I talked to Benjamin Daniels about her.
At the height of the September heat wave he knocked on the door of my cabin. When I answered, warily, he thrust a cardboard box toward me. On the side was a photograph of an electric fan.
“I don’t understand, Monsieur.”
He smiled at me. He had such a winning smile. “Un cadeau. A gift: for you.”
I stared at him, I tried to refuse. “Non, Monsieur—it’s too generous. I cannot accept. You already gave me the radio . . .”
“Ah,” he said, “but this was free! I promise. A two-for-one offer at Mr. Bricolage—I bought one for the apartment and now I have this second, going spare. I don’t need it, honestly. And I can tell it must get pretty stifling in there”—with a nod to my cabin. “Look, do you want me to set it up for you?”
No one ever comes into my home. None of the rest of them have ever been inside. For a moment I hesitated. But it was stifling in there: I keep all the windows shut for my privacy, but the air had grown stiller and hotter until it was like sitting inside an oven. So I opened the door and let him in. He showed me the different functions on the fan, helped me position it so I could sit in the stream of air while I watched through the shutters. I could see him glancing around. Taking in my tiny bureau, the pull-down bed, the curtain that leads through to the washroom. I tried not to feel shame; I knew at least that it was all tidy. And then, just as he was leaving, he asked about the photographs on my wall.
“Who’s this, here? What a beautiful child.”
“That is my daughter, Monsieur.” A note of maternal pride; it had been a while since I had felt that. “When she was younger. And here, when she was a little older.”
“They’re all of her?”
“Yes.”
He was right. She had been such a beautiful child: so much so that in our old town, in our homeland, people would stop me in the street to tell me so. And sometimes—because that’s the way in our culture—people would make the sign against the evil eye, tell me to take care: she was too beautiful, it would only bring misfortune if I wasn’t careful. If I was too proud, if I didn’t hide her away.
“What’s her name?”
“Elira.”
“She was the one who came to Paris?”
“Yes.”
“And she still lives here too?”
“No. Not any more. But I followed her here; I stayed after she had gone.”
“She must be . . . what—an actress? A model? With looks like that—”
“She was a very good dancer,” I said. I couldn’t resist. Suddenly, hearing his interest, I wanted to talk about her. It had been such a long time since I had spoken about my family. “That was what she came to Paris to do.”
I remembered the phone call, a month in. Not much email, back then, or texting. I would wait weeks for a call that would be cut short by the bleeping that would tell us she was running out of coins.
“I found a place, Mama. I can dance there. They’ll pay me good money.”
“And you’re sure it’s all right, this place? It’s safe?”
She laughed. “Yes, Mama. It’s in a good part of town. You should see the shops nearby! Fancy people go there, rich people.”
Now I watch as one of the partygoers staggers over to the nearby flowerbed, the one that has just been replanted, and relieves himself right there on the soil. Madame Meunier would be horrified if she knew, though I suspect she has rather more pressing matters to concern herself with at the moment. And usually the thought of her precious border being soaked with urine would give me a dark kind of pleasure. But this is not a normal time. Right now I am more anxious about this invasion of the building.
These people shouldn’t be here. Not now. Not after everything that has happened in this place.
Jess
I’m pacing the apartment. Wondering: are the rest of them still up there, in the penthouse, drinking wine? Laughing at my stupidity?
I open the windows to try and draw in some fresh air. In the distance I can hear the faint wailing of police sirens—Paris sounds like a city at war with itself. But otherwise it’s eerily quiet. I can hear every creak of the floorboards under my feet, even the scuttle of dry leaves in the courtyard.
Then a scream rips through the silence. I stop pacing, every muscle tensed. It came from just outside—
Then another voice joins it and suddenly there’s loads of noise coming from the courtyard: whoops and yells. I open the shutters and see all these kids piling in through the front gate, streaming across the cobbles and into the main building, carrying booze, shouting and laughing. Clearly there’s some sort of party going on. Who the hell is having a party, here? I take in the pointed hats and flowing capes, the pumpkins carried under their arms, and the penny drops. It must be Halloween. It’s kind of hard to believe there’s a world, time passing, outside the mystery of this apartment and Ben’s disappearance. If I were still in Brighton I’d be dressed as a “sexy cat” right now, serving J?gerbombs to stag dos down from London. It’s not much over forty-eight hours since I left that life but already it feels so far away, so long ago.