I reach into the cabinet under the sink and grab the bottle of mouthwash, pour it into the little cup. I want to wash away the rank taste of the tobacco. The cabinet door is still open. There are the little pots of pills in their neat row. It would be so easy. So much more effective than the cigarettes. So helpful to feel a little less . . . present right now.
The fact of the matter is that while I’ve been pretending to Jess, I could almost pretend to myself: that I was a normal adult, living on his own, surrounded by the trappings of his own success. An apartment he paid the rent on. Stuff he’d bought with his own hard-earned cash. Because I want to be that guy, I really do. I’ve tried to be that guy. Not a thirty-something loser forced back to his father’s house because he lost the shirt off his back.
Trust me—as much as I’ve tried to kid myself, it doesn’t make a difference having a lock on the front door and a buzzer of your own. I’m still under his roof; I’m still infected by this place. And I regress, being here. It’s why I escaped for a decade to the other side of the world. It’s why I was so happy in Cambridge. It’s why I went straight to meet Ben in that bar when he got in touch, despite Amsterdam. Why I invited him to live here. I thought his presence might make my sentence here more bearable. That his company would help me return to a different time.
So that’s all it was, when I let her think I was someone and something else. A little harmless make-believe, nothing more sinister than that.
Honest.
Jess
The voices are a roar of sound over the top of the music. I can’t believe how many people are packed into the space down here: it must be well over a hundred. Fake cobwebs have been draped from the ceiling and candles placed along the floor, illuminating the rough walls. The scent of the burning wax is strong in the tight, airless space. The reflection of the dancing flames gives the impression that the stone is moving, wriggling like something alive.
I try to blend into the crowd. My costume is by far the worst one I can see. Most of the guests have gone all out. A nun in a white habit drenched in blood is kissing a woman who has painted her entire semi-naked body red and is wearing a pair of twisted devil horns. A plague doctor dressed from head to toe in a black cloak and hat lifts up the long, curved beak of his mask to take a drag from a cigarette and then lets the smoke blow out of the eyeholes. A tall tuxedo-clad figure with a huge wolf’s head sips a cocktail through a straw. Everywhere I look there are mad monks, grim reapers, demons and ghouls. And a strange thing: the surroundings make all these figures seem more sinister than they would up above ground, in proper lighting. Even fake blood somehow looks more real down here.
I’m trying to work out how to insert myself into one of these groups of people and start a conversation about Ben. I also desperately need a drink.
Suddenly I feel my sheet wrenched off my head. A dead cowboy puts up his hands: “Oops!” He must have tripped over the trailing fabric. Crap, it’s already grimy from the ground, wet with spilled beer. I scrunch it up into a dirty ball. I’ll just have to do it without the disguise. There are so many people here I’m hardly going to stand out.
“Oh, salut!”
I turn to see a stupidly pretty girl wearing a huge flower crown and a floaty white peasant dress splattered with blood. It takes me a moment to place her: Mimi’s flatmate. Camille: that was it.
“It’s you!” she says. “You’re Ben’s sister, right?” So much for trying to blend in.
“Um. I hope this is OK? I heard the music—”
“Plus on est de fous, plus on rit, you know? The more the merrier! Hey, such a shame Ben isn’t here.” A little pout. “That guy seems to love a party!”
“So you know my brother?”
She wrinkles her tiny freckled nose. “Ben? Oui, un peu. A little.”
“And they all like him? The Meuniers, I mean? The family?”
“But of course. Everyone loves him! Jacques Meunier likes him a lot, I think. Maybe even more than his own children. Oh—” She stops, like she’s remembered something. “Antoine. He doesn’t like him.”
I remember the scene in the courtyard that first morning. “Do you think there might have been something . . . well, between my brother and Antoine’s wife?”
The smile vanishes. “Ben and Dominique? Jamais.” A fierceness to the way she says it. “They flirted. But it was nothing more than that.”
I try a different tack. “You said you saw Ben on Friday, talking to Mimi on the stairs?”
She nods.
“What time was that? What I mean is . . . did you see him after that? Did you see him that night at all?”
A tiny hesitation. Then: “I wasn’t here that night,” she says. Now she seems to spot someone over my shoulder. “Coucou Simone!” She turns back to me. “I must go. Have fun!” A little wave of her hand. The carefree party girl seems to be back. But when I asked her about the night Ben disappeared, she didn’t seem quite so happy-go-lucky. She suddenly seemed very keen to stop talking. And for a moment I thought I saw the mask slip. A glimpse of someone totally different underneath.
Mimi
Fourth floor
By the time I get down to the cave there are already so many people crammed inside. I’m never good with crowds at the best of times, with people invading my space. Camille’s friend Henri has brought his decks and a massive speaker and is playing “La Femme” at top volume. Camille’s greeting newcomers at the entrance in her Midsommar dress, the flower crown wobbling on her head as she jumps up and throws her arms around people.
“Ah, salut Gus, Manu—coucou Dédé!”
No one pays me much attention even though it’s my place. They’ve come for Camille, they’re all her friends. I pour ten centimeters of vodka into a glass and start drinking.
“Salut Mimi.”
I look down. Merde. It’s Camille’s friend LouLou. She’s sitting on some guy’s lap, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. She’s dressed as a cat; a headband with black lace ears, silk leopard-print slip dress falling off one shoulder. Long brown hair all tangled like she just got out of bed and her lipstick smudged but in a sexy way. The perfect Parisienne. Or like those Instagram cretins in their Bobo espadrilles and cat-eye liner doing fuck-me eyes at the lens. That’s how people think French girls should look. Not like me with my home-cut mullet and pimples round my mouth.