The Paris Apartment(10)

I climb down from the saddle, a little unsteadily. The bike is one of the few items in this room besides my iMac and my books. Nothing up on the walls. No rugs on the floor. Partly because I like the whole minimal aesthetic. Partly because I still feel like I haven’t really moved in, because I like the idea that I could up and leave at any moment.

I pull the headphones out of my ears. It sounds like things have quieted down out there in the courtyard. I walk over to the window, the muscles in my calves twitching.

I can’t see anything at first. Then my eye snags on a movement and I see there’s a girl down there, opening the door to the building. There’s something familiar about her, about the way she moves. Difficult to put my finger on, but my mind gropes around as if for a forgotten word.

Now I see the lights come on in the apartment on the third floor. I watch her move into my line of sight. And I know that she has to be something to do with him. With my old mate and—as of very recently—neighbor, Benjamin Daniels. He told me about a younger sister, once. Half sister. Something of a tearaway. Bit of a problem case. From his old life, however much he’d tried to sever himself from all that. What he definitely didn’t tell me was that she was coming here. But then it wouldn’t be the first time he’s kept something from me, would it?

The girl appears briefly at the windows, looking out. Then she turns and moves away—toward the bedroom, I think. I watch her until she’s out of sight.





Saturday

Jess




My throat hurts and there’s an oily sweat on my forehead. I stare up at the high ceiling above me and try and work out where I am. Now I remember: getting here last night . . . that scene in the courtyard a couple of hours ago. It was still dark out so I got back into bed afterward. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep but I must have drifted off. I don’t feel rested though. My whole body aches like I’ve been fighting someone. I think I was fighting someone, in my dream. The kind you’re relieved to wake up from. It comes back to me in fragments. I was trying to get into a locked room but my hands were clumsy, all fingers and thumbs. Someone—Ben?—was shouting at me not to open the door, do not open the door, but I knew I had to, knew I didn’t have any other choice. And then finally the door was opening and all at once I knew he was right—oh why hadn’t I listened to him? Because what greeted me on the other side—

I sit up in bed. I check my phone. Eight a.m. No messages. A new day and still no sign of my brother. I call his number: straight to voicemail. I listen to the voicenote he left me again, with that final instruction: “Just ring the buzzer. I’ll be up waiting for you—”

And this time I notice something strange. How his voice seems to cut off mid-sentence, like something has distracted him. After this there’s a faint murmur of sound in the background—words, maybe—but I can’t make anything out.

The uneasy feeling grows.

I walk out into the main living space. The room looks even more like something from a museum in the light of day: you can see the dust motes hanging suspended in the air. And I’ve just spotted something I didn’t see last night. There’s a largish, lighter patch on the floorboards just a few feet before the front door. I walk toward it, crouch down. As I do the smell—the strange smell I noticed last night—catches me right at the back of the throat. A singe-the-nostrils chemical tang. Bleach. But that’s not all. Something’s caught here in the gap between the floorboards, glinting in the cold light. I try to wiggle it out with my fingers, but it’s stuck fast. I go and get a couple of forks from the drawer in the kitchen, use them together to pry it loose. Eventually, I work it free. A long gilt chain unspools first, then a pendant: an image of a male saint in a cloak, holding a crook.

Ben’s St. Christopher. I reach up and feel the identical texture of the chain around my neck, the heavy weight of the pendant. I’ve never seen him without it. Just like me, I suspect he never takes it off, because it came from Mum. Because it’s one of the few things we have from her. Maybe it’s guilt, but I suspect Ben’s almost more sentimental about stuff like that than me.

But here it is. And the chain is broken.





Jess




I sit here trying not to panic. Trying to imagine the rational explanation that I’m sure must be behind all this. Should I call the police? Is that what a normal person would do? Because it’s several things now. Ben not being here when he said he would and not answering his phone. The cat’s blood-tinged fur. The bleach stain. The broken necklace. But more than any of this it’s the way it all . . . feels. It feels wrong. Always listen to your inner voice, was Mum’s thing. Never ignore a feeling. It didn’t work out so well for her, of course. But she was right, in a way. It’s how I knew I should barricade myself in my bedroom at night when I fostered with the Andersons, even before another kid told me about Mr. Anderson and his preferences. And way before that, before foster care even, it’s how I knew I shouldn’t go into that locked room—even though I did.

I don’t want to call the police, though. They might want to know things about you, a little voice says. They might have questions you don’t want to answer. The police and I have never got on all that well. Let’s just say I’ve had my share of run-ins. And even though he had it coming, what I did to that arsehole is, I suppose, technically still a crime. Right now I don’t want to put myself on their radar unless I absolutely have to.