Nick

Nick

Second floor

I suggested Jess come up to my place, rather than us chatting in the chilly darkness of the cave. I’m slightly regretting it now: I’ve offered her a seat but she’s pacing the room, looking at my Peloton bike, my bookcases. The knees of her jeans are worn, the cuffs of her sweater frayed, her fingernails bitten down to fragments like tiny pieces of broken shell. She gives off this jittery, restless energy: nothing like Ben’s languor, his easy manner. Her voice is different too; no private school for her, I’m guessing. But then Ben’s accent often changed depending on who he was speaking to. It took me a while to realize that.

“Hey,” she says, suddenly. “Can I go splash some water on my face? I’m really sweaty.”

“Be my guest.” What else can I say?

She wanders back in a couple of minutes later. I catch a gust of Annick Goutal Eau de Monsieur; either she wears it too (which seems unlikely) or she helped herself when she was in there.

“Better?” I ask.

“Yeah, much, thanks. Hey, I like your rain shower. That’s what you call it, right?”

I continue to watch her as she looks around the room. There’s a resemblance there. From certain angles it’s almost uncanny. . . . But her coloring’s different from Ben’s, her hair a dark auburn to his brown, her frame small and wiry. That, and the curious way she’s prowling around, sizing the place up, makes me think of a little fox.

“Thanks for helping me out,” she says. “For a moment I thought I’d never get out.”

“But what on earth were you doing in the cave?”

“The what?”

“Cave,” I explain, “it means ‘cellar’ in French.”

“Oh, right.” She chews the skin at the edge of her thumbnail, shrugs. “Having a look around the place, I suppose.” I saw that bottle of wine in her hand. How she slipped it back into the rack when she didn’t think I was looking. I’m not going to mention it. The owner of that cellar can afford to lose a bottle or two. “It’s huge down there,” she says.

“It was used by the Gestapo in the war,” I tell her. “Their main headquarters was on Avenue Foch, near the Bois de Boulogne. But toward the end of the Occupation they had . . . overspill. They used the cave to hold prisoners. Members of the Resistance, that kind of thing.”

She makes a face. “I suppose it makes sense. This place has an atmosphere, you know? My mum was very into that sort of thing: energy, auras, vibrations.”

Was. I remember Ben telling me about his mum. Drunk in a pub one night. Though even drunk I suspect he never spilled more than he intended to.

“Anyway,” she says, “I never really believed in that stuff. But you can feel something here. It gives me the creeps.” She catches herself. “Sorry—didn’t mean to offend—”

“No. It’s fine. I suppose I know what you mean. So: you’re Ben’s sister.” I want to work out exactly what she’s doing here.

She nods. “Yup. Same mum, different dads.”

I notice she doesn’t say anything about Ben being adopted. I remember my shock, finding out. But thinking that it also made sense. The fact that you couldn’t pigeonhole him like you could the others in our year at university—the staid rowing types, the studious honors students, the loose party animals. Yes, there was the public school accent, the ease—but it always felt as though there was some other note beneath it all. Hints of something rougher, darker. Maybe that’s why people were so intrigued by him.

“I like your Gaggia,” Jess says, wandering toward the kitchen. “They had one like that in a café I used to work in.” A laugh, without much humor in it. “I might not have gone to a posh school or uni like my brother but I do know how to make a mean microfoam.” I sense a streak of bitterness there.

“You want a coffee? I can make you one. I’m afraid I’ve only got oat milk.”

“Have you got any beer?” she asks, hopefully. “I know it’s early but I could really do with one.”

“Sure, and feel free to sit down,” I say, gesturing to the sofa. Watching her prowl around the room, combined with the lack of sleep, is making me feel a little dizzy.

I go to the fridge to get out a couple of bottles: beer for her, kombucha for me—I never drink earlier than seven. Before I can offer to open hers she’s taken a lighter out of her pocket, fitted it between the top of her index finger and the bottom of the cap and somehow flipped the lid off. I watch her, amazed and slightly appalled at the same time. Who is this girl?

“I don’t think Ben mentioned you coming to stay,” I say, as casually as I can. I don’t want her to feel like I’m accusing her of anything—but he definitely didn’t. Of course we didn’t speak much the last couple of weeks. He was so busy.

“Well, it was kind of last minute.” She waves a hand vaguely. “When did you last see him?” she asks. “Ben?”

“A couple of days ago—I think.”

“So you haven’t heard from him today?”

“No. Is something the matter?”

I watch as she tears at her thumbnail with her teeth, so hard it makes me wince. I see a little bead of blood blossom at the quick. “He wasn’t here when I arrived last night. And I haven’t heard from him since yesterday afternoon. I know this is going to sound weird, but could he have been in some sort of trouble?”

I cough on the sip I’ve just taken. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“It just . . . feels all wrong.” She’s fidgeting with the gold necklace around her neck now. I see the metal saint come free; it’s the same as his. “He left me this voicenote. It . . . kind of cuts out halfway through. And now he isn’t answering his phone. He hasn’t read any of my messages. His wallet and his keys are still in the apartment—and I know he hasn’t taken his Vespa because I saw it in the basement—”

“But that’s just like Ben, isn’t it?” I say. “He’s probably gone off for a few days, chasing some story with a couple of hundred euros in his back pocket. You can get the train to most of Europe from here. He’s always been like that, since we were students. He’d disappear and come back a few days later saying he’d gone to Edinburgh ’cause he fancied it, or he’d wanted to see the Norfolk Broads, or he’d stayed in a hostel and gone hiking in the Brecon Beacons.”

The rest of us in our little bubble, hardly remembering—some of us wanting to forget—that there was a world outside it. It wouldn’t have occurred to us to leave. But off he’d go, on his own, like he wasn’t crossing some sort of invisible barrier. That hunger, that drive in him.

“I don’t think so,” Jess says, cutting into these memories. “He wouldn’t do that . . . not knowing I was coming.” But she doesn’t sound all that certain. She sounds almost as though she’s asking a question. “Anyway, you seem to know him pretty well?”

“We hadn’t seen much of each other until recently.” That much, at least, is true. “You know how it is. But he got in touch with me when he moved to Paris. And meeting back up . . . it felt like it had been no time at all, really.”

I’m drawn back to that reunion nearly three months ago. My surprise—shock—at finding the email from him after so long, after everything. A sports bar in Saint-Germain. A sticky floor and sticky bar, signed French rugby shirts tacked to the wall, moldy-looking chunks of charcuterie with your beer and French club rugby playing on about fifteen different screens. But it felt nostalgic; almost like the kind of place we would have gone to as students nursing pints and pretending to be real men.

We caught up on the missed decade between us: my time in Palo Alto; his journalism. He got out his phone to show me his work.

“It’s not exactly . . . hard-hitting stuff,” he said, with a shrug. “Not what I said I wanted to do. It’s fluff, let’s be honest. But it’s tough right now. Should have gone the tech route like you.”

I coughed, awkwardly. “Mate, I haven’t exactly conquered the tech world.” That was putting it mildly. But I was almost more disappointed by his lack of success than my own. I’d have expected him to have written his prize-winning novel by now. We’d met on a student paper but fiction always seemed more his thing, not the factual rigors of journalism. And if anyone was going to make it I’d been so sure it would be Ben Daniels. If he couldn’t, what hope was there for the rest of us?

“I feel like I’m really hunting around for scraps,” he said. “I get to eat in some nice restaurants, a free night out once in a while. But it’s not exactly what I thought I’d end up doing. You need a big story to break into that, make your name. A real coup. I’m sick and tired of London, the old boys’ club. Thought I’d try my luck here.”

Well, we both had our big plans, back when we’d last seen each other. Even if mine didn’t involve much more than getting the fuck away from my old man and being as far away from home as possible.

A sudden clatter brings me back into the room. Jess, on the prowl again, has knocked a photograph off the bookshelf: one of the rare few I’ve got up there.

She picks it up. “Sorry. That’s a cool boat, though. In the photo.”

“It’s my dad’s yacht.”

“And this is you, with him?”

“Yes.” I’m about fifteen in that one. His hand on my shoulder, both of us smiling into the camera. I’d actually managed to impress him that day, taking the helm for a while. It might have been one of the only times I’ve ever felt his pride in me.

A sudden shout of laughter. “And this one looks like something out of Harry Potter,” she says. “These black cloaks. Is this—”

“Cambridge.” A group of us after a formal, standing on Jesus Green by the River Cam in the evening light, wearing our gowns and clutching half-drunk bottles of wine. Looking at it I can almost smell that green, green scent of the fresh-cut grass: the essence of an English summer.

“That’s where you met Ben?”

“Yup, we worked on Varsity together: him in editorial, me on the website. And we both went to Jesus.”

She rolls her eyes. “The names they give those places.” She squints at it. “He’s not in this photo, is he?”

“No. He was taking it.” Laughing, getting us all to pose. Just like Ben to be the one behind the camera, not in front of it: telling the story rather than a part of it.

She moves over to the bookcases. Paces up and down, reading the titles. It’s hard to imagine she ever stops moving. “So many of your books are in French. That’s what Ben was doing there, wasn’t it? French studies or something.”

“Well, he was doing Modern Languages at first, yes. He switched to English Literature later.”

“Really?” Something clouds her face. “I didn’t—I didn’t know that about him. He never told me.”

I recall the fragments that Ben told me about her while we were traveling. How she had it so much harder than him. No one around to pick up the pieces for her. Bounced around the care system, couldn’t be placed.

“So you’re the friend that helped him out with this place?” she asks.

“That’s me.”

“It sounds incredible,” he’d said, when I suggested it the day we met up again. “And you’re sure about that, the rent? You reckon it would really be that low? I have to tell you I’m pretty strapped for cash at the moment.”

“Let me find out,” I told him. “But I’m pretty sure, yes. I mean, it’s not in the best shape. As long as you don’t mind some slightly . . . antique details.”

He grinned. “Not at all. You know me. I like a place with character. And I tell you, it’s a hell of a lot better than crashing on people’s sofas. Can I bring my cat?”

I laughed. “I’m sure you can bring your cat.” I told him I’d make my inquiries. “But I think it’s probably yours if you want it.”

“Well . . . thanks mate. I mean . . . seriously, that sounds absolutely amazing.”

“No problem. Happy to help. So that’s a yes, you’re interested?”

“It’s a hell yes.” He laughed. “Let me buy you another drink, to celebrate.”

We sat there for hours with more beers. And suddenly it was like we were back in Cambridge with no time having passed between us.

He moved in a couple of days later. That quick. I stood there with him in the apartment as he looked around.

“I know it’s a little retro,” I told him.

“It’s certainly . . . got character,” he said. “You know what? I think I’ll keep it like this. I like it. Gothic.”

And I thought how great it was, having my old buddy back. He grinned at me and for some reason I suddenly felt like everything might be OK. Maybe more than OK. Like it might help me find that guy I had been, once upon a time.

“Can I use your computer?”

“What?” I’m jolted out of the memory. I see Jess has wandered over to my iMac.

“Those bloody roaming charges are a killer. I just thought I could check Ben’s Instagram again, in case something’s happened to his phone and he’s messaged me back.”

“Er—I could give you my Wifi code?” But she’s already sitting down, her hand on the mouse. I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter.

She moves the mouse and the screen lights up. “Wait—” she leans forward, peering at the screensaver, then turns around to me. “This is you and Ben, isn’t it? Jeez, he looks so young. So do you.”

I haven’t switched on my computer in several days. I force myself to look. “I suppose we were. Not much more than kids.” How strange, to think it. I felt so adult at the time. Like all the mysteries of the world had suddenly been unlocked to me. And yet we were still children, really. I glance out of the windows. I don’t need to look at the photo; I can see it with my eyes shut. The light golden and slanting: both of us squinting against the sun.

“Where were you, here?”

“A group of us went interrailing, the whole summer after our finals.”

“What, on trains?”

“Yes. All across Europe . . . it was amazing.” It really was. The best time of my life, even.

I glance at Jess. She’s gone quiet; seems lost in her own thoughts. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, sure.” She forces a smile. A little of her energy seems to have evaporated. “So . . . where was this photo taken?”

“Amsterdam, I think.”

I don’t think: I know. How could I forget?

Looking at that photo, I can feel the late July sun on my face, smell the sulphur stink of the warm canal water. So clear, that time, even though those memories are over a decade old. But then everything on that trip seemed important. Everything said, everything done.