Jess

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.