Suddenly I feel my sheet wrenched off my head. A dead cowboy puts up his hands: “Oops!” He must have tripped over the trailing fabric. Crap, it’s already grimy from the ground, wet with spilled beer. I scrunch it up into a dirty ball. I’ll just have to do it without the disguise. There are so many people here I’m hardly going to stand out.
“Oh, salut!”
I turn to see a stupidly pretty girl wearing a huge flower crown and a floaty white peasant dress splattered with blood. It takes me a moment to place her: Mimi’s flatmate. Camille: that was it.
“It’s you!” she says. “You’re Ben’s sister, right?” So much for trying to blend in.
“Um. I hope this is OK? I heard the music—”
“Plus on est de fous, plus on rit, you know? The more the merrier! Hey, such a shame Ben isn’t here.” A little pout. “That guy seems to love a party!”
“So you know my brother?”
She wrinkles her tiny freckled nose. “Ben? Oui, un peu. A little.”
“And they all like him? The Meuniers, I mean? The family?”
“But of course. Everyone loves him! Jacques Meunier likes him a lot, I think. Maybe even more than his own children. Oh—” She stops, like she’s remembered something. “Antoine. He doesn’t like him.”
I remember the scene in the courtyard that first morning. “Do you think there might have been something . . . well, between my brother and Antoine’s wife?”
The smile vanishes. “Ben and Dominique? Jamais.” A fierceness to the way she says it. “They flirted. But it was nothing more than that.”
I try a different tack. “You said you saw Ben on Friday, talking to Mimi on the stairs?”
She nods.
“What time was that? What I mean is . . . did you see him after that? Did you see him that night at all?”
A tiny hesitation. Then: “I wasn’t here that night,” she says. Now she seems to spot someone over my shoulder. “Coucou Simone!” She turns back to me. “I must go. Have fun!” A little wave of her hand. The carefree party girl seems to be back. But when I asked her about the night Ben disappeared, she didn’t seem quite so happy-go-lucky. She suddenly seemed very keen to stop talking. And for a moment I thought I saw the mask slip. A glimpse of someone totally different underneath.
Mimi
Fourth floor
By the time I get down to the cave there are already so many people crammed inside. I’m never good with crowds at the best of times, with people invading my space. Camille’s friend Henri has brought his decks and a massive speaker and is playing “La Femme” at top volume. Camille’s greeting newcomers at the entrance in her Midsommar dress, the flower crown wobbling on her head as she jumps up and throws her arms around people.
“Ah, salut Gus, Manu—coucou Dédé!”
No one pays me much attention even though it’s my place. They’ve come for Camille, they’re all her friends. I pour ten centimeters of vodka into a glass and start drinking.
“Salut Mimi.”
I look down. Merde. It’s Camille’s friend LouLou. She’s sitting on some guy’s lap, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. She’s dressed as a cat; a headband with black lace ears, silk leopard-print slip dress falling off one shoulder. Long brown hair all tangled like she just got out of bed and her lipstick smudged but in a sexy way. The perfect Parisienne. Or like those Instagram cretins in their Bobo espadrilles and cat-eye liner doing fuck-me eyes at the lens. That’s how people think French girls should look. Not like me with my home-cut mullet and pimples round my mouth.
“I haven’t seen you for so long.” She waves her cigarette—she’s also one of those girls who lights cigarettes outside cafés but doesn’t actually inhale, just holds them and lets the smoke drift everywhere while she gestures with her pretty little hands. Hot ash lands on my arm. “I remember,” she says, her eyes widening. “It was at that bar in the park . . . August. Mon Dieu, I’ve never seen you like that. You were crazy.” A cute little giggle for weirdo Mimi.
At this moment the music changes. And I can barely believe it but it’s that song. “Heads Will Roll,” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It feels like fate. And suddenly I’m back there.
It was too hot to be inside so I suggested to Camille we go to this bar, Rosa Bonheur, in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. I hadn’t told Camille but knew Ben might be there. He was writing a piece on the bar; I’d heard him talking to his editor through the apartment’s open windows.