The Paris Apartment(20)

“I like your Gaggia,” Jess says, wandering toward the kitchen. “They had one like that in a café I used to work in.” A laugh, without much humor in it. “I might not have gone to a posh school or uni like my brother but I do know how to make a mean microfoam.” I sense a streak of bitterness there.

“You want a coffee? I can make you one. I’m afraid I’ve only got oat milk.”

“Have you got any beer?” she asks, hopefully. “I know it’s early but I could really do with one.”

“Sure, and feel free to sit down,” I say, gesturing to the sofa. Watching her prowl around the room, combined with the lack of sleep, is making me feel a little dizzy.

I go to the fridge to get out a couple of bottles: beer for her, kombucha for me—I never drink earlier than seven. Before I can offer to open hers she’s taken a lighter out of her pocket, fitted it between the top of her index finger and the bottom of the cap and somehow flipped the lid off. I watch her, amazed and slightly appalled at the same time. Who is this girl?

“I don’t think Ben mentioned you coming to stay,” I say, as casually as I can. I don’t want her to feel like I’m accusing her of anything—but he definitely didn’t. Of course we didn’t speak much the last couple of weeks. He was so busy.

“Well, it was kind of last minute.” She waves a hand vaguely. “When did you last see him?” she asks. “Ben?”

“A couple of days ago—I think.”

“So you haven’t heard from him today?”

“No. Is something the matter?”

I watch as she tears at her thumbnail with her teeth, so hard it makes me wince. I see a little bead of blood blossom at the quick. “He wasn’t here when I arrived last night. And I haven’t heard from him since yesterday afternoon. I know this is going to sound weird, but could he have been in some sort of trouble?”

I cough on the sip I’ve just taken. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“It just . . . feels all wrong.” She’s fidgeting with the gold necklace around her neck now. I see the metal saint come free; it’s the same as his. “He left me this voicenote. It . . . kind of cuts out halfway through. And now he isn’t answering his phone. He hasn’t read any of my messages. His wallet and his keys are still in the apartment—and I know he hasn’t taken his Vespa because I saw it in the basement—”

“But that’s just like Ben, isn’t it?” I say. “He’s probably gone off for a few days, chasing some story with a couple of hundred euros in his back pocket. You can get the train to most of Europe from here. He’s always been like that, since we were students. He’d disappear and come back a few days later saying he’d gone to Edinburgh ’cause he fancied it, or he’d wanted to see the Norfolk Broads, or he’d stayed in a hostel and gone hiking in the Brecon Beacons.”

The rest of us in our little bubble, hardly remembering—some of us wanting to forget—that there was a world outside it. It wouldn’t have occurred to us to leave. But off he’d go, on his own, like he wasn’t crossing some sort of invisible barrier. That hunger, that drive in him.

“I don’t think so,” Jess says, cutting into these memories. “He wouldn’t do that . . . not knowing I was coming.” But she doesn’t sound all that certain. She sounds almost as though she’s asking a question. “Anyway, you seem to know him pretty well?”

“We hadn’t seen much of each other until recently.” That much, at least, is true. “You know how it is. But he got in touch with me when he moved to Paris. And meeting back up . . . it felt like it had been no time at all, really.”

I’m drawn back to that reunion nearly three months ago. My surprise—shock—at finding the email from him after so long, after everything. A sports bar in Saint-Germain. A sticky floor and sticky bar, signed French rugby shirts tacked to the wall, moldy-looking chunks of charcuterie with your beer and French club rugby playing on about fifteen different screens. But it felt nostalgic; almost like the kind of place we would have gone to as students nursing pints and pretending to be real men.

We caught up on the missed decade between us: my time in Palo Alto; his journalism. He got out his phone to show me his work.

“It’s not exactly . . . hard-hitting stuff,” he said, with a shrug. “Not what I said I wanted to do. It’s fluff, let’s be honest. But it’s tough right now. Should have gone the tech route like you.”

I coughed, awkwardly. “Mate, I haven’t exactly conquered the tech world.” That was putting it mildly. But I was almost more disappointed by his lack of success than my own. I’d have expected him to have written his prize-winning novel by now. We’d met on a student paper but fiction always seemed more his thing, not the factual rigors of journalism. And if anyone was going to make it I’d been so sure it would be Ben Daniels. If he couldn’t, what hope was there for the rest of us?

“I feel like I’m really hunting around for scraps,” he said. “I get to eat in some nice restaurants, a free night out once in a while. But it’s not exactly what I thought I’d end up doing. You need a big story to break into that, make your name. A real coup. I’m sick and tired of London, the old boys’ club. Thought I’d try my luck here.”