After he’s got his long, angry speech off his chest he hangs up and shoves the phone back in his pocket. Then he spits out a single word: “Putain.”
I know that one. I got a D in my French GCSE but I did look up all the swear words once and I’m good at remembering the stuff that interests me. Whore: that’s what it means.
Now he turns and starts walking in my direction again. And I see, quite clearly, that he just wants to use the gate to this building. I step aside, feeling a total idiot for having got so keyed up over nothing. But it makes sense; I spent the whole Eurostar journey looking over my shoulder. You know, just in case.
“Bonsoir,” I say in my best accent, flashing my most winning smile. Maybe this guy will let me in and I can go up to the third floor and hammer on Ben’s apartment door. Maybe his buzzer’s simply not working or something.
The guy doesn’t reply. He just turns to the keypad next to the gate and punches in a series of numbers. Finally he gives me a quick glance over his shoulder. It’s not the most friendly glance. I catch a waft of booze, stale and sour. Same breath as most of the punters in the Copacabana.
I smile again. “Er . . . excuse moi? Please, ah—I need some help, I’m looking for my brother, Ben. Benjamin Daniels—”
I wish I had a bit more of Ben’s flair, his charm. “Benjamin Silver-Tongue,” Mum called him. He’s always had this way of getting anyone to do what he wants. Maybe that’s why he ended up a journalist in Paris while I’ve been working for a bloke affectionately known as The Pervert in a shithole bar in Brighton serving stag dos at the weekends and local lowlifes in the week.
The guy turns back to face me, slowly. “Benjamin Daniels,” he says. Not a question: just the name, repeated. I see something: anger, or maybe fear. He knows who I’m talking about. “Benjamin Daniels is not here.”
“What do you mean, he’s not here?” I ask. “This is the address he gave me. He’s up on the third floor. I can’t get hold of him.”
The man turns his back on me. I watch as he pulls open the gate. Finally he turns round to face me a third time and I think: maybe he is going to help me, after all. Then, in accented English, very slowly and loudly, he says: “Fuck off, little girl.”
Before I even have time to reply there’s a clang of metal and I jump backward. He’s slammed the gate shut, right in my face. As the ringing fades from my ears I’m left with just the sound of my breathing, fast and loud.
But he’s helped me, even though he doesn’t know it. I wait a moment, take a quick look back down the street. Then I lift my hand to the keypad and punch in the same numbers I watched him use only a few seconds ago: 7561. Bingo: the little light flickers green and I hear the mechanism of the gate click open. Dragging my case after me, I slip inside.
Mimi
Fourth floor
Merde.
I just heard his name, out there in the night. I lift my head, listening. For some reason I’m on top of the covers, not under them. My hair feels damp, the pillow cold and soggy. I shiver.
Am I hearing things? Did I imagine it? His name . . . following me everywhere?
No: I’m sure it was real. A woman’s voice, drifting up through the open window of my bedroom. Somehow I heard it four stories up. Somehow I heard it through the roar of white noise inside my head.
Who is she? Why is she asking about him?
I sit up, pulling my bony knees tight against my chest, and reach for my childhood doudou, Monsieur Gus, a scraggy old penguin stuffed animal toy I still keep beside my pillow. I press him against my face, try to comfort myself with the feel of his hard little head, the soft, shifting scrunch of the beans inside his body, the musty smell of him. Just like I did as a little girl when I’d had a bad dream. You’re not a little girl any longer, Mimi. He said that. Ben.
The moon is so bright that my whole room is filled with a cold blue light. Nearly a full moon. In the corner I can make out my record player, the case of vinyls next to it. I painted the walls in here such a dark blackish-blue that they don’t reflect any light at all but the poster hanging opposite me seems to glow. It’s a Cindy Sherman; I went to her show at the Pompidou last year. I got completely obsessed with how raw and freaky and intense her work is: the kind of thing I try to do with my painting. In the poster, one of the Untitled Film Stills, she’s wearing a short black wig and she stares out at you like she’s possessed, or like she might be about to eat your soul. “Putain!” my flatmate Camille laughed, when she saw it. “What happens if you bring some guy back? He’s gonna have to look at that angry bitch while you’re screwing? That’ll put him off his rhythm.” As if, I thought at the time. Nineteen years old and still a virgin. Worse. A convent-school-educated virgin.