Sophie

Sophie

Penthouse

“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 families 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, machère 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.”