The Paris Apartment(43)

We’d started with the weaker stuff. It didn’t seem to do all that much at first. But as it kicked in I felt something shift. Actually, now I think about it, maybe it wasn’t so much the weed. It was Ben.

“Look,” he said. “I get that you don’t want to talk. But if you need to get anything off your chest, you know?” He put up his hands. “No judgment here.”

I thought of that place, the girls. I’d kept it inside me for so long, my grim little secret. Maybe it would be a kind of catharsis. I took a deep breath. A long pull of my joint. And then I started talking. Once I started I didn’t want to stop.

I told him about my sixteenth birthday present. How my dad had told me it was time for me to become a man. His gift to me. Best of the best, for his son. He wanted to give me an experience I’d never forget.

I remember the staircase leading downward. Opening that door. Telling him I didn’t want that.

“What?” My dad had stared at me. “You think you’re too good for this? You’re going to throw this back in my face? What’s wrong with you, boy?”

I told Ben how I stayed. Because I had to. And how I left that place a changed person—barely a man yet. How it left its stain on me.

All of a sudden it was just spilling out of me, all my secrets, shit I had never told anyone, like this putrid waterfall. And Ben just sat listening, in the dark of the café.

“Christ,” he said, his pupils large. “That’s seriously fucked-up.” I remember that, clearly.

“I haven’t told anyone else about it,” I said. “Don’t—don’t tell the others, yeah?”

“It’s safe with me,” Ben said.

After that we started on the stronger stuff. Egging each other on. That was when it really hit. We’d look at each other and just giggle, even though we didn’t know why.

“We didn’t see all that much of the city,” I tell Jess, now. “So I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert. If you want a good weed café I could probably tell you that much.”

If only the night had ended there. Without what came next. Without the darkness. The black water of the canal.





Jess




“Hang on,” I say. “You told me you and Ben hadn’t seen each other for over a decade when you guys bumped into each other again?”

“Yes.”

“And that was after that trip, right?”

“Yeah. I hadn’t seen him since then.”

I let it sit a little, wait for him to continue, to explain the long stretch of time. Silence.

“I have to ask,” I say, “what on earth happened in Amsterdam?” I mean it as a joke—mainly. But it feels like there’s something there. The way his voice changed when he spoke about it.

For a moment Nick’s face is a mask. Then it’s like he remembers to smile. “Ha. Just boys being boys. You know.”

A gust of icy wind hits us, ripping leaves from the shrubs and tossing them into the air.

“Jesus!” I say, wrapping my arms around myself.

“You’re shivering,” Nick says.

“Yeah, well—this jacket’s not really designed for the cold. Primarni’s finest.” Though I highly doubt Nick knows what Primark is.

He stretches a hand out toward me, such a sudden motion that I jerk backward.

“Sorry!” he says. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You’ve got a leaf caught in your hair. Wait a second, I’ll get it out.”

“There’s probably all sorts in there,” I say, casting around for a joke. “Food, cigarette butts, the lot.” I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face, his fingers in my hair as he untangles the leaf.

“Here—” he plucks it out and shows it to me: it’s a dead brown ivy leaf. His face is still very close to mine. And in the way you do just know with these things, I think he might be about to kiss me. It’s a very long time since I’ve been kissed by anyone. I find myself letting my lips open slightly.

Then we’re plunged into darkness again.

“Shit,” Nick swears. “It’s the sensors—we’ve been too still.”

He waves an arm and they come back on. But whatever was just happening between us has been shattered. I blink spots of light from my eyes. What the hell was I thinking? I’m trying to find my missing brother. I don’t have time for this.

Nick takes a step away from me. “Right,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “Shall we go back down?”

We climb back down into the apartment. “Hey,” I say. “I think I’ll just find a bathroom.” I need to pull myself together.

“You want me to show you the way?” Nick asks. Clearly he’s familiar with this apartment, I note, despite what he says about not doing this often.

“No, I’m good,” I tell him. “Thanks.”

He goes back to join the others. I wander down a dimly lit corridor. Thick carpet beneath my feet. More artworks hanging on the walls. I push open doors as I go: I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but I do know I’ve got to find something that might tell me more about these people, or what Ben had to do with any of them.

I find two bedrooms: one very masculine and impersonal, like I imagine a room in a swanky business hotel might be, the other more feminine. It looks as though Sophie and Jacques Meunier sleep in different rooms. Interesting, though maybe not surprising. Off Sophie’s bedroom is a room-sized wardrobe, with rows of high heels and boots in sensible shades of black and tan and camel, hanging racks of dresses and silk shirts, expensive-looking sweaters with tissue interleaved between them. In one corner is an ornate dressing table with a spindly antique-looking chair and a big mirror. I thought only the Kardashians and people in films had rooms like this.