Jacques frowned; he didn’t understand. My husband: a clever man, but also arrogant. Used to having things his way, having power. I have never acquired that sort of arrogance. I have never been certain enough of my position to be complacent. “Well,” he said. “We’ll have to invite him to drinks, look him over.”
I didn’t like the sound of that: inviting him into our home.
The first note arrived two weeks later.
I know who you are, Madame Sophie Meunier. I know what you really are. If you don’t want anyone else to know I suggest you leave €2000 beneath the loose step in front of the gate.
The “Madame”： a nasty little piece of faux formality. The mocking, knowing tone. No postmark; it had been hand-delivered. My blackmailer knew this building well enough to know about the loose step outside the gate.
I didn’t tell Jacques. I knew he would refuse to pay, for one thing. Those who have the most money are often the most close-fisted about handing it over. I was too afraid not to pay. I took out my jewelry box. I considered the yellow sapphire brooch Jacques had given me for our second wedding anniversary, the jade and diamond hair clips he gave me last Christmas. I selected an emerald bracelet as the safest, because he never asked me to wear it. I took it to a pawnbroker, a place out in the banlieues, the neighborhoods outside the peripherique ring road that encircles the city. A world away from the Paris of postcards, of tourist dreams. I had to go somewhere no one could possibly recognize me. The pawnbroker knew I was out of my depth. I think he could sense my fear. Little did he know it was less to do with the neighborhood than my horror at finding myself in this situation. The debasement of it.
I returned with more than enough cash to cover it—less than I should have got, though. Ten €200 notes. The money felt dirty: the sweat of other hands, the accumulated filth. I slid the wedge of notes into a thick envelope where they looked even dirtier against the fine cream card and sealed them up. As though it would somehow make the fact of the money less horrific, less demeaning. I left it, as directed, beneath the loose step in front of the apartment building’s gate.
For the time being, I had covered my debts.
“Perhaps you’ll want to return to the third floor now,” I tell the strange, scruffy girl. His sister. Hard to believe it. Hard, actually, to imagine him having had a childhood, a family at all. He seemed so . . . discrete. As though he had stepped into the world fully formed.
“I didn’t catch your name,” she says.
I didn’t give it. “Sophie Meunier,” I say. “My husband Jacques and I live in the penthouse apartment, on this floor.”
“If you’re in the penthouse apartment, what’s up there?” She points to the wooden ladder.
“The entrance to the old chambres de bonne—the old maids’ quarters—in the eaves of the building.” I nod my head in the other direction, toward the descending staircase. “But I’m sure you’ll want to get back to the third floor now.”
She takes the hint. She has to walk right by me to go back down. I don’t move an inch as she passes. It is only when my jaw begins to ache that I realize how hard I have been gritting my teeth.
Jess
I close the apartment door behind me. I think of the way Sophie Meunier looked at me just now: like I was something she’d found on the sole of her shoe. She might be French, but I’d know her type anywhere. The shining black bob, the silk scarf, the swanky handbag. The way she stressed “penthouse.” She’s a snob. It’s not exactly a new feeling, being looked at like I’m scum. But I thought I sensed something else. Some extra hostility, when I mentioned Ben.
I think of her suggestion that he might have gone away. “It’s not a great time,” he’d said, on the phone. But he wouldn’t just up and go without leaving word . . . would he? I’m his family—his only family. However put out he was, I don’t think he would abandon me.
But then it wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared out of my life with little more than a backward glance. Like when suddenly he had some shiny new parents ready to whisk him away to a magical new life of private schools and holidays abroad and family Labradors and sorry but the Daniels are only looking to adopt one child. Actually it can be best to separate children from the same family, especially when there has been a shared trauma. As I said, my brother’s always been good at getting people to fall in love with him. Ben, driving away in the back seat of the Daniels’ navy blue Volvo, turning back once and then looking forward, onward to his new life.