The Paris Apartment (13 page)

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.

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.”

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.