I booked a week off work and sorted out a hotel in Monaco, which hit my finances hard. This entire project had drained a large amount of the savings I’d diligently gathered, and it pained me to see my hard-earned funds being depleted like this. I’d been putting a little bit aside every month since I started getting an allowance from Sophie and John （they obviously felt as though they had to treat me like one of their own in this respect. I felt uncomfortable about it, but I still took the money） and it gave me a sense of security that I didn’t get from anything else. Every time I checked my savings account I felt a fresh sense of fury at the imbalance between the Artemis financial landscape and my own. I accept that this is ridiculous, given that I was spending my money in order to kill them, but not every emotion is rational.
Still, a week in the sunshine wasn’t something to entirely despair about, and Monaco was tiny, roughly the size of Central Park, so deliberately bumping into Janine wouldn’t be a problem as long as she was in town. Unfortunately, there were no guarantees for this, given the propensity of the super-rich to jet off at a moment’s notice. Her Instagram was private, but she’d accepted a request to follow her from the handle ‘Monaco deluxe’， which was an account I’d made with pictures stolen from society sites. They showed the rich and powerful at parties and charity events – it was easy to repost them with gushing tributes to ‘Mrs Daphne Baptiste, generously donating a beautiful mink coat to the Children’s care fund’ or ‘Mrs Lorna Gold, who hosted an elegant evening soiree at her beautiful penthouse for the street dog society.’ If these women ever even looked at my page, they would just accept the praise at face value. They were pillars of Monaco society, of course people wished to show some thanks. From that page I could see a little of what she was doing, but Janine wasn’t a frequent poster, nor was she a talented photographer. Apart from a few posed pictures taken by professionals, the images on her account were mainly blurry photos of sunsets from private jet windows, the odd snap of a lunch table with a caption like, ‘Great time catching up with Bob and Lily at Cafe Flore’， and a few photos of family events. Bryony lived her life in real time on Instagram and it was invaluable. Janine was old school. Her last picture was three days ago, and was a close up of her slightly chubby bejewelled hands, showing off a dark red manicure. The caption said, ‘Thanks again to @MonacoManis for a good job’， so at least she was there for now.
I flew out on a Monday, and as soon as I’d showered off the sadness of a budget flight and a shuttle bus, I went out to explore. Of course, I knew where Janine’s flat was. It’s remarkable how easy it is to find out where people live. Even if they’re not on the electoral roll, so many people geotag their locations, or follow accounts on social media from their area. If you follow eight different accounts with ‘Islington’ in their name, nobody gets a prize for figuring out where you get your morning paper. Even worse, people are so trusting that they post photos of the view from their bedroom windows, or of their own front doors. And for celebrities, it’s even easier. A lot of the time, the media will report on the exact location of someone’s home. If they’re involved in something truly scandalous, they might even fly a helicopter over it, or mock up a floor plan. Janine gave me her address directly. She gave it to every reader of Hello! two years ago when she opened her doors for a reception to honour a Turkish businesswoman who was winning much praise for inventing a possible cure for eczema. The piece literally opened with ‘Janine Artemis welcomes us to her beautiful penthouse in the Exodora building in Monaco’s gilded playground.’ The businesswoman by the way, was later sentenced to eight years in jail for taking close to ￡100 million in funding and fabricating research. The fight to eradicate eczema goes on.
It was a lovely warm day and I used the map on my phone to take me to the Exodora building, walking past cafés stuffed with feline-faced women and tubby men in shirts with contrasting collars, all of whom could have used some factor 50 earlier in their lives. The building was only ten minutes from my hotel, which was a relief because the heat was rising now and the hope of a nice walk was slightly marred by the supercars which left a trail of fetid petrol fumes in their wake every time they whizzed by me. It’s said that one in three people who live in Monaco is a millionaire. I understand that rich people mainly stay alive in order to keep hold of their money, and that a tax haven like this one helps them to do that, but it felt like one big gated community where there’s no need for open space or fresh air because the helicopter can take off in twenty minutes and zip you over to Switzerland or Provence if you find yourself craving it.