Jess

Jess

I sit here trying not to panic. Trying to imagine the rational explanation that I’m sure must be behind all this. Should I call the police? Is that what a normal person would do? Because it’s several things now. Ben not being here when he said he would and not answering his phone. The cat’s blood-tinged fur. The bleach stain. The broken necklace. But more than any of this it’s the way it all . . . feels. It feels wrong. Always listen to your inner voice, was Mum’s thing. Never ignore a feeling. It didn’t work out so well for her, of course. But she was right, in a way. It’s how I knew I should barricade myself in my bedroom at night when I fostered with the Andersons, even before another kid told me about Mr. Anderson and his preferences. And way before that, before foster care even, it’s how I knew I shouldn’t go into that locked room—even though I did.

I don’t want to call the police, though. They might want to know things about you,a little voice says. They might have questions you don’t want to answer. The police and I have never got on all that well. Let’s just say I’ve had my share of run-ins. And even though he had it coming, what I did to that arsehole is, I suppose, technically still a crime. Right now I don’t want to put myself on their radar unless I absolutely have to.

Besides, I don’t really have enough to tell them, do I? A cat that might just have killed a mouse? A necklace that might just have been innocently broken? A brother who might have just fucked off, yet again, to leave me to fend for myself?

No, it’s not enough.

I put my head in my hands, try to think what to do next. At the same moment my stomach gives a long, loud groan. I realize I can’t actually remember the last time I ate anything. Last night I’d sort of imagined I’d get here and Ben would fix me up some scrambled eggs or something, maybe we’d order a takeaway. Part of me feels too queasy and keyed up to eat. But perhaps I’ll be able to think more clearly with some food in my belly.

I raid the fridge and cupboards but besides half a pack of butter and a stick of salami they’re bare. One cupboard is different from all the rest: it’s some sort of cavity with what looks like a pulley system, but I can’t work out what it’s for at all. In desperation I cut off some of the salami with a very sharp Japanese knife that I find in Ben’s utensil pot, but it’s hardly a hearty breakfast.

I pocket the set of keys I found in Ben’s jacket. I know the code now, I’ve got the keys: I can get back into this place.

The courtyard looks less spooky in the light of day. I pass the ruins of the statue of the naked woman, the head separated from the rest, face up, eyes staring at the sky. One of the flowerbeds looks like it has recently been re-dug, which explains that smell of freshly turned earth. There’s a little fountain running, too. I look over at the tiny cabin in the corner and see a dark gap between the closed slats of the shutters; perfect for spying on anything that’s going on out here. I can imagine her watching me through it: the old woman I saw last night, the one who seems to live there.

I take in the strangeness of my surroundings as I close the apartment’s gates, the foreignness of it all. The crazily beautiful buildings around me, the cars with their unfamiliar numberplates. The streets also look different in daylight—and much busier when I get away from the hush of the apartment building’s cul-de-sac. They smell different, too: moped fumes and cigarette smoke and roasted coffee. It must have rained in the night as the cobbles are gleaming wet, slippery underfoot. Everyone seems to know exactly where they’re going: I step into the street out of the way of one woman walking straight at me while talking on her phone and nearly collide with a couple of kids sharing an electric scooter. I’ve never felt so clueless, so like a fish out of water.

I wander past shop fronts with their grilles pulled down, wrought-iron gates leading onto courtyards and gardens full of dead leaves, pharmacies with blinking neon green crosses—there seems to be one on every street, do the French get sick more?—doubling back on myself and getting lost a couple of times. Finally, I find a bakery, the sign painted emerald green with gold lettering—BOULANGERIE—and a striped awning. Inside the walls and the floor are decorated with patterned tiles and it smells like burnt sugar and melted butter. The place is packed: a long queue doubles back on itself. I wait, getting hungrier and hungrier, staring at the counter which is filled with all sorts of things that look too perfect to be eaten: tiny tarts with glazed raspberries, eclairs with violet icing, little chocolate cakes with a thousand very fine layers and a touch of what looks like actual gold on top. People in front of me are putting in serious orders: three loaves of bread, six croissants, an apple tart. My mouth waters. I feel the rustle of the notes I nicked from Ben’s wallet in my pocket.

The woman in front of me has hair so perfect it doesn’t look real: a black, shining bob, not a strand out of place. A silk scarf tied around her neck, some kind of camel-colored coat and a black leather handbag over her arm. She looks rich. Not flashy rich. The French equivalent of posh. You don’t have hair that perfect unless you spend your days doing basically nothing.

I look down and see a skinny, silver-colored dog on a pale blue leather lead. It looks up at me with suspicious dark eyes.

The woman behind the counter hands her a pastel-colored box tied with a ribbon: “Voilà, Madame Meunier.”

“Merci.”

She turns and I see that she’s wearing red lipstick, so perfectly applied it might be tattooed on. At a guess she’s about fifty—but a very well-preserved fifty. She’s putting her card back into her wallet. As she does something flutters to the ground—a piece of paper. A banknote?

I bend down to pick it up. Take a closer look. Not a banknote, which is a shame. Someone like her probably wouldn’t miss the odd ten euros. It’s a handwritten note, scribbled in big block capitals. I read: double la prochaine fois, salope.

“Donne-moi ça!”

I look up. The woman is glaring at me, her hand outstretched. I think I know what she’s asking but she did it so rudely, so like a queen commanding a peasant, that I pretend not to understand.

“Excuse me?”

She switches to English. “Give that to me.” And then finally, as an afterthought, “please.”

Taking my time about it, I hold out the note. She snatches it from my hand so roughly that I feel one of her long fingernails scrape at my skin. Without a thank you, she marches out through the door.

“Excusez-moi? Madame?”the womanbehind the counter asks, ready to take my order.

“A croissant, please.” Everything else is probably going to be too expensive. My stomach rumbles as I watch her drop it into the little paper bag. “Two, actually.”

On the walk back to the apartment through the cold gray morning streets I eat the first one in big ravenous bites and then the second slower, tasting the salt of the butter, enjoying the crunch of the pastry and the softness inside. It’s so good that I could cry and not much makes me cry.

Back at the apartment building I let myself in through the gate with the code I learned yesterday. As I cross the courtyard I catch the scent of fresh cigarette smoke. I glance up, following the smell. There’s a girl sitting there, up on the fourth-floor balcony, cigarette in her hand. A pale face, choppy dark hair, dressed in head-to-toe black from her turtleneck to the Docs on her feet. I can see from here that she’s young, maybe nineteen, twenty. She catches sight of me looking back at her, I can see it in the way her whole body freezes. That’s the only way I can describe it.

You.You know something, I think, staring back. And I’m going to get you to tell me.