. “Food, cigarette butts, the lot.” I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face, his fingers in my hair as he untangles the leaf.

“Here—” he plucks it out and shows it to me: it’s a dead brown ivy leaf. His face is still very close to mine. And in the way you do just know with these things, I think he might be about to kiss me. It’s a very long time since I’ve been kissed by anyone. I find myself letting my lips open slightly.

Then we’re plunged into darkness again.

“Shit,” Nick swears. “It’s the sensors—we’ve been too still.”

He waves an arm and they come back on. But whatever was just happening between us has been shattered. I blink spots of light from my eyes. What the hell was I thinking? I’m trying to find my missing brother. I don’t have time for this.

Nick takes a step away from me. “Right,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “Shall we go back down?”

We climb back down into the apartment. “Hey,” I say. “I think I’ll just find a bathroom.” I need to pull myself together.

“You want me to show you the way?” Nick asks. Clearly he’s familiar with this apartment, I note, despite what he says about not doing this often.

“No, I’m good,” I tell him. “Thanks.”

He goes back to join the others. I wander down a dimly lit corridor. Thick carpet beneath my feet. More artworks hanging on the walls. I push open doors as I go: I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but I do know I’ve got to find something that might tell me more about these people, or what Ben had to do with any of them.

I find two bedrooms: one very masculine and impersonal, like I imagine a room in a swanky business hotel might be, the other more feminine. It looks as though Sophie and Jacques Meunier sleep in different rooms. Interesting, though maybe not surprising. Off Sophie’s bedroom is a room-sized wardrobe, with rows of high heels and boots in sensible shades of black and tan and camel, hanging racks of dresses and silk shirts, expensive-looking sweaters with tissue interleaved between them. In one corner is an ornate dressing table with a spindly antique-looking chair and a big mirror. I thought only the Kardashians and people in films had rooms like this.

I find the bathroom too, big enough to hold a yoga class in, with a huge sunken bath encased in marble, his-and-hers sinks. The next door opens onto the toilet: if you’re rich I suppose you probably don’t wee in the same place that you bathe in your scented oils. A quick poke around in the cabinets, but I don’t find much beyond some very posh-looking wrapped soaps from somewhere called Santa Maria Novella. I pocket a couple.

The room opposite the toilet seems to be some sort of study. It smells like leather and old wood. A huge antique-looking desk with a burgundy leather top squats in the center. There’s a big black and white picture opposite it which I think is some abstract image at first but then suddenly—like a magic eye—realize is actually a photograph of a woman’s torso: breasts, belly button, vee of pubic hair between her legs. I stare at it for a moment, taken aback. It seems like quite an odd thing to hang in your study, but then I suppose you can do what you like if you work from home.

I try the drawers to the desk. They’re locked, but these kinds of locks are pretty easy to pick. I’ve got the first open in a minute or so. The first thing I find is a couple of sheets of paper. It looks like the top sheet must be missing, because these are numbered “2” and “3” at the bottom. Some sort of price list, it looks like. No: accounts. Wines, I think: I see “Vintage” at the top of one column. The number of bottles bought—never more than about four, I notice. A price next to each wine. Jesus. Some of these single bottles seem to be going for more than a thousand euros. And then what looks like a person’s name next to each of these entries. Who spends that much money on wine?

I reach right to the back of the drawer, to see if there’s anything else in there. My fingers close around something small and leathery. I pull it out. It’s a passport. A pretty old one, by the looks of things. On the front it has a gold circular design and some foreign-looking letters. Russian, maybe? It looks pretty old, too. I open it up and there’s a black and white photograph of a young woman. I have the same feeling I did when I looked at that portrait over the fireplace. That I know this person from somewhere . . . though I can’t place her. Her cheeks and lips full, her hair long and wild and curling, her eyebrows plucked into thin half-moons. All at once it hits me. Something about the set of the mouth, the tilt of the chin. It’s Sophie Meunier, only about thirty years younger. I look at the front cover again. So she’s actually Russian or something—not French. Odd.

I shut the drawer. As I do, something falls with a thud off the desk and onto the floor. Shit. I snatch it up: not broken, thank God. A photograph in a silver frame. A posh, formal-looking one. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before: I must have been so focused on the drawers. There are several people in it. I recognize the man first. It’s Jacques Meunier, Sophie’s husband: the guy in the painting. And there’s Sophie Meunier next to him, somewhere between the age she is now and in that passport photo, wearing what’s probably meant to be a smile on her face instead of a chilly grimace. And then three kids. I frown, squinting at the faces, then tilt the photograph toward me, try and see it better under the dim lights. Two teenagers—boys—and a little girl.

The younger-looking boy, with his mop of golden hair. I’ve seen him before. And then I remember. I saw him in a photograph in Nick’s flat, next to a sailing boat, a man’s hand on his shoulder. The younger boy is Nick.

Hang on. Hang on, this doesn’t make any sense. Except it does, suddenly, make a terrible kind of sense. That older boy with the darker hair and the scowl, nearly a man—I think that’s Antoine. This tiny girl with the dark hair . . . I peer at it more closely. There’s something about the startled expression that’s familiar. It’s Mimi. The people in this photograph are—

It’s then I hear my name being called. How long have I been in here? I put the photograph down with a clatter, my hands suddenly clumsy. I scuttle across the room to the door, peek out through the crack into the corridor. The door at the end is still closed but as I watch it begins to open. While there’s still time not to be seen I scurry across the hallway, into the toilet.

I hear Nick’s voice saying, “Jess?”

I open the door to the toilet again and step into the corridor with my best expression of innocent surprise. My heart is hammering somewhere up near my throat.

“Hey!” I say. “All good?”

“Oh,” Nick says. “I just—well, Sophie wanted me to make sure you hadn’t got lost.” He smiles that nice guy smile and I think: I do not know this person at all.

“No,” I say. “I’m fine.” My voice, incredibly, sounds almost normal. “I was just coming back to join you.”

I smile.

And all the time I’m thinking: they’re a family, they’re a family. Nice guy Nick and frosty Sophie and drunken Antoine and quiet, intense Mimi.

What the actual fuck.

Sophie

They’ve all left. My jaw is stiff with the effort of maintaining a mask of serenity. The girl turning up here completely derailed my plans for the evening. I haven’t managed to achieve anything I wanted to with the others.

The bottle of wine is left open on the table. I have drunk far more than I would have had Jacques been here. He would be appalled to see me have much more than a glass. But then I have also spent many evenings alone here over the years. I suppose I’m not unlike other women of my social standing. Left to rattle around in their huge apartments while their husbands are away—with their mistresses, caught up in their work.

When I married Jacques I understood it as an exchange. My youth and beauty for his wealth. Over the years, as is the way with this particular kind of contract, my worth only diminished as his increased. I knew what I was getting into, and for the most part I do not regret my choice. But maybe I hadn’t reckoned with the loneliness, the empty hours. I glance over at Benoit, sleeping in his bed in the corner. Small wonder that so many women like me have dogs.

But being alone is better than the company of my stepsons. I see how they look at me, Antoine and Nicolas.

I reach for the bottle and pour the remainder into a glass. The liquid reaches to the very rim. I drink it down. It’s a very fine burgundy but it doesn’t taste good like this. The acid stings the back of my throat and nostrils like vomit.

I open a new bottle and start drinking that too. I drink it straight from the neck this time, tipping the bottle vertical. The wine rushes out too fast for me to gulp it down; I cough. My throat is burning, raw. The wine pours over my chin, down my neck. The cool of it is strangely refreshing. I feel it sinking into the silk of my shirt.

I saw him in the courtyard the morning after our drinks, talking to Mimi’s flatmate, Camille, in a puddle of sunlight. Jacques once told me he approved of that girl living with our daughter. A good influence. Nothing to do with that little pink pout, the delicate upturned nose, the small high breasts, I am sure.

She was leaning toward Benjamin Daniels as a sunflower in a Provençal field tilts toward the sun, Vichy-check top slipping off brown shoulders, white shorts so brief that half a bronzed buttock was visible beneath each hem. The two of them together were beautiful, just as he and Dominique had been beautiful; impossible not to see it.

“Bonjour Madame Meunier,” Camille trilled. A little wave as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. The “Madame” calculated, no doubt, to make me feel all the cruel power of her youth. Her phone trilled. She read whatever had arrived, a smile forming as though she were reading some secret message from a lover. Her fingers went to her lips. The whole thing was a display for him, perhaps: meant to entice, intrigue. “I have to go,” she said. “Salut Ben!” She turned and blew him a kiss.

And then it was just me and Benjamin Daniels in the courtyard. And the concierge, of course. I was certain she would be watching all of this from her cabin.

“You’ve made it beautiful out here,” he said.

How did he know it was all my work? “It’s not looking its best,” I told him. “This time of year—everything is almost over.”

“But I love the rich colors,” he said. “Tell me, what are those—over there?”

“Dahlias. Agapanthus.”

He asked me about several of the borders. He seemed genuinely interested, though I knew he was just humoring me. But I didn’t stop. I was enjoying telling him—telling somebody—about the oasis I had created. For a moment I almost forgot my suspicion of him.

And then he turned to face me. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Your accent intrigues me. Are you originally from France?”

“Excuse me?” I fought not to lose control of my expression, felt the mask slipping.

“I noticed that you don’t always use the definite article,” he said. “And your consonants: they’re a little harder than a native speaker’s.” He made a pinch with his thumb and forefinger. “Just a little. Where are you from originally?”

“I—” For a moment, I couldn’t speak. No one had ever commented on my accent, not even the French—not even the Parisians, who are the worst snobs of all. I had begun to flatter myself that I had perfected it. That my disguise was complete, foolproof. But now I realized that if he had guessed, and he wasn’t even French, it meant others would have done too, of course they would. It was a chink, an opening in the shell through which my former self might be glimpsed. Everything I had carefully put in place, all I had worked so hard at. With that one question he was saying: you don’t fool me.

“I don’t like him,” I told Jacques, later. “I don’t trust him.”

“What on earth do you mean? I was impressed by him last night. You can feel the ambition coming off him. Perhaps he’ll be a good influence on my wastrel sons.”

What could I tell him? He made a comment about my accent? I don’t like the way he seems to watch all of us? I don’t like his smile? It sounded so weak.

“I don’t want him here,” I said. It was all I could think to say. “I think you should ask him to leave.”

“Oh really?” Jacques said, quite pleasantly. Too pleasantly. “You’re going to tell me, now, are you, who I may and may not have in my own house?”

And that was that. I knew not to say anything more on the matter. Not for the time being. I would just have to think of another way to rid this place of Benjamin Daniels.

The next morning a new note arrived.

The amount my blackmailer was asking for had doubled.

I suppose a few thousand euros should sound like small fry to someone living in an apartment worth several million. But the apartment is in Jacques’ name. The money tied up in Jacques’ accounts, his investments, his business. Ours has always been an old-fashioned arrangement; at any given time I have only had what has been handed out to me for housekeeping, for my wardrobe. I did not realize before I became a part of this world how invisible the grease—the money—that moves its wheels really is. It is all squirreled away, invested, liquid or fixed, so little of it available in ready cash.

Still, I did not tell Jacques. I knew how badly he would react, which would only make things worse. I knew that by telling him I would make this thing real, would dredge up the past. And it would only further underscore the imbalance of power that existed between my husband and me. No, instead I would find a way to pay. I still felt able to handle it on my own. Just. I chose a diamond bracelet, this time: an anniversary gift.

The next morning, I dutifully left another wedge of grubby notes in a cream-colored envelope beneath the loose step.

Now, I look at myself in the mirror across the room. The spreading crimson stain of the wine. I’m transfixed by the sight of it. The red sinking into the pale silk of the shirt. Like spilled blood.

I rip the shirt from me. It tears so easily. The mother of pearl buttons explode from the fabric, skitter to the corners of the room. Next, the trousers. The fine soft wool is tight, clinging. A moment later I am on the ground, kicking them from me. I am sweating. I am panting like an animal.

I look at myself in my lingerie, bought at great expense by my husband but so seldom seen by him. Look at this body, denied so much pleasure, still so well-honed from the years of dieting. The xylophone of my décolletage, the wishbone of my pelvis. Once my body was all curves and ripeness. A thing to provoke lust or contempt. To be touched. With a great effort I changed it into something to be concealed, upon which to hang the garments made for a woman of my standing.

My lips are stained by the wine. My teeth, too. I open my mouth wide.

Holding my own gaze in the mirror I let out a silent scream.

Jess

I made my excuses to leave the penthouse as quickly as I could. I just wanted to get out. There was a moment, sensing them all watching, when I wondered if one of them might try and stop me. Even as I opened the door I thought I might feel a hand on my shoulder. I walked back down the stairs to Ben’s apartment quickly, the back of my neck prickling.

They’re a family. They’re a family. And this isn’t Ben’s apartment: not really. Right now I’m sitting here inside someone’s family home. Why on earth didn’t Ben tell me this? Did it not seem important? Did he somehow not know?

I think of how impressed I was with Nick’s fluent French in the police station. Of course he’s bloody fluent: it’s his first language. I’m trying to think back to our first conversation. At no point, as far as I can recall, did he actually tell me he was English. That stuff about Cambridge, I just assumed—and he let me.

Although he did lie to me about something. He pretended his surname was Miller. Why pick that in particular? I remember the results I got when I searched for him online: did he simply choose it because it’s so generic? I march to Ben’s bookshelf, pull out his dog-eared French dictionary, flip through to “M.” This is what I find:

Miller = Meunier. He gave me a translation of his surname.

One thing I can’t work out, though. If Nick has got some other, hidden agenda, why was he so keen to help? Why did he come to the police station with me, speak to Commissaire Blanchot? It doesn’t fit. Maybe he has another more innocent reason for keeping all of this from me. Maybe they’re just a really private family as they’re so rich. Or maybe I’ve been taken for a complete fool . . .

A chill goes through me as I think of them tonight at the drinks party. Observing me like an animal at the zoo. I think how it didn’t make sense that such a random group of people should choose to hang out together. That they seemed to have nothing in common. But a family . . . that’s different. You don’t have to have anything in common with your family; the thing that binds you is your shared blood. I mean, I assume that’s how it is. I’ve never had much of a family. And I wonder whether that’s why I didn’t spot the truth. I couldn’t read the signs, the important little clues. I don’t know how families work.

I go to put the dictionary back on the shelf. As I do, a sheet of paper comes loose and falls out onto the floor. I think it’s one of the pages of the book at first, because it’s such a ratty old thing, until I pick it up. It takes me a moment to work out why I recognize it. I’m sure it’s the top sheet of those accounts I found in the desk drawer in the penthouse apartment. Yes: there’s a “1” at the bottom of the page. The same sort of thing: the vintages, the prices paid, the surnames of the people who have bought them, all with a little “M.” in front of them. But what is interesting is what’s printed at the top of the sheet of paper. The symbol of a firework exploding, in raised gold emboss. Just like the strange metal card Ben had in his wallet: the one I’ve lent to Theo, yesterday. And what’s also interesting is that Ben—in the same scrawl he’d used in his notebook—has written something in the margin:

Numbers don’t make sense. Wines surely worth much less than these prices.

Then, underneath, underlined twice: ask Irina.

My heart starts beating a little faster. This is a connection. This is something important. But how on earth am I going to work out what it means? And who the hell is Irina?

I take out my phone, snap a photo. Piggybacking off Nick’s Wifi again, I send it to Theo.

I think of our meeting in the café. I’m not sure I entirely trust the guy. I’m not even convinced I’ll hear back from him. But he’s literally the only person I’ve got left—

My thumb freezes on the phone. I go very still. I just heard something. A scratching sound, at the apartment’s front door. I wonder briefly if it’s the cat, before I realize it’s lying stretched out on the sofa. My chest tightens. There’s someone out there, trying to get in.

I get up. I feel the need for something to defend myself with. I remember the very sharp knife in Ben’s kitchen, the one with the Japanese characters on it. I go and get it. And then I approach the door. Fling it open.

“You.”

It’s the old woman. The concierge. She takes a step back. Puts her hands up. I think she’s holding something in her right fist. I can’t tell what it is, the fingers are clenched too tightly.

“Please . . . Madame . . .” Her voice a rasp, as though it’s rusty from lack of use. “Please . . . I did not know you were here. I thought—”

She stops abruptly, but I catch her involuntary glance upward.

“You thought I was still up there, right? In the penthouse.” So she’s been keeping an eye on my movements around this place. “So you thought . . . what? You’d come and have a snoop around? What’s that in your hand? A key?”

“No, Madame . . . it’s nothing. I swear.” But she doesn’t open her fingers to show me.

Something occurs to me. “Was that you last night? Sneaking in here? Creeping around?”

“Please. I do not know what you are talking about.”

She is cringing backward. And suddenly I don’t feel good about this at all. I might not be big, but she’s even smaller than me. She’s an old woman. I lower the knife: I hadn’t even realized I was pointing it at her. I’m a little shocked at myself.

“Look, I’m sorry. It’s OK.”

Because how harmless can she be, really? A little old lady like that?

Alone again, I think about my options. I could confront Nick about all this, see what he says. Ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, giving me a fake name. Get him to explain himself. But I reject this pretty quickly. I have to pretend to know nothing. If he knows I’ve discovered his secret—their secret—that will make me a threat to him and to whatever else he might be trying to hide. If he thinks I still don’t know anything, then perhaps I can keep digging—invisible in plain sight. When I look at it like this, my new knowledge gives me a kind of power. From the beginning, from the moment I stepped foot in this building, the others have held all the cards. Now I’ve got one of my own. Just one, but maybe it’s an ace. And I’m going to use it.

Mimi

When I get back to the apartment I just want to go to my room and pull the covers over my head, crawl deep down into the darkness with Monsieur Gus the penguin and sleep for days. I’m exhausted by the drinks upstairs, the effort it all took. But when I try to open the front door I find my way blocked with crates of beer, bottles of spirits and MC Solaar blaring out of the speakers.

“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” I call. “What’s going on?”

Camille appears in a pair of men’s boxers and lace camisole, dirty blond hair piled up on top of her head in an unraveling bun. A lit spliff dangles from one hand. “Our Halloween party?” she says, grinning. “It’s tonight.”

“Party?”

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Yeah. Remember? Nine thirty, down in the cave, for the spooky atmosphere—then maybe bring a few people up here for an afterparty. You said before that your papa would probably be away this week.”

Putain. I totally forgot. Did I really agree to this? If I did it feels like a lifetime ago. I can’t have people here, I can’t cope—

“We can’t have a party,” I tell her. I try to sound firm, assertive. But my voice comes out small and shrill.

Camille looks at me. Then she laughs. “Ha! You’re joking, of course.” She strides over and ruffles my hair, plants a kiss on my cheek, wafting weed and Miss Dior. “But why the long face, ma petite chou?” Then she stands back and looks at me properly. “Wait. Es-tu sérieuse? What the fuck, Mimi? You think I can just cancel it now, at what, eight thirty?” She’s staring now, looking at me properly—as though for the first time. “What’s wrong with you? What’s going on?”

“Rien,” I say. Nothing. “It’s fine. I was only joking. I’m—uh—really looking forward to it, actually.” But I’m crossing my fingers behind me like I did as a little kid, hiding a lie. Camille is looking closely at me now; I can’t hold her gaze.

“I just didn’t sleep well last night,” I say, shifting from one foot to the other. “Look, I . . . I have to go and get ready.” I can feel my hands trembling. I clench them into fists. I want to stop this conversation right now. “I need to get my costume together.”

This distracts her, thank God. “Did I tell you I’m going as one of the villagers from Midsommar?” She asks. “I found this amazing vintage peasant dress from a stall at Les Puces market . . . and I’m going to throw a load of fake blood over it too—it’ll be super cool, non?”

“Yeah,” I say, hoarsely. “Super cool.”

I rush into my room and close the door behind me, then lean against it and breathe out. The indigo walls envelop me like a dark cocoon. I look up at the ceiling, where when I was small I stuck a load of glow-in-the-dark stars and try to remember the kid who used to stare at them before she fell asleep. Then I glance at my Cindy poster on the opposite wall and I know it is only my imagination but suddenly she looks different: her eyes wild and frightened.

I’ve always loved this time of year, Halloween especially. The chance to wallow in darkness after all the tedious cheerfulness and heat of the summer. But I’ve never been into parties, even at the best of times. I’m tempted to try and hide up here. I glance at the shadowy space under the bed. Maybe I could climb under there like I did as a child—when Papa was angry, say—and just wait for it all to be over . . .

But there’s no point. It will only make Camille more suspicious, more persistent. I know I don’t have any other option except to go out there and show my face and get so drunk I can’t remember my own name. With a stubby old eyeliner I try to draw a black spiderweb on my cheek so Camille won’t say I’ve made no effort but my hands are shaking so much I can’t hold the pencil steady. So I smudge it under my eyes instead, down my cheeks, like I’ve been crying black tears, rivers of soot.

When I next look in the mirror I take a step back. It’s kind of spooky: now I look how I feel on the inside.

Concierge

She caught me. It’s not like me to be so sloppy. Well. I’ll just have to watch and wait and try again when the opportunity presents itself.

I’m back in my cabin. The buzzer for the gate goes again and again. Each time I hesitate. This is my tiny portion of power. I could refuse them entry if I wanted. It would be so easy to turn the party guests away. Of course, I do not. Instead I watch them streaming into the courtyard in their costumes. Young, beautiful; even the ones who aren’t truly beautiful are gilded by their youth. Their whole lives ahead of them.

A loud whoop—one boy jumps on another’s back. Their actions show they are children, really, despite their grown bodies. My daughter was the same age as them when she came to Paris. Hard to believe, she seemed so adult, so focused, compared to these youths. But that’s what being poor does to you; it shortens your childhood. It hardens your ambition.

I talked to Benjamin Daniels about her.

At the height of the September heat wave he knocked on the door of my cabin. When I answered, warily, he thrust a cardboard box toward me. On the side was a photograph of an electric fan.

“I don’t understand, Monsieur.”

He smiled at me. He had such a winning smile. “Un cadeau. A gift: for you.”

I stared at him, I tried to refuse. “Non, Monsieur—it’s too generous. I cannot accept. You already gave me the radio . . .”

“Ah,” he said, “but this was free! I promise. A two-for-one offer at Mr. Bricolage—I bought one for the apartment and now I have this second, going spare. I don’t need it, honestly. And I can tell it must get pretty stifling in there”—with a nod to my cabin. “Look, do you want me to set it up for you?”

No one ever comes into my home. None of the rest of them have ever been inside. For a moment I hesitated. But it was stifling in there: I keep all the windows shut for my privacy, but the air had grown stiller and hotter until it was like sitting inside an oven. So I opened the door and let him in. He showed me the different functions on the fan, helped me position it so I could sit in the stream of air while I watched through the shutters. I could see him glancing around. Taking in my tiny bureau, the pull-down bed, the curtain that leads through to the washroom. I tried not to feel shame; I knew at least that it was all tidy. And then, just as he was leaving, he asked about the photographs on my wall.

“Who’s this, here? What a beautiful child.”

“That is my daughter, Monsieur.” A note of maternal pride; it had been a while since I had felt that. “When she was younger. And here, when she was a little older.”

“They’re all of her?”

“Yes.”

He was right. She had been such a beautiful child: so much so that in our old town, in our homeland, people would stop me in the street to tell me so. And sometimes—because that’s the way in our culture—people would make the sign against the evil eye, tell me to take care: she was too beautiful, it would only bring misfortune if I wasn’t careful. If I was too proud, if I didn’t hide her away.

“What’s her name?”

“Elira.”

“She was the one who came to Paris?”

“Yes.”

“And she still lives here too?”

“No. Not any more. But I followed her here; I stayed after she had gone.”

“She must be . . . what—an actress? A model? With looks like that—”

“She was a very good dancer,” I said. I couldn’t resist. Suddenly, hearing his interest, I wanted to talk about her. It had been such a long time since I had spoken about my family. “That was what she came to Paris to do.”

I remembered the phone call, a month in. Not much email, back then, or texting. I would wait weeks for a call that would be cut short by the bleeping that would tell us she was running out of coins.

“I found a place, Mama. I can dance there. They’ll pay me good money.”

“And you’re sure it’s all right, this place? It’s safe?”

She laughed. “Yes, Mama. It’s in a good part of town. You should see the shops nearby! Fancy people go there, rich people.”

Now I watch as one of the partygoers staggers over to the nearby flowerbed, the one that has just been replanted, and relieves himself right there on the soil. Madame Meunier would be horrified if she knew, though I suspect she has rather more pressing matters to concern herself with at the moment. And usually the thought of her precious border being soaked with urine would give me a dark kind of pleasure. But this is not a normal time. Right now I am more anxious about this invasion of the building.

These people shouldn’t be here. Not now. Not after everything that has happened in this place.

Jess

I’m pacing the apartment. Wondering: are the rest of them still up there, in the penthouse, drinking wine? Laughing at my stupidity?

I open the windows to try and draw in some fresh air. In the distance I can hear the faint wailing of police sirens—Paris sounds like a city at war with itself. But otherwise it’s eerily quiet. I can hear every creak of the floorboards under my feet, even the scuttle of dry leaves in the courtyard.

Then a scream rips through the silence. I stop pacing, every muscle tensed. It came from just outside—

Then another voice joins it and suddenly there’s loads of noise coming from the courtyard: whoops and yells. I open the shutters and see all these kids piling in through the front gate, streaming across the cobbles and into the main building, carrying booze, shouting and laughing. Clearly there’s some sort of party going on. Who the hell is having a party, here? I take in the pointed hats and flowing capes, the pumpkins carried under their arms, and the penny drops. It must be Halloween. It’s kind of hard to believe there’s a world, time passing, outside the mystery of this apartment and Ben’s disappearance. If I were still in Brighton I’d be dressed as a “sexy cat” right now, serving Jägerbombs to stag dos down from London. It’s not much over forty-eight hours since I left that life but already it feels so far away, so long ago.

I see one bloke stop and pee in one of the flowerbeds while his friends look on, cackling. I slam the shutters closed, hoping that’ll help block out some of the noise.

I sit here for a moment, the sounds beyond the windows muffled but still audible. Something has just occurred to me. There’s a chance someone going to that party might know Ben; he’s been living here for a few months, after all. Maybe I can learn more about this family. And frankly anything is better than sitting here, feeling surrounded and spied upon, not knowing what they might be planning for me.

I don’t have a costume, but surely I can make use of something here. I stride into the bedroom and while the cat watches me curiously, sitting tucked into its haunches on top of Ben’s chest of drawers, I tug the sheet off the bed. I find a knife in the drawer, stab some eye-holes into it and then chuck the thing over my head. I march into the bathroom to have a look, trying not to trip over the edges of the sheet. It’s not going to win any prizes, but now I’ve got an outfit and a disguise in one, and frankly it’s a hell of a lot better than a sodding sexy cat, the basic bitch of Halloween costumes.

I open the door to the apartment, listen. It sounds as though they’re heading into the basement. I creep down the spiral staircase, following the music and the stream of guests down the stairwell into the cave, the thump of the bass getting louder and louder until I can feel it vibrating in my skull.

Nick

I’m on my third cigarette of the evening. I only took up smoking when I came back here; the taste disgusts me but I need the steadying hit of the nicotine. All those years of clean living and now look at me: sucking on a Marlboro like a drowning man taking his last breaths. I look down from my window as I smoke, watch the kids streaming into the courtyard. I almost kissed her this evening, up on the terrace. That moment, stretching out between the two of us. Until it seemed like the only thing that made sense.

Christ. If the lights hadn’t gone off and shocked me out of my trance, I would have done. And where would I be now?

His sister. His sister.

What was I thinking?

I wander into the bathroom. Stub out the cigarette in the sink where it fizzles wetly. Look in the mirror.

Who do you think you are? my reflection asks me, silently. More importantly, who does she think you are?

The good guy. Eager to help. Concerned about his mate.

That’s what she sees, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve let her believe.

You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make ourselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offense. So it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human. But, really, the important thing to stress is I haven’t actually lied to her. Not outright. I just haven’t told her the whole truth.

It’s not my fault she assumed I was British. Makes sense. I’ve honed my accent and my fluency pretty well over the years; made a big effort to do so when I was at Cambridge and didn’t want to be known as “that French guy”. Flattening my vowels. Hardening my consonants. Perfecting a kind of London drawl. It’s always been a point of pride for me, a little thrill when Brits have mistaken me for one of them—just like she did.

The second thing she assumed was that the people in this building are nothing more than neighbors to one another. That was all her, honestly. I just didn’t stand in the way of her believing it. To tell the truth, I liked her believing in him: Nick Miller. A normal guy, nothing to do with this place beyond the rent he paid on it.

Look. Can anyone say they’ve really never wished their family were less embarrassing, or different in some way? That they’ve never wondered what it might be like to be free of all those familial hang-ups? That baggage. And this family has rather more baggage than most.

I’ve heard from Papa this evening, incidentally. Everything OK, son? Remember I’m trusting you to take care of things there. The “son” was affectionate for him. He must really want me to do his bidding. But then my father excels at getting others to do his bidding. The second part is classic Papa, of course. Ne merdes pas. Do not mess this up.

I think of that dinner, during the heat wave. All of us summoned up to the roof terrace. The light purplish, the lanterns glowing among the fig trees, the warm scent of their leaves. The streetlamps coming on below us. The air thick as soup, like you had to swallow it rather than inhale.

Papa at one end of the table, my stepmother beside him in eau-de-nil silk and diamonds, cool as the night was hot, profile turned toward the skyline as though she were somewhere else entirely—or wished she were. I remember the first time Papa introduced us to Sophie. I must have been about nine. How glamorous she seemed, how mysterious.

At the other end of the table sat Ben: both guest of honor and fatted calf. Papa had invited him personally. He had made quite an impression at the drinks party.

“Now Ben,” my father said, walking over with a new bottle of wine. “You must tell me what you think of this. It’s clear you have an excellent palate. It’s one of those things that cannot be learned, no matter how much of the stuff you drink.”

I looked over at Antoine, well into his second bottle by now and wondered: had he caught the barb? Our father never says anything accidentally. Antoine is his supposed protégé: the one who’s worked for him since he left school. But he’s also Papa’s whipping boy, even more so than I am—especially because he’s had to take all the flak in the years I’ve been absent.

“Thank you, Jacques.” Ben smiled, held out his glass.

As Papa poured a crimson stream into one of my mother’s Lalique glasses he put a paternal hand on Ben’s shoulder. Together they represented an ease that Papa and I had never had, and looking at them I felt a kind of ridiculous envy. Antoine had noticed, too. I saw his scowl.

But maybe this could work to my advantage. If my father liked Ben this much, someone I had invited into this house, into our family, perhaps there was some way he would finally accept me, his own son. A pathetic thing to hope, but there you have it. I’ve always had to hunt for scraps where paternal affection’s concerned.

“I see that peevish expression of yours, Nicolas,” my father said—using the French word, maussade—turning to me suddenly in that unnerving way of his. Caught out, I swallowed my wine too fast, coughed and felt the bitterness sting my throat. I don’t even particularly like wine. Maybe the odd biodynamic variety—not the heavy, old-world stuff. “Quite incredible,” he went on. “Same look exactly as your sainted dead mother. Nothing ever good enough for her.”

Beside me I felt Antoine twitch. “That’s her fucking wine you’re pouring,” he muttered, under his breath. My mother’s was an old family: old blood, old wine from a grand estate: Château Blondin-Lavigne. The cellar with its thousands of bottles was part of her inheritance, left to my father on her death. And since her death, my brother, who has never forgiven her for leaving us, has been working his way through as many of them as possible.

“What was that, my boy?” Papa said, turning to Antoine. “Something you’d care to share with the rest of us?”

A silence expanded, dangerously. But Ben spoke into it with the exquisite timing of a first violin entering into his solo: “This is delicious, Sophie.” We were eating my father’s favorite (of course): rare fillet, cold, sautéed potatoes, a cucumber salad. “This beef might be the best I’ve ever tasted.”

“I didn’t cook it,” Sophie said. “It came from the restaurant.” No fillet for her, just cucumber salad. And I noticed that she didn’t look at him, but at a point just beyond his right shoulder. Ben hadn’t won her over, it seemed. Not yet. But I noticed how Mimi snatched furtive glances at him when she thought no one was looking at her, almost missing her mouth with her fork. How Dominique, Antoine’s wife, gazed at him with a half-smile on her face, as though she’d prefer him to the meal before her. And all the while Antoine gripped his steak knife like he was planning to ram it between someone’s ribs.

“Now, of course you’ve known Nicolas since you were boys,” my father said to Ben. “Did he ever do any work at that ridiculous place?”

That ridiculous place meaning: Cambridge, one of the top universities in the world. But the great Jacques Meunier hadn’t needed a college education, and look where he’d got himself. A self-made man.

“Or did he just piss away my hard-earned cash?” Papa asked. He turned to me. “You’re pretty good at doing that, aren’t you, my boy?”

That stung. A short while ago I invested some of that “hard-earned cash” in a health start-up in Palo Alto. Anyone who knew anything was buzzed about it: a pin-prick of blood, the future of healthcare. I used most of the money Papa had settled on me when I turned eighteen. Here was a chance to prove my mettle to him; prove my judgment in my own field was just as good as his . . .

“I can’t speak for how hard he worked at uni,” Ben said, with a wry grin in my direction—and it was a relief to have him cut the tension. “We took different courses. But we pretty much ran the student paper together—and a group of us traveled all over one summer. Didn’t we, Nick?”

I nodded. Tried to match his easy smile but I had the feeling, suddenly, of sighting a predator in the long grass.

Ben went on: “Prague, Barcelona. Amsterdam—” I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but our eyes met at that moment. His expression was impossible to read. Suddenly I wanted him to shut the fuck up. With a look I tried to convey this. Stop. That’s enough. This was not the time to be talking about Amsterdam. My father could never find out.

Ben glanced away, breaking eye contact. And that was when I realized how reckless I had been, inviting him here.

Then there was a sound so loud it felt like the building itself might be collapsing under us. It took me a couple of seconds to realize it was thunder, and immediately afterward a streak of lightning lit the sky violet. Papa looked furious. He might control everything that happens in this place, but even he couldn’t order the weather what to do. The first fat drops began to fall. The dinner was over.

Thank Christ.

I remembered to breathe again. But something had shifted.

Later that night, Antoine stormed into my room. “Papa and your English pal. Thick as thieves, aren’t they? You know it would be just like him, right? Disinherit us and leave it all to some random fucking stranger?”

“That’s insane,” I said. It was. But even as I said it I could feel the idea taking root. It would be just like Papa. Always telling us, his own sons, how useless we were. How much of a disappointment to him. But would it be like Ben?

What had always made my mate intriguing was his very unknowability. You could spend hours, days, in his company—you could travel across Europe with him—and never be sure you’d got to the real Benjamin Daniels. He was a chameleon, an enigma. I had no idea, really, who I had invited under this roof, into the bosom of my family.

I reach into the cabinet under the sink and grab the bottle of mouthwash, pour it into the little cup. I want to wash away the rank taste of the tobacco. The cabinet door is still open. There are the little pots of pills in their neat row. It would be so easy. So much more effective than the cigarettes. So helpful to feel a little less . . . present right now.

The fact of the matter is that while I’ve been pretending to Jess, I could almost pretend to myself: that I was a normal adult, living on his own, surrounded by the trappings of his own success. An apartment he paid the rent on. Stuff he’d bought with his own hard-earned cash. Because I want to be that guy, I really do. I’ve tried to be that guy. Not a thirty-something loser forced back to his father’s house because he lost the shirt off his back.

Trust me—as much as I’ve tried to kid myself, it doesn’t make a difference having a lock on the front door and a buzzer of your own. I’m still under his roof; I’m still infected by this place. And I regress, being here. It’s why I escaped for a decade to the other side of the world. It’s why I was so happy in Cambridge. It’s why I went straight to meet Ben in that bar when he got in touch, despite Amsterdam. Why I invited him to live here. I thought his presence might make my sentence here more bearable. That his company would help me return to a different time.

So that’s all it was, when I let her think I was someone and something else. A little harmless make-believe, nothing more sinister than that.

Honest.

Jess

The voices are a roar of sound over the top of the music. I can’t believe how many people are packed into the space down here: it must be well over a hundred. Fake cobwebs have been draped from the ceiling and candles placed along the floor, illuminating the rough walls. The scent of the burning wax is strong in the tight, airless space. The reflection of the dancing flames gives the impression that the stone is moving, wriggling like something alive.

I try to blend into the crowd. My costume is by far the worst one I can see. Most of the guests have gone all out. A nun in a white habit drenched in blood is kissing a woman who has painted her entire semi-naked body red and is wearing a pair of twisted devil horns. A plague doctor dressed from head to toe in a black cloak and hat lifts up the long, curved beak of his mask to take a drag from a cigarette and then lets the smoke blow out of the eyeholes. A tall tuxedo-clad figure with a huge wolf’s head sips a cocktail through a straw. Everywhere I look there are mad monks, grim reapers, demons and ghouls. And a strange thing: the surroundings make all these figures seem more sinister than they would up above ground, in proper lighting. Even fake blood somehow looks more real down here.

I’m trying to work out how to insert myself into one of these groups of people and start a conversation about Ben. I also desperately need a drink.

Suddenly I feel my sheet wrenched off my head. A dead cowboy puts up his hands: “Oops!” He must have tripped over the trailing fabric. Crap, it’s already grimy from the ground, wet with spilled beer. I scrunch it up into a dirty ball. I’ll just have to do it without the disguise. There are so many people here I’m hardly going to stand out.

“Oh, salut!”

I turn to see a stupidly pretty girl wearing a huge flower crown and a floaty white peasant dress splattered with blood. It takes me a moment to place her: Mimi’s flatmate. Camille: that was it.

“It’s you!” she says. “You’re Ben’s sister, right?” So much for trying to blend in.

“Um. I hope this is OK? I heard the music—”

“Plus on est de fous, plus on rit, you know? The more the merrier! Hey, such a shame Ben isn’t here.” A little pout. “That guy seems to love a party!”

“So you know my brother?”

She wrinkles her tiny freckled nose. “Ben? Oui, un peu. A little.”

“And they all like him? The Meuniers, I mean? The family?”

“But of course. Everyone loves him! Jacques Meunier likes him a lot, I think. Maybe even more than his own children. Oh—” She stops, like she’s remembered something. “Antoine. He doesn’t like him.”

I remember the scene in the courtyard that first morning. “Do you think there might have been something . . . well, between my brother and Antoine’s wife?”

The smile vanishes. “Ben and Dominique? Jamais.” A fierceness to the way she says it. “They flirted. But it was nothing more than that.”

I try a different tack. “You said you saw Ben on Friday, talking to Mimi on the stairs?”

She nods.

“What time was that? What I mean is . . . did you see him after that? Did you see him that night at all?”

A tiny hesitation. Then: “I wasn’t here that night,” she says. Now she seems to spot someone over my shoulder. “Coucou Simone!” She turns back to me. “I must go. Have fun!” A little wave of her hand. The carefree party girl seems to be back. But when I asked her about the night Ben disappeared, she didn’t seem quite so happy-go-lucky. She suddenly seemed very keen to stop talking. And for a moment I thought I saw the mask slip. A glimpse of someone totally different underneath.

Mimi

By the time I get down to the cave there are already so many people crammed inside. I’m never good with crowds at the best of times, with people invading my space. Camille’s friend Henri has brought his decks and a massive speaker and is playing “La Femme” at top volume. Camille’s greeting newcomers at the entrance in her Midsommar dress, the flower crown wobbling on her head as she jumps up and throws her arms around people.

“Ah, salut Gus, Manu—coucou Dédé!”

No one pays me much attention even though it’s my place. They’ve come for Camille, they’re all her friends. I pour ten centimeters of vodka into a glass and start drinking.

“Salut Mimi.”

I look down. Merde. It’s Camille’s friend LouLou. She’s sitting on some guy’s lap, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. She’s dressed as a cat; a headband with black lace ears, silk leopard-print slip dress falling off one shoulder. Long brown hair all tangled like she just got out of bed and her lipstick smudged but in a sexy way. The perfect Parisienne. Or like those Instagram cretins in their Bobo espadrilles and cat-eye liner doing fuck-me eyes at the lens. That’s how people think French girls should look. Not like me with my home-cut mullet and pimples round my mouth.

“I haven’t seen you for so long.” She waves her cigarette—she’s also one of those girls who lights cigarettes outside cafés but doesn’t actually inhale, just holds them and lets the smoke drift everywhere while she gestures with her pretty little hands. Hot ash lands on my arm. “I remember,” she says, her eyes widening. “It was at that bar in the park . . . August. Mon Dieu, I’ve never seen you like that. You were crazy.” A cute little giggle for weirdo Mimi.

At this moment the music changes. And I can barely believe it but it’s that song. “Heads Will Roll,” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It feels like fate. And suddenly I’m back there.

It was too hot to be inside so I suggested to Camille we go to this bar, Rosa Bonheur, in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. I hadn’t told Camille but knew Ben might be there. He was writing a piece on the bar; I’d heard him talking to his editor through the apartment’s open windows.

Since he lent me that Yeah Yeah Yeahs record I’d Googled the lead singer, Karen O. I’d tried dressing like her and when I did I felt like someone else. I’d spent the afternoon cutting my hair into her short, jagged style. And that evening I put on my Karen O outfit: a thin white tank top, painted my lips red, ringed my eyes in black eyeliner. At the last moment I took off my bra.

“Waouh!” Camille breathed, when I came out. “You look so . . . different. Oh my God . . . I can see your nénés!” She grinned. “Who’s this for?”

“Va te faire foutre.” I told her to fuck off because I was embarrassed. “It’s not for anyone.” And it was hardly anything compared to what she was wearing: a loose-knit gold mesh dress that stopped just below her chatte.

Outside the streets were so hot you could feel the burning pavement through the soles of your shoes and the air was shimmering with dust and exhaust fumes. And then the most horrible coincidence: just as we were leaving through the front gate there was Papa, coming in the other direction. Despite the heat I felt cold all over. I wanted to die. I knew the exact moment when he saw me; his expression shifting dangerously.

“Salut,” Camille said, a little wave. He smiled at her—always a smile for Camille; like every other guy on earth. She was wearing a jacket buttoned over her dress so you couldn’t see that she was pretty much naked beneath. I’ve noticed that she has this way of being exactly what men want her to be. With Papa she has always been so demure, so innocent, all “oui Monsieur” and “non Monsieur” from beneath her lowered eyelashes.

Papa turned from Camille to me. “What are you wearing?” he asked, his eyes glittering.

“I . . .” I stammered. “It’s so hot, I thought . . .”

“Tu ressembles à une petite putain.” That’s what he said. I remember it so clearly because I felt the words like they were being burned into me: I can still feel the sting of them now. You look like a little slut. He’d never spoken to me like that before. “And what have you done to your hair?”

I put my hand up, touched my new Karen O fringe.

“I’m ashamed of you. Do you hear me? Never dress like this again. Go and change.”

His tone scared me. I nodded. “D’accord, Papa.”

We followed him back into the building. But as soon as he had disappeared into the penthouse, Camille grabbed my hand and we ran out of there and along the street to the Metro and I tried to forget about it, tried to be just another carefree nineteen-year-old out for the night.

The park felt like a jungle, not part of the city: steam rising up off the grass, the bushes, the trees. A big crowd around the bar. This buzz, this wild energy. I could feel the beat of the music deep under my rib cage, vibrating through my whole body. There were people wearing way less than me, less than Camille even: girls in tiny bikinis who’d probably spent the day sunbathing on the Paris Plages, those artificial beaches by the river they construct in the summer. The air smelled like sweat and suntan lotion and hot, dry grass and the sticky sweet of cocktails.

I drank my first Aperol Spritz like it was lemonade. I still felt sick about the look on Papa’s face. A little slut. The way he spat out the words. I drank the second one quickly too. Then I didn’t care so much.

The girl at the decks turned the music up and people started dancing. Camille took my hand and dragged me into the crowd. There were some friends of ours—no, hers—from the Sorbonne. There were pills going round from a little plastic baggie. That’s not me. I drink but I never take drugs.

“Allez Mimi,” LouLou said, after she’d placed the tab on her tongue and swallowed it. “Pourquoi pas?” Come on, Mimi. Why not? “Just a half?”

And maybe I really had turned into someone else because I took the little half of the tab she held out to me. I kept it on my tongue for a second, let it dissolve.

After that it got blurry. Suddenly I was dancing and I was right in the middle of the crowd and I just wanted to carry on forever in the middle of all those sweaty bodies, these strangers. It seemed like everyone was smiling at me, love just pouring out of them.

People were dancing on tables. Someone lifted me up onto one. I didn’t care. I was someone different, someone new. Mimi was gone. It was wonderful.

And then the song came on: “Heads Will Roll.” At the same moment I looked over and I saw him. Ben. Down there, in the middle of the crowd. A pale gray T-shirt and jeans, despite the heat. A bottle of beer in his hand. It was like something from a film. I’d spent so much time watching him in his apartment, watching him across the table at dinner, it felt so weird to see him in the real world, surrounded by strangers. I had started to feel like he belonged to me.

And then he turned, like the pressure of my eyes had been enough for him to know I was there, and he raised a hand and smiled. There was a current running through me. I went to step toward him. But suddenly I was falling; I had forgotten about the table, and the ground was rushing up to meet me—

“Mimi. Mimi? Who are you here with?”

I couldn’t see the others. All the faces that had seemed to be smiling before weren’t now. I could see them looking and I could hear laughter and it seemed like I was surrounded by a pack of wild animals, teeth gnashing, eyes staring. But he was there; and I felt like he would keep me safe.

“I think you need some air.” He put out his hand. I grasped hold of it. It was the first time he had touched me. I didn’t want to let go, even after he had pulled me up. I didn’t ever want to let go. He had beautiful hands, the fingers long, elegant. I wanted to put them in my mouth, to taste his skin.

The park was dark, so dark, away from the lights and sounds of the bar. Everything was a million miles away. The farther we went the more it felt like none of the rest of it was real. Just him. The sound of his voice.

We went down to the lake. He made to go and sit on a bench but I saw a tree right next to the water, roots spreading beneath the surface. “Here,” I said. He sat down beside me. I could smell him: clean sweat and citrus.

He passed me an Evian bottle. Suddenly I was thirsty, so thirsty. “Not too much,” he said. “Steady on—that’s enough.” He took the bottle away from me. We sat there for a while in silence. “How do you feel? Want to go back and find your friends?”

No. I shook my head. I didn’t want that. I wanted to stay here in the dark with the hot breeze moving the tall trees above us and the lapping of the lake water against the banks.

“They’re not my friends.”

He took out a cigarette. “You want one? I suppose it might help . . .”

I took one, put it between my lips. He went to pass me the lighter. “You do it,” I said.

I loved watching his fingers working the lighter, like he was casting some spell. The tip lit, glowed. I sucked in the smoke.

“Merci,” I said.

Suddenly the shadows under the next tree along seemed to move. There was someone there. No . . . two people. Tangled together. I heard a moan. Then a whisper: “Je suis ta petite pute.” I’m your little whore.

Normally I would have looked away. I would have been so embarrassed. But I couldn’t take my eyes off them. The pill, the darkness, him sitting so close—that most of all—it loosened something inside me. Loosened my tongue.

“I’ve never had that,” I whispered, looking toward the couple under the tree. And I found myself telling him my most embarrassing secret. That while Camille brought back different guys every week—sometimes girls, too—I’d never actually had sex with anyone. Except right then I didn’t feel embarrassed; it felt like I could say anything.

“Papa’s so strict,” I said. I thought of how he had looked at me earlier. A little slut. “He said this horrible thing this evening . . . about how I looked. And sometimes I get this feeling, like he’s ashamed, like he doesn’t really like me that much. He looks at me, talks to me, like I’m an . . . an imposter, or something.” I didn’t think I was explaining very well. I’d never said any of this to anyone. But Ben was listening and nodding and, for the first time, I felt heard.

Then he spoke. “You’re not a little girl any longer, Mimi. You’re a grown woman. Your father can’t control you anymore. And what you just described? The way he makes you feel? Use it, to drive yourself. Use it for inspiration in your art. All true artists are outsiders.” I looked at him. He’d spoken so fiercely. It felt like he was talking from experience. “I’m adopted,” he said then. “In my opinion, families are overrated.”

I looked toward him, sitting so close in the darkness. It made sense. It was part of that connection between us, the one I’d felt since the first time I saw him. We were both outsiders.

“And you know what?” he said—and his voice was still different than usual. More raw. More urgent. “It’s not about where you came from. What kind of shit might have happened to you in the past. It’s about who you are. What you do with the opportunities life presents to you.”

And then he put his hand gently on my arm. The lightest touch. The pads of his fingertips were hot against my skin. The feeling seemed to travel straight from my arm right to the very center of me. He could have done anything to me right there in the dark and I’d have been his.

And then he smiled. “It looks good, by the way.”

“Quoi?”

“Your hair.”

I put my hand up to touch it. I could feel where the hair was sticking to my forehead with sweat.

He smiled at me. “It suits you.”

And that was the moment. I leaned over and I grabbed hold of his face in both hands and kissed him. I wanted more. I half-clambered on top of him, tried to straddle him.

“Hey,” he laughed, pulling back, pushing me gently away, wiping his mouth. “Hey, Mimi. I like you too much for that.”

I got it, then. Not here; not like this: not for the first time. The first time between us had to be special. Perfect.

Maybe you could say it was the pill. But that was the moment I felt myself fall in love with him. I thought I had been in love once before but it didn’t work out. Now I knew how false the other time had been. Now I understood. I’d been waiting for Ben.

The song ends and the spell is broken. I’m back in the cave, surrounded by all these idiots in their stupid Halloween costumes. They’re playing Christine and the Queens now, everyone howling along to the chorus. People shoving past me, ignoring me, like always.

Wait. I’ve just spotted a face in the crowd. A face that has no business being at this party.

Putain de merde.

What the hell is she doing here?

Jess

I move through the cave, deeper into the crowd of masked faces and writhing bodies. The party’s getting wild; I’m pretty sure I spot a couple up against a wall having sex or something close to it and a little way on a small group doing lines. I wonder if the room full of wine has been locked. I reckon this many people could put quite a dent in those racks of bottles.

“Veux-tu un baiser de vampire?” a guy asks me. I see that he’s dressed as Dracula in a plasticky cape and some fake fangs—it’s almost as crap a costume as my ghost outfit was.

“Erm . . . sorry, what?” I say, turning toward him.

“A Vampire’s Kiss,” he says in English, with a grin. “I asked if you want one?” For a moment I wonder if he’s suggesting we make out. Then I look down and realize he’s holding out a glass swimming with bright red liquid.

“What’s in it?”

“Vodka, grenadine . . . maybe some Chambord.” He shrugs. “Mostly vodka.”

“OK. Sure.” I could do with some Dutch courage. He hands it over. I take a sip—Jesus, it’s even more grim than it looks, the metallic hit of the vodka beneath the sticky sweet of the syrup and raspberry liqueur. It tastes like something we might have served at the Copacabana, and that’s not a good thing. But it’s worth it for the vodka, even if I’d really prefer to take it neat. I take another long glug, braced this time for the sweetness.

“I’ve never met you before,” he says, sounding almost more French now he’s speaking English. “What’s your name?”

“Jess. You?”

“Victor. Enchanté.”

“Er . . . thanks.” I get straight to the point. “Hey, do you know Ben? Benjamin Daniels. From the third floor?”

He makes a face. “Non, désolé.” He looks genuinely sorry to have let me down. “I like your accent,” he adds. “It’s cool. You’re from London, non?”

“Yup,” I say. It’s not exactly true, but then where am I from, really?

“And you’re a friend of Mimi’s?”

“Er—yes, I suppose you could say that.” As in: I’ve met her precisely twice and she’s never seemed exactly delighted to see me, but I’m not going to go into particulars.

He raises his eyebrows in surprise, and I wonder if I’ve made some sort of mistake.

“It’s just . . . most people here are friends of Camille. No one really knows Mimi. She—how do you say it in English?—keeps herself to herself. Kind of intense. A bit—” He makes a gesture that I take to mean: “cuckoo.”

“I don’t know her that well,” I say, quickly.

“Some people don’t get why Camille’s friends with Mimi. But I say—you just have to look at Mimi’s apartment to know why. Mimi’s got rich parents. You know what I’m saying?” He points up toward the apartment. “In this part of town? Seriously expensive. That is some sick crib.” He attempts to do the last two words in a kind of American accent.

In other circumstances I could almost feel sorry for Mimi. That people would assume someone’s only friends with you because of your money: that’s rough. I mean, it’s never a problem I’ve had to deal with, but still.

“So what are you?” he asks.

“What?” A beat, and then I realize he means my costume. “Oh—right.” Shit. I look down at my outfit: jeans and old bobbly sweater. “Well, I was a ghost but now I’m just an ex-barmaid who’s sick of everyone’s shit.”

“Quoi?” He frowns.

“It’s—er, a British thing,” I tell him. “It might not translate.”

“Oh right.” He nods. “Cool.”

An idea hits me. If Camille and Mimi are down here then no one is up there, in the apartment. I could take a look around.

“Hey,” I say, “Victor—could you do me a favor?”

“Tell me.”

“I really need to pee. But I don’t think there’s an, er—toilette—down here?”

He looks suddenly uncomfortable: clearly French boys get as embarrassed about such matters as their British counterparts.

“Could you ask Camille if we can borrow the key to the place?” I smile my most winning smile, the one I’d use on the big tippers at the bar. Little hair flip. “I’d be so grateful.”

He grins back. “Bien sûr.”

Bingo. Maybe Ben’s not the only one with the charm.

I sip my drink while I wait: it’s growing on me, now. Or maybe that’s the vodka kicking in. Victor comes back a few minutes later, holds up a key.

“Amazing,” I say, holding out my hand.

“I’ll come with you,” he says, with a grin. Crap. I wonder what he thinks is going to come out of this. But maybe it helps me look less suspicious if we go together.

I follow Victor up out of the cave, up the dark staircase. We take the lift—his suggestion—and we end up pressed against each other as there’s barely room for one person. I can smell his breath—cigarettes and vodka, not a totally unappealing combination. And he’s not bad-looking. But too pretty for my liking; you could cut a lemon on his jawline. Besides, he’s basically a child.

I have a sudden flashback to Nick and me a couple of hours ago on the roof terrace. That moment, after he’d taken the leaf out of my hair—when he didn’t move away as quickly as he should have. That snatched piece of time, just before the lights went out, when I was convinced he was going to kiss me. What would have happened if it hadn’t suddenly gone dark? If I hadn’t gone sneaking into the rest of the apartment and found that photograph? Would we have gone back to his apartment, fallen into his bed together—

“You know, I’ve always wanted to be with an older woman,” Victor says, earnestly, jolting me back into the real world.

Steady on, mate, I think. And besides, I’m only twenty-eight.

The lift grinds to a halt on the fourth floor. Victor unlocks the door to the apartment. There are a load of bottles and crates of beer stacked in the main room—must be extra party supplies.

“Hey,” I say. “Why don’t you fix us a couple more drinks while I go and pee? This time big on the vodka please, less of the red stuff.”

There’s a corridor leading off the main room with several doors. The layout reminds me a little of the penthouse flat, only everything here is more cramped and instead of original artworks on the walls there are peeling posters—CINDY SHERMAN: CENTRE POMPIDOU and a tour list for someone called DINOS. The first room I come to is an absolute tip: the floor scattered with clothes, lace lingerie in bright sorbet colors and shoes—bras and thongs tangled around the sharp points of heels. A dressing table covered in makeup, about twenty mashed lipsticks all missing their lids. The air’s so heavily scented with perfume and cigarette smoke it gives me an instant headache. A huge poster on one wall of Harry Styles in a tutu and, on the opposite, Dua Lipa in a tux. I think of Mimi and her scowl, her jagged, grungy fringe. I’m pretty sure this isn’t her vibe. I close the door.

The next room has to be Mimi’s. Dark walls. Big black and white angry prints on the walls—one of a freaky, blank-eyed woman—lots of serious-looking arty tomes on the bookshelf. A record player with a load of vinyls in a special case next to it. The one on the turntable is by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It’s Blitz!

I creep across to the window. It turns out that Mimi’s got a perfect diagonal view into the main living space of Ben’s apartment, across the courtyard. I can see his desk, the sofa. Interesting. I think of her dropping her wine glass earlier when I spoke about Ben. She’s hiding something, I know it.

I open the cupboard, search through drawers of clothes. Nothing to note. It’s all so neat, almost anally so. But the problem is I don’t know what I’m looking for—and I suspect I don’t have much time before Victor starts wondering why I’m taking so long.

I get on my knees and grope around under the bed. My hand connects with what feels like material wrapped around something harder, wood maybe, and I just know I’ve found something significant. I get a hold of the whole lot, pull it toward me. A piece of gray material falls open to reveal a ragged pile of artists’ canvases, slashed and torn into pieces. So much mess and chaos compared to the rest of the room.

I look more closely at the material they were wrapped in. It’s a gray T-shirt with Acne on the label, an exact match for the ones in Ben’s cupboard. I’m sure it’s one of his. It even smells like his cologne. Why has Mimi been keeping her art stuff in one of Ben’s T-shirts? More importantly: why has she got one of Ben’s T-shirts at all?

“Jessie?” Victor calls. “Are you OK, Jessie?”

Shit. It sounds like he’s getting closer.

I start trying to fit some of the scraps of canvas back together as quickly as I can. It’s like doing a really messy jigsaw puzzle. Finally I’ve pieced enough pieces of the first one together to see the picture. I stand back. It’s a really good likeness. She’s even managed to get his smile, which others have called charming but I’d definitely tell him makes him look like a smarmy git. Here he is, right in front of me. Ben. Just as he is in life.

Except for one terrible, terrifying difference. I lift a hand to my mouth. His eyes have been removed.

“Jessie?” Victor calls again, “où es-tu, Jessie?”

I fit the next image together, and the next. Jesus. They’re all of him. There’s even one of him lying down and—Christ alive, that’s way more of my brother than I ever needed to see. In every single one the eyes have been destroyed, punched or torn out with something.

I had a feeling Mimi was lying about knowing him the first time I met her. I suspected she was hiding something as soon as her wine glass hit the floor in Sophie Meunier’s apartment. But I never expected anything like this. If these are anything to go by—if that nude painting is any clue—she knows Ben very well indeed. And feels strongly enough about him to have done some pretty serious damage to these paintings: those tears in the fabric could only have been made with something really sharp, or with a lot of force—or both.

I stand up but as I do a strange thing happens. It’s like the whole room tilts with the movement. Whoa. I go to steady myself against the nightstand. I try to blink away the dizziness. I take a step backward and it happens again. As I stand, trying to get my balance, it feels like the ground is rolling around under my feet and everything around me is made of jelly, the walls collapsing inward.

I stagger out of the bedroom, into the corridor. I have to keep a hand out on both sides to stop myself from keeling over. And then Victor appears, at the end of the passage.

“Jessie—there you are. What were you doing?” He’s walking toward me down the dark corridor. He smiles and his teeth are very white—just like a real vampire. My only way out is past him; he’s blocking my escape. Even with my brain turned to syrup I know what this is. You don’t work in twenty different divey bars and not know what this is. The drink some guy’s offered to buy you, the freebie that is anything but. I never, ever fall for that shit. What the hell was I thinking? How could I have been so stupid? It’s always the pretty ones, the seemingly harmless ones, the so-called nice guys.

“What the fuck was in that drink, Victor?” I ask.

And then everything goes black.