The Paris Affair Page 5

  And last but not least, it’s door codes.

  The infuriating, can’t-remember-them-all-because-I’m-not-Rain-Man door codes. Because in Paris, there’s a door code for everything: two at the flat (one for the courtyard, one for the building), one for each yoga school I’ve trialled, one for anyone you visit, and one for work. In order not to go one hundred per cent bats, I’ve devised a system.

  Like right now, I’m punching in the code for the downstairs door at work. Do I remember the numbers? Of course not. I’m as bad with numbers as I am with names; I’m a visual creature. But what I can remember easily is the ‘shape’ of the code: diagonals, middle lines, a square, etc. In this case, it’s a big ‘V’ with a ‘C’ for cup at the end. If I were numerically minded that would translate as: 1-3-8-0-C. It’s hard to explain but it works for me.

  The door buzzes and I head for the lift. I can hear it rattle as it makes its way down towards me. Inside, the air smells of perfume – some sort of bruised flower – and I stare at my reflection in the mirrored doors as they close. I look tired. Wired. I was up late sending off Camilla’s CV for a job at Vogue she’d be perfect for but would never have the confidence to apply for herself, and writing my article. My final draft landed in Hyacinth’s inbox at around 3 am and by 3.01 I wanted to unsend it. But instead, I brushed my teeth, telling myself things like: You probably nailed it. And maybe I did. Hyacinth’s feedback on my last story was certainly rattling around my head the whole time I typed: Reference other artists! Give the reader something to learn! And so I really worked the Berthe Morisot angle I spoke to Noah about in the alleyway.

  Fingers crossed.

  The lift doors open. Reception is empty and Claudia is sitting perched on her desk, talking loudly on speakerphone, while everyone around her pretends not to be annoyed. My head thumps, so I keep my eyes down and frown in a way that makes me seem unapproachable as I head to my desk. I drop my handbag on the floor, flop down on my chair and power on my computer.

  It glows to life and I enter my password: ParisObserver123.

  No, I’m not completely lacking in imagination, that’s the same one I was issued on my first day, right before I embarked on that awkward introductory tour of the office.

  I move to my inbox, staring at my screen, scanning through my emails for anything from Hyacinth. For feedback on my article. Please love it, please love it, please love it.

  But who am I kidding, it’s just gone 9 am and last time it took her more than twenty-four hours to get back to me. The best thing I can do right now is get a start on my next idea. But my head is thumping, my mouth is dry, and I either need an IV drip of caffeine or a defibrillator. Now. I glance up at the kitchen. There are people in there, milling around the Nespresso machine. One of them laughs loudly. I’ll need to wait until they leave, otherwise I’ll be drawn into the hell that is office small talk. Meanwhile, Claudia is still polluting the airwaves with her speakerphone call. It’s interesting that there isn’t more violence in the workplace.

  But now the people are leaving. I stand up. I’m about to head to the kitchen when I hear a small voice say, ‘Harper.’

  I turn to look. It’s Judy, the receptionist with her perfect short dark bob. She’s wearing a cream knee-length dress that nips in at the waist and she is grinning a sweet grin. I smile back because she’s the only person in this place I don’t actively dislike.

  But wait…

  She’s carrying roses.

  Red ones.

  I do a quick count: twelve.

  I stand there, staring at her. She’s not bringing those to me, is she? My breath is quick. Please be for someone else. Someone sitting right near me. Wesley?

  My face is getting hot now because, nope, she’s definitely coming for me.

  ‘Lucky girl!’ says Judy.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, my throat constricting as she lays them down on my desk.

  But my insides are all: Fuck him.

  Because before I even reach for the card, I know what it will say: H xx.

  Harrison.

  I know this because today is the anniversary of the day we met.

  And he always does something like this, always has, and it appears, always fucking will. Last year was a massive teddy bear which ended up finding its ‘forever home’ at Oxfam. I thought it was a one-off. A slip. A jagged end to a tradition. But here we are, a full swing around the sun later, and he’s still being an arsehole. And don’t get me wrong, I know it looks like a sweet gesture, but know this: anything Harrison does that seems ‘sweet’ has an ulterior motive. In this case he’s trying to keep me on his hook. And I hate that, as hard as I try to break free, he’s managing. I hate that I still google him. I hate that love is a bit like a prison: easy to get into but you have to tunnel your way out with a teaspoon.

  ‘Those are pretty,’ says Wesley from his side of the desk.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, my voice deadpan. Because, no, Wesley, they are not pretty, they are twelve little Trojan horses full of poison. Treat them as such.

  But this is partly my fault. I shouldn’t have told Harrison I got this job. But when he dropped his last just checking u r well text it felt so good to say: Actually all is great, I got a job in Paris! It was the first time my news was the exciting news.

  There’s movement in my peripheral vision, the smell of bruised flowers I recognise from the elevator, and then there she is beside me. Leaning in to smell the roses. Claudia.

  ‘Who are those from?’ She grins at me. ‘You’ve only been here, what – three weeks – and already you’re getting flowers?’

  ‘You can have them if you want.’ I move back from them like they’ve been sent from Chernobyl. Because I’m thinking about those Instagram posts with him and Melody and that glistening pool beneath a perfect LA sky and screw him. He doesn’t get to live in two hearts simultaneously.

  Claudia looks at me, shocked.

  ‘I mean it,’ I snap, pushing them towards her. ‘Take them. I don’t want his stupid flowers.’

  ‘Wow, Harper,’ she says, picking them up. ‘Whoever he is, he’s just being nice. You know, it wouldn’t kill you to be nice sometimes.’ And then she walks away.

  Statistically speaking, she’s wrong of course. Being ‘nice’ absolutely could kill me. Being nice, being polite, is precisely how most women end up being pulled into a panel van by their killer. These are the helpful hints I used to write about in my ‘How not to get murdered’ column. If that magazine hadn’t folded, I’d happily forward her the link. But I don’t say that, do I? No, of course not. Because while the likes of Stan get to glare at Hyacinth and challenge her in meetings, I’m a woman, so I have to at least pretend to be likeable. Agreeable. Nice. That’s the final frontier of feminism right there. You can be anything you want to be as a woman these days, but don’t you dare be unlikeable.

  Claudia is whispering to Nathalie now. The one who was talking about perfume in yesterday’s meeting; the one I’m going to ‘be a guinea pig’ with. Probably about how fucked up I am. And she has a point: I am a bit fucked up.

  But here’s my point: so what?

  Focus, Harper, focus. Because I don’t have time to care about things like office bitchery right now. I have bigger problems, problems like Mum.

  I need to make sure she isn’t still in bed.

  Chapitre sept

  We’re sitting in a bistro not far from work. It’s the compulsory Friday team drinks thing. Except Hyacinth isn’t here. She somehow got out of it the way people always do when they’re in charge. The seats are covered in shiny red leather and there are a series of yellow-lit stained glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling. I’m nestled up against the exposed brick half-wall – lined with bright green fake plants – that separates us from the tables behind. The windows are all open, the sky outside is a deep navy black. My mother didn’t answer the first four of my calls, and when she finally did pick up call number five, she told me to ‘calm down’ because she and Neville had ‘worked things
out’. That’s code for: expect a repeat performance in a month. So now I’m four piña coladas deep and the world has shifted into soft focus.

  Though I’m not sure my blood alcohol level can be blamed entirely on my mother.

  Claudia tried to chat to me earlier; cornered me by the bar while I waited for my first drink to ask about my ‘issues with roses’. I’m not making this up, those were her exact words. I escaped that in favour of a dull conversation with Helena about all the roadwork being done in Paris – a conversation that led to the skolling of piña colada number one and a swift ordering of number two. Next came a few polite chats with freelancers, another trip to the bar, and then a stressful half hour, nodding and smiling and staying mute, as I listened to two women talk first about an upcoming wedding (woman one) and then terrifying sounding birthing options (woman two). Halfway through piña colada number three, they paused for breath, turned to me and asked the question I’d been dreading all along: were babies in my plan?

  Sometimes I wonder whether other people watch a different news channel to me. Because yesterday it was Matilde Beaumont. Today I learned that a multinational was being sued for knowingly selling a drug with undisclosed side-effects. Tomorrow there will be something else. We live in a world where for a great swathe of people, ‘kindness’ and ‘empathy’ are nothing more than hashtags used to atone between one hate-storm and another. How could I subject another being to all that? And given the transience of it all, what would be the point anyway?

  But, even though all that is true, one of them was pregnant and that’s not the kind of thing you point out to a pregnant lady. That would make me an arsehole. So instead I just said, ‘Maybe if I meet the right guy,’ and then suggested we pose for a photograph. By the time we’d selected which one to use, agreed on a filter and chosen the hashtags – #paris #bignight and #ifyoulikepinacoladas – they’d forgotten about me and were back to talking about complicated napkin folds and seating plans.

  So now I’m sipping drink number four, talking to the person I wanted to talk to all along. Stan. The news guy. The guy who has the job I want.

  But, honestly, he’s pissing me off.

  He’s watching me pull my skirt over my knees with smug, light blue eyes, as he sips on a Guinness.

  ‘It’s important that we have people like you on staff,’ he says. ‘Not everyone wants to face what’s going on in the world. Some people just want to go and see a good film. Talk about things like pretty pictures.’ He takes another sip. ‘You know what you should do?’

  Oh good. Nothing I love more than a man telling me what I should do. Because, you know, he probably knows better than I do how I should live my life.

  ‘You should cover more opera like Wesley. Elevate things.’

  I want to throw my drink at him and tell him I have some pretty strong thoughts about what he should do too, but I don’t. I just say: ‘So tell me about this girl. The one that went missing.’

  I’ve already read everything that was leaked to the papers – strangled, necklace missing, blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and damage to her wrist believed to have been caused by some sort of restraint – but Stan seems to think of himself as having the inside scoop. Maybe he knows something the papers don’t and the Murderino in me is curious. Also, this seems like solid neutral ground. And Stan is the sort of person who needs to feel clever – so why not just give him what he needs?

  ‘She worked as a secretary in a law firm,’ he starts and then his eyes flicker and he grins. ‘She looked a bit like you, actually.’

  ‘Yes, you said,’ I quip back. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘One night she left work and never returned. There was no sign of foul play so the police didn’t follow it up. Everyone in France has the right to disappear, you know,’ he says with a scoff, using his fingers to air-quote ‘right to disappear’.

  And he’s right. I read that exact term in one of the articles about Matilde Beaumont, and googled it immediately. It spoke to some deep part of my imagination that, on a whim, you could leave everyone and everything and start anew without consequence. A few clicked hyperlinks later, I’d learned that, yes, it was true: in France, the police won’t search for you unless there are clear signs of foul play or you’re a minor. Which means that approximately one thousand unidentified bodies are found in France each year, compared with around sixty-six in Britain, which has a similar population. Most of the time the DNA from those bodies isn’t recorded either.

  Now, I know I’ve listened to a lot of true crime podcasts so my worldview might be skewed but all I thought when I read that was: what a perfect place to be a murderer.

  ‘They’re just fucking lazy,’ Stan continues. ‘It took finding her body for them to jump to attention. It always does. But nothing changes.’

  ‘No CCTV footage?’ I ask, like I don’t already know the answer.

  He shakes his head and I swear to god there’s a flash of pain behind his eyes. A glint of humanity. And for a brief second I think maybe, just maybe, I’ve misjudged him. He clearly cares about female safety. But then he speaks.

  ‘Look, if the police haven’t solved it, I doubt you’re going to.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Did you even study journalism?’

  And, just like that, I’m back to hating him.

  ‘Yes,’ I say just a millisecond too quickly. It comes out defensive. Fake. Shit.

  He noticed. He smells weakness. ‘So where were you working before this, Harper Brown?’

  Even the way he says my name is patronising.

  ‘I was freelance.’

  He exhales loudly as if to say: for fuck’s sake.

  ‘So, what, you had a blog?’ He scoffs. ‘Journalism was a noble profession back when I was starting out. It was all about truth. That’s the problem with your generation – everyone wants a short cut. But there’s no short cut to excellence. The only way to become truly great at this job is to do whatever it takes.’

  I down the rest of my drink and clench my jaw. I need to keep my mouth busy with something, otherwise I’m going to say things like, ‘I’m not sure two years of working for free every night can be classed as a fucking short cut, Stan.’

  But saying things like that won’t end well. I don’t want to make enemies this early and Stan has already decided who I am. How I fit into the world. And he’s spent too many years being told how clever he is, how right he is, to doubt those initial perceptions. And the worst part is I’m scared he’s actually right. What if this is as good as it gets for me? What if nobody ever takes me seriously no matter how hard I try?

  ‘I’m going to get another drink,’ I say, crinkling my nose as I stand up and head to the bar.

  I pull out my phone and refresh my emails. And there it is. Finally. A reply from Hyacinth.

  Harper, what is this? We need less Berthe Morisot, and more about Noah. Who he is. What he wants. What makes him tick. We need zing. Dig deeper.

  The first thing I notice is: no exclamation marks. This cannot be good. My cheeks grow hot. Maybe Stan’s right. Maybe I do suck. Maybe I’m kidding myself thinking I can do this.

  I click back to my inbox and glance down the rest of the subject titles. It’s the fourth one down, a Google alert, that has me hanging onto the bar for stability as my downward spiral takes proper hold.

  Harrison Daze to tour West Coast.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  It’s not that I want Harrison to fail as such (except for when I do). It’s more that every time something like this happens I feel like maybe he was right to leave me, maybe I was holding him back.

  I down the rest of my drink and look around for the bartender. But he’s still busy, five people over, so I can’t get another yet. I flick through to Instagram to distract myself, scanning through the list of people who’ve liked my photograph from earlier. When I first set up this Instagram account I had the naïve intention of becoming one of those Parisian lifestyle influencers: lots of balconies, bottles of perfume and paintings in galle
ries. That was before I realised how intense my new job would be, and how much work goes into maintaining an influencer account. But it’s probably lucky I relinquished that dream. Because I’ve had seven likes. Seven. Fucking. Likes. But there at the top of the screen, amid all the other Instagram stories, gleaming from its technicolour halo, sits Noah’s story.

  I tap on it, expecting a still frame of a painting he’s working on or a wineglass or, I don’t know, the moon.

  But up comes a video of what looks like an artist’s studio, a crowd of people, then Noah and a girl with big white teeth. She’s holding her wrist up to the lens and there’s something drawn on it but then it’s gone again.

  My-my, how very interesting. The mysterious Noah X has posted something personal on social media for a change.

  And just like that my pulse speeds up – the way it always does before I make a risky decision.

  I glance back at our group: Stan is talking to one of the freelancers now, Claudia is holding up her vintage Hermès bag for someone to inspect, and the pregnant lady is stroking her stomach. I look back to the screen and play his story once again, taking in the surroundings. I think about Hyacinth’s email – dig deeper; and my conversation with Stan – whatever it takes; and the Google alert about Harrison – and maybe it’s all of those things, or maybe it’s none, but it seems to me there’s only one way this night should end.

  And so I tap on ‘send message’ and type: Hey stranger, can I come?

  Chapitre huit

  I slam the door of the Uber and look around. There’s an old Parisian streetlight covered in advertising stickers at the top of a set of concrete stairs that run between this street and the one below. Its amber glow reflects off the leaves of an overhanging tree and lights up the blue and white street sign: Rue Chappe. I look at my sat nav then down the stairs: Noah’s building should be about a third of the way down. The Uber driver turns up his music – it’s French hip-hop – revs his engine and drives away. And I’m left alone, on this empty cobbled street on the hill in Montmartre, wondering what the hell I’m doing.