The Paris Apartment (28 page)

“Well,” Antoine says. “Much as I have enjoyed our little chit-chat, I'd like my cash now, please.” He puts out his hand. “I
thought I'd come and collect it in person. Because I've been waiting for three days now. You've always been so prompt in the
past. So diligent. And I've let a day go by for extenuating circumstances, you know . . . but I can't wait forever. My patience
does have limits.”

“I don't have it,” I say. “It is not as easy as you think—”

“I think it's pretty fucking easy.” Antoine gestures about at the apartment. “Look at this place.”

I unclasp my watch and hand it to him. “Fine. Take this. It's a Cartier Panthère. I'll—I'll tell your father it has gone for
mending.”

“Oh,
mais non
.” He puts up a hand, mock-affectedly. “I'm not getting my hands dirty. I'm Papa's son, after all, you must know that about
me, surely? I would like another pretty cream-colored envelope of cash, please. It's so very like you, isn't it? The elegant
exterior, the cheap grubby reality inside.”

“What have I done to make you hate me so much?” I ask him. “I've done nothing to you.” Antoine laughs. “You're telling me
that you really don't know?” He leans in a little closer and I can smell the stink of the alcohol on his breath. “You are
nothing,
nothing
, compared to Maman. She was from one of the best fam
ilies in France. A truly great French line: proud, noble. You know the family thinks he killed her? Paris' best physicians and they couldn't work out what was making her so sick. And when she died he replaced her with what—with you? To be honest I didn't need to see those records. I knew what you were from the moment I met you. I could
smell
it on you.”

My hand itches to slap him again. But I won't allow another loss of control. Instead I say: “Your father will be so disappointed
in you.”

“Oh, don't try with the ‘disappointment' card. It doesn't work for me any longer. He's been disappointed in me ever since
I came out of my poor mother's
chatte
. And he's given me fucking nothing. Nothing, anyway, that hasn't been tied up with guilt and recrimination. All he's given
me is his love of money and a fucking Oedipal complex.”

“If he hears about this—you threatening me, he'll . . . he'll cut you off.”

“Except he won't hear about it, will he? You can't tell him because that's the whole point. You can't let him find out. Because
there's so much I
could
tell. Other things that have gone on inside these apartment walls.” He pulls a thoughtful expression. “How does that saying
go, again?
Quand le chat n'est pas là, les souris dansent 
. . .”
While the cat's away, the mice dance.
He takes out his phone, waves it back and forth in front of my face. Jacques' number, right there on the screen.

“You wouldn't do it,” I say. “Because then you wouldn't get your money.”

“Well isn't that exactly the point? Chicken and egg,
ma
chère belle-mère
. You pay, I don't tell. And you really don't want me to tell Papa, do you? About what else I know?”

He leers at me. Just as he did when I left the third-floor apartment one evening, and he emerged out of the shadows on the
landing. Looked me up and down in a way that no stepson should look at their stepmother. “Your lipstick,
ma chère belle-mère
,” he said, with a nasty smile. “It's smudged. Just there.”

“No,” I tell Antoine, now. “I'm not going to give you any more.”

“Excuse me?” He cups a hand behind his ear. “I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

“No, you're not getting your money. I'm not going to give it to you.”

He frowns. “But I'll tell my father. I'll tell him the other thing.”

“Oh no, you won't.” I know that I am in dangerous territory. But I can't resist saying it. Calling his bluff.

He nods at me, slowly, like I'm too stupid to understand him. “I assure you, I absolutely will.”

“Fine. Message him now.”

I see a spasm of confusion cross his face. “You stupid bitch,” he spits. “What's wrong with you?” But suddenly he seems uncertain.
Even afraid.

 

I told Benjamin Daniels about Sofiya Volkova. That was my most reckless act. More than anything else I did with him. We had
showered together that afternoon. He had washed my hair for me. Perhaps it was this simple act—far more intimate than the
sex, in its way—that released something in me. That encouraged me to tell him about the woman I thought I had left behind
in a locked room beneath one of the city's better-heeled streets. In doing so I felt suddenly as though I was the one in control.
Whoever my blackmailer was, they would no longer hold all of the cards. I would be the one telling the story.

“Jacques chose me,” I said. “He could have had his pick of the girls, but he chose me.”

“But of course he chose you,” Ben said, as he traced a pattern on my naked shoulder.

He was flattering me, perhaps. But over the years I had also come to see what the attraction must have been for my husband.
Far better to have a second wife who could never make him feel inferior, who came from somewhere so far beneath him that she
would always be grateful. Someone he could mold as he chose. And I was so happy to be molded. To become Madame Sophie Meunier
with her silk scarves and diamond earrings. I could leave that place far behind. I wouldn't end up like some of the others.
Like the poor wretch who had given birth to my daughter.

Or so I thought. Until that first note showed me that my past hung over my life like a blade, ready at any moment to pierce
the illusion I had created.

“And tell me about Mimi,” Ben murmured, into the nape of my neck. “She's not yours . . . is she? How does she fit into all
this?”

I went very still. This was his big mistake. The thing that finally shocked me out of my trance. Now I knew I wasn't the only
one he was speaking to. Now I realized how stupid I had been. Stupid and lonely and weak. I had revealed myself to this man,
this stranger—someone I still didn't really know, in spite of all our snatched time together. In hindsight, perhaps even as
he had told me about his childhood he had been selecting, editing—part of him slipping away from me, ever unknowable. Giving
me choice morsels, just enough that I would unburden myself to him in return. He was a journalist, for God's sake. How could
I have been so foolish? In talking I had handed him the power. I hadn't just risked everything I had built for myself, my
own way of life. I had risked everything I wanted for my daughter, too.

I knew what I had to do.

Just as I know what I have to do now. I steel myself, give Antoine my most withering stare. He may be taller than me but I feel him cringing beneath it. I think he has just understood that I am beyond bullying.

“Message your father or not,” I say. “I don't care. But either way, you aren't getting another euro from me. And at this moment
I think we all have more important matters to focus on. Don't you? You know Jacques' position on this. The family comes first.”

I'm back here. Back in this quiet street with its beautiful buildings. That familiar feeling settles over me: the rest of
the city, the world, seems so far away.

I think of Theo's words: “
You strike me as the kind of person who could be a little . . . reckless
.” It made me angry, when he said it, but he was right. I
know
there is a part of me that is drawn to danger, even seeks it out.

Maybe it's madness. Maybe if Theo hadn't just been arrested, I'd have gone back to his place like he said I should. Crashed
on his sofa. Maybe not. But as it stands I don't have anywhere else to go. I know I can't go to the police. I also know that
if I want to find out what happened to Ben, this place is the only option. The building holds the key, I'm sure of it. I won't
find any answers running away.

I had a gut feeling that day with Mum, too. She was acting weirdly that morning. Wistful. Not herself. Her smile dreamy, like
she was already somewhere else. Something told me I shouldn't go to school. Fake a sick note, like I had before. But she wasn't
sad or frightened. Just a little checked out. And it was sports day and once upon a time I was good at sports and it was summer
and I didn't want to be around Mum when she was like that. So I went to school and completely forgot Mum even existed for
a few hours, that anything existed except my friends and the three-legged race and the sack race and all that stupid stuff.

When I got home at ten to four I knew. Before I even got to the bedroom. Before I even unpicked that lock and opened that
door. I think maybe she'd changed her mind, remembered she had kids who needed her more than she needed to leave. Because she wasn't lying peacefully on the bed. She was lying like a snapshot of someone doing a front crawl, frozen in the act of swimming toward the door.

I'll never ignore a gut feeling again.

If they've done something to Ben, I know I've got the best chance of finding it out. Not the police in their pay. No one but
me. I've got nothing to lose, really. If anything, I feel a kind of pull toward this place now. To crawl, as Theo put it,
back into the belly of the beast.
I'd thought it sounded melodramatic when he said it but, when I stand at the gate and look up at it, it feels right. Like
this place, this building, is some huge creature ready to swallow me whole.

 

There's no sign of anyone about when I enter the apartment building, not even the concierge. All the lights are off in the
apartments up above. It seems as deathly quiet as it did the night I arrived. It's late, I suppose. I tell myself it must
just be my imagination that lends the silence a heavy quality, like the building has been waiting for me.

I move toward the stairwell. Strange. Something draws my eye in the dim light. A large, untidy pile of clothes at the bottom
of the stairs, strewn across the carpet. What on earth is that doing there?

I reach for the light switch. The lights stutter on.

I look back at the pile of old clothes. My stomach clenches. I still can't see what it is but in an instant I know, I just know. Whatever is there at the bottom of the stairs is something bad. Something I don't want to see. I move toward it as though I'm pushing through water, resisting, and yet knowing I have to go
and look. As I get closer I can make it out more clearly. There's a solid shape visible inside the softness of the material.

Oh my God
. I'm not sure if I whisper this out loud or if it's only in my head. I can see now with horrible clarity that the shape is
a person. Lying face down, spread-eagled on the flagstones. Not moving. Definitely not moving.

Not again. I've been here before. The body in front of me, so horribly still.
Oh my God oh my God.
I can see little spots dancing in front of my eyes.
Breathe
, Jess.
Just breathe
. Every part of me wants to scream, to run in the opposite direction. I force myself to crouch down. There's a chance she
could still be alive . . . I bend down, put out a hand—touch the shoulder.

I can feel bile rising in my throat, gagging me. I swallow, hard. I roll the concierge over. Her body moves as though it really
is just a loose collection of old clothes, too fluid, too senseless. A couple of hours ago she was warning me to be careful.
She was frightened. Now she's—

I put a couple of fingers to her neck, sure there'll be nothing . . .

But I think I feel something. Is that?—yes, beneath my fingertips: a stuttering, a pulse. Faint, but definite. She is still
alive, but only just.

I look up at the dark stairwell, toward the apartments. I know this wasn't an accident. I know one of them did this.

“Can you hear me?” Christ, I realize I don't even know the woman's name. “I'm going to call an ambulance.”

It seems so pointless. I'm sure she can't hear me. But as I watch her lips begin to part, as though she's trying to say something.

I reach into my pocket for my phone.

But there's nothing there. My jacket pocket is empty. What the hell—

I scrabble in my jeans pockets. Not in there either. Back up to my jacket. But it's definitely not here. No phone.

And then I remember. I handed it over to that doorman in the club, because he wouldn't let us in otherwise. We got thrown
out before I had a chance to collect it—and I'm certain he wouldn't have handed it over anyway.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath. OK, Jess: think.
Think
. It's fine. It's fine. You don't need your phone. You can just go onto the street and ask someone else to call an ambulance.

I shove open the door, run through the courtyard to the gate. Pull at the handle. But nothing happens. I pull harder: still
nothing. It doesn't move a millimeter. The gate is locked; it's the only explanation. I suppose the same mechanism that allows
it to be opened with the key code can also be used to lock it shut. I'm trying to think rationally. But it's difficult because
panic is taking over. The gate is the only way out of this place. And if it's locked, then I'm trapped inside. There is no
way out.

Could I climb it? I look up, hopefully. But it's just a sheet of steel, nothing to get a toehold on. Then there are the anti-climb
spikes along the top and the shards of glass along the wall either side that would shred me to pieces if I tried to climb over.

I run back into the building, into the stairwell.

When I return I see the concierge has managed to sit up, her back against the wall near the bottom of the staircase. Even
in the gloom I can make out the cut at her hairline where she must have hit her head on the stone floor.

“No ambulance,” she whispers, shaking her head at me. “No ambulance. No police.”

“Are you mad? I have to call—”

I break off, because she has just looked up at the staircase behind me. I follow her gaze. Nick is standing there, at the
top of the first flight of stairs.

“Hello Jess,” he says. “We need to talk.”