“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.”
Jess
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.