The Paris Apartment(24)

I stare at her. “What do you mean?”

She shakes her head. And then she turns and walks away, goes back to her sweeping. It all happened so quickly I could almost believe I imagined the whole thing. Almost.

I stare after her stooped, retreating figure. For Christ’s sake: it feels like everyone I meet in here is speaking in riddles—except Nick, maybe. I have this sudden, almost violent urge to run up to her and, I don’t know, shake her or something . . . force her to tell me what she means. I swallow my frustration.

When I turn to open the gate I’m sure I can feel her gaze across my shoulder blades, definite as the touch of fingertips. And as I step onto the street I can’t help but wonder: was that a warning or a threat?





Concierge





The Loge



The gate clangs shut behind the girl. She thinks that she’s staying in a normal apartment building. A place that follows ordinary rules. She has no idea what she has got herself into here.

I think of Madame Meunier’s instructions. I know that I have no option but to obey. I have too much at stake here not to cooperate. I will tell her that the girl has just left, as she asked me to do. I will tell her when she comes back, too. Just like the obedient member of staff I am. I do not like Madame Meunier, as I have made clear. But we have been forced into an uneasy kind of alliance by this girl’s arrival. She has been sneaking around. Asking questions of those that live here. Just like he did. I can’t afford to have her drawing attention to this place. He wanted to do that too.

There are things here that I have to protect, you see. Things that mean I can never leave this job. And up until recently I have felt safe here. Because these are people with secrets. I have been too deep into those secrets. I know too much. They can’t get rid of me. And I can never be rid of them.

He was kind, the newcomer. That was all. He noticed me. He greeted me each time he passed in the courtyard, on the staircase. Asked me how I was. Commented on the weather. It doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it felt like such a long time since someone had paid any attention to me, let alone shown me kindness. Such a long time since I had even been noticed as a human being. And soon afterward he began asking his questions.

“How long have you worked here?” he inquired, as I washed the stone floor at the base of the staircase.

“A long time, Monsieur.” I wrung out my mop against the bucket.

“And how did you come to work here? Here—let me do that.” He carried the heavy bucket of water across the hallway for me.

“My daughter came to Paris first. I followed her here.”

“What did she come to Paris for?”

“That was all a very long time ago, Monsieur.”

“I’m still interested, all the same.”

That made me look at him more closely. Suddenly I felt I had told him enough. This stranger. Was he too kind, too interested? What did he want from me?

I was very careful with my answer. “It isn’t a very interesting story. Perhaps some other time, Monsieur. I have to get on with my work. But thank you, for your help.”

“Of course: don’t let me hold you up.”

For so many years my insignificance and invisibility have been a mask I can hide behind. And in the process I have avoided raking up the past. Raking up the shame. As I say, this job may have its small losses of dignity. But it does not involve shame.

But his interest, his questions: for the first time in a very long time I felt seen. And like a fool, I fell for it.

And now this girl has followed him here. She needs to be encouraged to leave before she is able to work out that things are not what they seem.

Perhaps I can persuade her to go.





Jess




It’s strange to be back among people, traffic, noise, after the hush of the building. Disorientating, too, because I still don’t really know where I am, how all the roads around here connect to one another. I check the map on my phone quickly, so as not to burn too much more data. The café where I’m meeting this Theo guy turns out to be all the way across town on the other side of the river so I decide to take the Metro, even though it means I’ll have to break another of the notes I nicked from Ben.

It feels like the further I move away from the apartment the easier I can breathe. It’s like a part of me has smelled freedom and never wants to go back inside that place, even though I know I have to.

I walk along cobbled streets, past crowded pavement cafés with wicker chairs, people chatting over wine and cigarettes. I pass an old wooden windmill erupting from behind a hedge and wonder what on earth that’s doing in the middle of the city, in someone’s garden. Hurrying down a long flight of stone steps I have to climb around a guy sleeping in a fort of soggy-looking cardboard boxes; I drop a couple of euros into his paper cup. A little way on I cut through a couple of smart-looking squares that look almost identical, except in the middle of one there are these old guys playing some kind of boules and in the other a merry-go-round with a candy-striped top, kids clinging onto model horses and leaping fish.

When I get to the more crowded streets around the Metro stop there’s an odd, tense feeling, like something’s about to happen. It’s like a scent in the air—and I have a good nose for trouble. Lo and behold, I spot three police vans parked in a side street. I glimpse them sitting inside wearing helmets, stab vests. On instinct, I keep my head down.