“I’m Jess,” I say. “Jess Hadley, his sister.”
“I’m Nick.” A shrug. “I—well, I’m the one who suggested he come and live here.”
Nick
Second floor
I suggested Jess come up to my place, rather than us chatting in the chilly darkness of the cave. I’m slightly regretting it now: I’ve offered her a seat but she’s pacing the room, looking at my Peloton bike, my bookcases. The knees of her jeans are worn, the cuffs of her sweater frayed, her fingernails bitten down to fragments like tiny pieces of broken shell. She gives off this jittery, restless energy: nothing like Ben’s languor, his easy manner. Her voice is different too; no private school for her, I’m guessing. But then Ben’s accent often changed depending on who he was speaking to. It took me a while to realize that.
“Hey,” she says, suddenly. “Can I go splash some water on my face? I’m really sweaty.”
“Be my guest.” What else can I say?
She wanders back in a couple of minutes later. I catch a gust of Annick Goutal Eau de Monsieur; either she wears it too (which seems unlikely) or she helped herself when she was in there.
“Better?” I ask.
“Yeah, much, thanks. Hey, I like your rain shower. That’s what you call it, right?”
I continue to watch her as she looks around the room. There’s a resemblance there. From certain angles it’s almost uncanny. . . . But her coloring’s different from Ben’s, her hair a dark auburn to his brown, her frame small and wiry. That, and the curious way she’s prowling around, sizing the place up, makes me think of a little fox.
“Thanks for helping me out,” she says. “For a moment I thought I’d never get out.”
“But what on earth were you doing in the cave?”
“The what?”
“Cave,” I explain, “it means ‘cellar’ in French.”
“Oh, right.” She chews the skin at the edge of her thumbnail, shrugs. “Having a look around the place, I suppose.” I saw that bottle of wine in her hand. How she slipped it back into the rack when she didn’t think I was looking. I’m not going to mention it. The owner of that cellar can afford to lose a bottle or two. “It’s huge down there,” she says.
“It was used by the Gestapo in the war,” I tell her. “Their main headquarters was on Avenue Foch, near the Bois de Boulogne. But toward the end of the Occupation they had . . . overspill. They used the cave to hold prisoners. Members of the Resistance, that kind of thing.”
She makes a face. “I suppose it makes sense. This place has an atmosphere, you know? My mum was very into that sort of thing: energy, auras, vibrations.”
Was. I remember Ben telling me about his mum. Drunk in a pub one night. Though even drunk I suspect he never spilled more than he intended to.
“Anyway,” she says, “I never really believed in that stuff. But you can feel something here. It gives me the creeps.” She catches herself. “Sorry—didn’t mean to offend—”
“No. It’s fine. I suppose I know what you mean. So: you’re Ben’s sister.” I want to work out exactly what she’s doing here.
She nods. “Yup. Same mum, different dads.”
I notice she doesn’t say anything about Ben being adopted. I remember my shock, finding out. But thinking that it also made sense. The fact that you couldn’t pigeonhole him like you could the others in our year at university—the staid rowing types, the studious honors students, the loose party animals. Yes, there was the public school accent, the ease—but it always felt as though there was some other note beneath it all. Hints of something rougher, darker. Maybe that’s why people were so intrigued by him.
“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.