And then I remember. I handed it over to that doorman in the club, because he wouldn’t let us in otherwise. We got thrown out before I had a chance to collect it—and I’m certain he wouldn’t have handed it over anyway.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath. OK, Jess: think. Think. It’s fine. It’s fine. You don’t need your phone. You can just go onto the street and ask someone else to call an ambulance.
I shove open the door, run through the courtyard to the gate. Pull at the handle. But nothing happens. I pull harder: still nothing. It doesn’t move a millimeter. The gate is locked; it’s the only explanation. I suppose the same mechanism that allows it to be opened with the key code can also be used to lock it shut. I’m trying to think rationally. But it’s difficult because panic is taking over. The gate is the only way out of this place. And if it’s locked, then I’m trapped inside. There is no way out.
Could I climb it? I look up, hopefully. But it’s just a sheet of steel, nothing to get a toehold on. Then there are the anti-climb spikes along the top and the shards of glass along the wall either side that would shred me to pieces if I tried to climb over.
I run back into the building, into the stairwell.
When I return I see the concierge has managed to sit up, her back against the wall near the bottom of the staircase. Even in the gloom I can make out the cut at her hairline where she must have hit her head on the stone floor.
“No ambulance,” she whispers, shaking her head at me. “No ambulance. No police.”
“Are you mad? I have to call—”
I break off, because she has just looked up at the staircase behind me. I follow her gaze. Nick is standing there, at the top of the first flight of stairs.
“Hello Jess,” he says. “We need to talk.”
Nick
Second floor
“You animal,” she says. “You did this to her? Who the fuck are you?”
I put up my hands. “It—it wasn’t me. I just found her.”
It was Antoine, of course. Going too far, as usual. An old woman, for God’s sake: to shove her like that.
“It must have been a . . . a terrible accident. Look. There are some things I have to explain. Can we talk?”
“No,” she says. “No, I don’t want to do that, Nick.”
“Please, Jess. Please. You have to trust me.” I need her to stay calm. Not do anything rash. Not force me to do something I’ll regret. I’m also still unsure whether or not she has a phone on her.
“Trust you? Like I trusted you before? When you took me to meet that shady cop? When you hid from me that you were a family?”
“Look, Jess,” I say, “I can explain everything. Just—come with me. I don’t want you to get hurt. I really don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“What,” she gestures to the concierge. “Like her? And Ben? What have you done to Ben? He’s your friend, Nick.”
“No!” I shout it. I’ve been trying to be so calm, so controlled. “He was not my friend. He was never my friend.” And I don’t even try to keep the bitterness at bay.
Three nights ago my little sister Mimi came and told me what she had found on his computer.
“It said . . . it said our money doesn’t come from wine. It says . . . it says it’s girls. Men buying girls, not wine . . . this horrible place, this club—ce n’est pas vrai . . . it can’t be true, Nick . . . tell me it’s not true.” She was sobbing as she tried to speak. “And it says . . .” she fought for breath, “it says I’m not really theirs . . .”
I suppose we always knew about Mimi, Antoine and I. I suppose all families have these kind of secrets, these commonly agreed deceptions that are never spoken of aloud. Frankly, we were too afraid. I remember how, when we were little more than kids, Antoine made some comment that our father overheard—some insinuation. Papa backhanded him across the room. It has never properly been mentioned again. Just another skeleton thrown to the back of the closet.
Ben had clearly been very, very busy. It sounded as though he had discovered more about Papa and his business than I even knew myself. But then I haven’t wanted to know all the deplorable particulars. I’ve kept as much distance, as much ignorance, as possible over the years. Still, it was all tied up with the thing I had told him in strictest confidence ten years before in a weed café in Amsterdam. The confession he had promised me, hand on heart, never to share with another soul. The secret at the very heart of my family. My main, terrible, source of shame.
I can still remember my father’s words when I was sixteen, outside that locked door at the bottom of the velvet staircase. Taunting: “Oh, you think this is something you can just turn your nose up at, do you? You think you’re above this? What do you think really paid for that expensive school? What do you think paid for the house you live in, the clothes you wear? Some dusty old bottles? Your sainted mother’s precious inheritance? No, my boy. This is where it comes from. Think you’re immune now? Think you’re too good for all of it?”
I knew all too well what Mimi had felt, reading about it on Ben’s computer. Learning about the roots of our wealth, our identity. Discovering it was sullied money that had paid for everything. It’s like a disease, a cancer, spreading outward and making all of us sick.
But at the same time you can’t choose your blood. They are still the only family I have.
When Mimi told me what she had read, all of it—Ben’s casual text message months ago, our meeting in the bar, the move into this building—suddenly revealed itself to be not the workings of happy coincidence, but something far more calculated. Targeted. He had used me to fulfil his own ambitions. And now he would destroy my family. And in the process, he apparently didn’t care that he would also destroy me.
I thought again of that old French saying about family. La voix du sang est la plus forte: the voice of blood is the strongest. I didn’t have a choice.
I knew what I had to do.
Just as I know what I have to do now.
Jess
“Please Jess,” Nick says in a reasonable tone. “Just hear me out. I’ll come down there and we can chat.”
For a moment I think: just because they’re a family, it doesn’t mean they’re all responsible for what’s happened here. I remember how Nick briefly referred to his father as “a bit of a cunt”: clearly they don’t all see eye to eye. Maybe I’ve jumped to conclusions—maybe she really did fall. An old woman, frail, slipping on the stairs late at night . . . no one to hear her because it’s late. And maybe the front gate is locked because it’s late, too—
No. I’m not going to take my chances. I turn to look back at the concierge, slumped on the floor and grimacing in pain. And as I do, I see the door to the first-floor apartment opening. I watch as Antoine steps out onto the landing to stand next to his brother—the two of them so much more alike than I had realized. He smiles down at me, a horrible grin.