The Paris Apartment(8)

I shrug off my jacket, throw it onto the sofa. I should probably take a shower—I’m pretty sure I stink. A bit of B.O. but mainly of vinegar: you can’t work at the Copacabana and not reek of the stuff, it’s what we use to sluice the bar down after every shift. But I’m too tired to wash. I think Ben might have mentioned something about a camp bed, but I don’t see any sign of one. So I take a throw from the sofa and lie down in the bedroom on top of the covers in all my clothes. I give the pillows some thumps to try and rearrange them. As I do something slithers out of the bed onto the floor.

A pair of women’s knickers: black silk, lacy, expensive-looking. Ew. Christ, Ben. I don’t want to think about how those got here. I don’t even know if Ben has a girlfriend. I feel a little pang of sadness, in spite of myself. He’s all I’ve got and I don’t even know this much about him.

I’m too tired to do much more than kick the knickers away, out of sight. Tomorrow I’ll sleep on the sofa.





Jess




A shout rips through the silence. A man’s voice. Then another voice, a woman’s.

I sit up in bed listening hard, heart kicking against my ribs. It takes a second for me to work out that the sounds are coming from the courtyard, filtering through the windows in the main room. I check the alarm clock next to Ben’s bed. 5 a.m.: morning, just, but still dark.

The man is shouting again. He sounds slurred, like he’s been drinking.

I creep across the main room to the windows and crouch down. The cat pushes its face into my thigh, mewing. “Shh,” I tell it—but I quite like the feel of its warm, solid body against mine.

I peer into the courtyard. Two figures stand down there: one tall, one much smaller. The guy is dark-haired and she’s blonde, the long fall of her hair silver in the cool light of the courtyard’s one lamp. He’s wearing a parka with a fur rim that looks familiar, and I realize it’s the guy I “met” outside the gate last night.

Their voices get louder—they’re shouting over one another now. I’m pretty sure I hear her say the word “police.” At this his voice changes—I don’t understand the words but there’s a new hardness, a threat, to his tone. I see him take a couple of steps toward her.

“Laisse-moi!” she shouts, sounding different now, too—scared rather than angry. He takes another step closer. I realize I’m pressed so close to the window that my breath has misted up the glass. I can’t just sit here, listening, watching. He raises a hand. He’s so much taller than her.

A sudden memory. Mum, sobbing. I’m sorry, I’m sorry: over and over, like the words to a prayer.

I lift my hand to the window and slam it against the glass. I want to distract him for a few seconds, give her a chance to move away. I see both of them glance up in confusion, their attention caught by the sound. I duck down, out of sight.

When I look back out again it’s just in time to see him pick something up from the ground, something big and bulky and rectangular. With a big petulant shove he throws it toward her—at her. She steps back and it explodes at her feet: I see it’s a suitcase, spilling clothes everywhere.

Then he looks straight up at me. There’s no time to crouch down. I understand what his look means. I’ve seen you. I want you to know that.

Yeah, I think, looking right back. And I see you, dickhead. I know your sort. You don’t scare me. Except all the hairs on the back of my neck are standing to attention and the blood’s thumping in my ears.

I watch as he walks over to the statue and shoves it viciously off its plinth, so that it topples to the ground with a crash. Then he makes for the door that leads back into the apartment building. I hear the slam echoing up the stairwell.

The woman is left on her knees in the courtyard, scrabbling around for the things that have fallen out of the suitcase. Another memory: Mum, on her knees in the hallway. Begging . . .

Where are the other neighbors? I can’t be the only one who heard the commotion. It’s not a choice to go down and help: it’s something I have to do. I snatch up the keys, run down the couple of flights of stairs and out into the courtyard.

The woman starts as she spots me. She’s still on her hands and knees and I see that her eye make-up has run where she’s been crying. “Hey,” I say softly. “Are you OK?”

In answer she holds up what looks like a silk shirt; it’s stained with dirt from the ground. Then, shakily, in heavily accented English: “I came to get my things. I tell him it’s over, for good. And this—this is what he does. He’s a . . . a son-of-a-bitch. I never should have married him.”

Jesus, I think. This is why I know I’m better off single. Mum had exceptionally terrible taste in men. My dad was the worst of all of them though. Supposedly a good guy. A real fucking bastard. Would have been better if he’d disappeared off into the night like Ben’s dad did before he was born.

The woman’s muttering under her breath as she shovels clothes into the suitcase. Anger seems to have taken over from fear. I go over and crouch down, help her pick up her things. High heels with long foreign names printed inside, a black silk, lacy bra, a little orange sweater made out of the softest fabric I’ve ever felt. “Merci,” she says, absent-mindedly. Then she frowns. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you here before.”