“Hey,” she called, standing up and waving so hard that her nénés bounced around in her bikini top like they were trying to escape. “Bienvenue—welcome! I’m Camille. And this is Merveille. Cute pussy!”
I was so embarrassed. She knew exactly what she was saying, it’s the same slang in French: chatte. Also, I hate that my full name is Merveille. No one calls me that. I’m Mimi. My mum gave me that name because it means “wonder” and she said that’s what my arrival into her life was: this unexpected but wonderful thing. But it’s also completely mortifying.
I sank down behind my book, but not so much that I couldn’t still see him over the top of it.
The guy shielded his eyes. “Thanks!” he called. He put up a hand, waved back. As he did I saw again that strip of skin between his T-shirt and jeans. “I’m Ben—friend of Nick’s? I’m moving into the third floor.”
Camille turned to me. “Well,” she said, in an undertone. “I feel like this place has just got a lot more exciting.” She grinned. “Maybe I should introduce myself to him properly. Offer to look after the pussy if he goes away.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s fucking him in a week’s time, I thought to myself. It would hardly be a surprise. The surprising thing was how much I hated the thought of it.
Someone’s knocking on the door to my apartment.
I creep down the hall, look through the peephole. Merde: it’s her: the woman from Ben’s apartment.
I swallow—or try to. It feels like my tongue is stuck in my throat.
It’s hard to think with this roaring in my ears. I know I don’t have to open the door. This is my apartment, my space. But the knock knock knock is incessant, beating against my skull until I feel like something in me is going to explode.
I grit my teeth and open the door, take a step back. The shock of her face, close up: I see him in her features, straightaway. But she’s small and her eyes are darker and there’s something, I don’t know, hungry about her which maybe was in him too but he hid it better. It’s like with her all the angles are sharper. With him it was all smoothness. She’s scruffy, too: jeans and an old sweater with frayed cuffs, dark red hair scragged up on top of her head. That’s not like him either. Even in a gray T-shirt on a hot day he looked kind of . . . pulled-together, you know? Like everything fit him just right.
“Hi,’ she says. She smiles but it’s not a real smile. “I’m Jess. What’s your name?”
“M—Mimi.” My voice comes out as a rasp.
“My brother—Ben—lives on the third floor. But he’s . . . well, he’s kind of disappeared on me. Do you know him at all?”
For a crazy moment I think about pretending I don’t speak English. But that’s stupid.
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t know him—don’t, I mean. My English, sorry, it’s not so good.”
I can feel her looking past me, like she’s trying to see her way into my apartment. I move sideways, try to block her view. So instead she looks at me, like she’s trying to see into me: and that’s worse.
“This is your apartment?” she asks.
“Oui.”
“Wow.” She widens her eyes. “Nice work if you can get it. And it’s just you in here?”
“My flatmate Camille and me.”
She’s trying to peer into the apartment again, looking over my shoulder. “I was wondering if you’d seen him lately, Ben?”
“No. He’s been keeping his shutters closed. I mean—” I realize, too late, that wasn’t what she was asking.
She raises her eyebrows. “OK,” she says, “but do you remember the last time you saw him generally about the place? It would be so helpful.” She smiles. Her smile is not like his at all. But then no one’s is.
I realize she’s not going to go unless I give her an answer. I clear my throat. “I—I don’t know. Not for a while—I suppose maybe a week?”
“Quoi? Ce n’est pas vrai!” That’s not true! I turn to see Camille, in just a camisole and her culotte, wandering into the space behind me. “It was yesterday morning, remember Mimi? I saw you with him on the stairs.”
Merde. I can feel my face growing hot. “Oh, yes. That’s right.” I turn back to the woman in the doorway.
“So he was here yesterday?” she asks, frowning, looking from me to Camille and back. “You did see him?”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “Yesterday. I must have forgotten.”
“Did he say if he was going anywhere?”
“No. It was only for a second.”
I picture his face, as I passed him on the stairs. Hey Mimi. Something up? That smile. No one’s smile is like his.
“I can’t help you,” I say. “Sorry.” I go to close the door.
“He said he’d ask me to feed his kitty if he ever went away,” Camille says and the almost flirtatious way she says “kitty” reminds me of her “Cute pussy!” on the day he arrived. “But he didn’t ask this time.”
“Really?” The woman seems interested in this. “So it sounds like—” Maybe she’s realized I’m slowly closing the door on her because she makes a movement like she’s about to step forward into the apartment. And without even thinking I slam the door in her face so hard I feel the wood give under my hands.
My arms are shaking. My whole body’s shaking. I know Camille must be staring at me, wondering what’s going on. But I don’t care what she thinks right now. I lean my head against the door. I can’t breathe. And suddenly I feel like I’m choking. It rushes up inside me, the sickness, and before I can stop it I’m vomiting, right onto the beautifully polished floorboards.
Sophie
Penthouse
I’m coming up the stairs when I see her. A stranger inside these walls. It sends such a jolt through me that I nearly drop the box from the boulangerie. A girl, snooping around on the penthouse landing. She has no business being here.
I watch her for a while before I speak. “Bonjour,” I say coolly.
She spins around, caught out. Good. I wanted to shock her.
But now it’s my turn to be shocked. “You.” It’s her from the boulangerie: the scruffy girl who picked up the note I dropped.
Double la prochaine fois, salope. Double the next time, bitch.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jess. Jess Hadley. I’m staying with my brother Ben,” she says, quickly. “On the third floor.”
“If you are staying on the third floor then what are you doing up here?” It makes sense, I suppose. Sneaking around in here as though she owns the place. Just like him.
“I was looking for Ben.” She must realise how absurd this sounds, as though he might be hiding in some shadowy corner up here in the eaves, because she suddenly looks sheepish. “Do you know him? Benjamin Daniels?”
That smile: a fox entering the henhouse. The sound of a glass smashing. A smear of crimson on a stiff white napkin.
“Nicolas’s friend. “Yes. Although I’ve only met him a couple of times.”
“Nicolas? Is that ‘Nick’? I think Ben might have mentioned him. Which floor’s he on?”
I hesitate. Then I say: “The second.”