by Pip Drysdale
‘I’m not sure his wife will look at it like that and she’s super connected. And I’m still in my probation period – Hyacinth could just fire me. God, I could lose my entire career over this before it even begins. It’s a shitshow.’
‘Hmmm,’ she says. ‘Right, this is what you do. Nobody knows your name, right?’
‘No.’
‘So you never talk to this guy Noah again. And you haven’t contacted that Sabine girl yet, have you?’
I shake my head.
‘Well, don’t. Then she’ll have no idea who you are either. If you see his wife out somewhere just dodge her. And if anyone asks what you did on Friday, you went home. You were never there.’ She takes another bite of toast. ‘And then just pray to all the gods and goddesses that Sabine doesn’t upload it.’
And then we change the subject. She starts to tell me about the hot guy from work, the one she saw in the elevator, about how she’s figured out he works on the fourteenth floor. And as she speaks, just out of view of the camera, I open that little orange bottle and take one of Anne’s final three Ambiens.
Chapitre dix
I shake the rain off my umbrella at the door and then move into Franprix. It’s bright in here. Fluorescent and vivid. While the sky outside looks like the gods dragged a dirty thumb over it. The contrast is startling and it takes a while for my eyes to adjust. It’s ten past five on Sunday afternoon. I finished my revised article on Noah this morning at around 11 am. The rest of the day was spent watching Netflix, eating dark chocolate, squatting on Sabine’s Vimeo and Instagram pages – nothing new has been uploaded – and googling a million variations on: Agnès Bisset, Noah X wife and Le Voltage. I’m not sure what I was looking for exactly – some sort of indication that things weren’t as bad as they first seemed.
I found nothing of the sort.
Instead, while recent photographs of Agnès Bisset were almost non-existent, I found a splattering of images of a younger Agnès with numerous influential (though tastefully non-ostentatious) types, as well as a profile in a women’s magazine from 2016. She was listed as number two in a piece called ‘Ten most influential women in Paris’. Yes, brilliant. It didn’t state her exact net worth but, from what it did say, I gather it’s substantial enough to be deemed too vulgar to disclose. It then went on to talk about how she attended a famous finishing school in Switzerland, briefly dated the son of a famous socialite in New York, owns three galleries – in Switzerland, Vienna and now Le Voltage in Paris – and, despite being born into the upper echelon of Paris society and inheriting the means to rest on her laurels, has built a name for herself as the Mother Teresa of the art world, tirelessly launching the careers of young emerging artists like Noah X.
That last part gave me heart palpitations, as well as a pretty strong snapshot of both the nature of their relationship and Noah’s flimsy moral fibre. He was using her. Using her, and cheating on her. Then came a scouring of Yelp, Google and Tripadvisor. Nothing but glowing reviews.
By 5 pm, my nerves were frayed and I needed a glass of wine. But when I went to pour myself a glass there wasn’t any. There was no food nor (more concerningly) coffee either.
So here I am, wandering into the supermarket with a wet umbrella and jeans that are sticking to my legs from rain, wondering, as I pick up a shopping basket, whose idea it was to put fake greenery on the ceiling. The air is filled with the bright sound of coins jangling as they’re dropped into the cash register, muted conversations, fridges humming and the squeak of soles of shoes sticking to a floor that smells of badly rinsed disinfectant.
To my right is an orange juice dispenser and a tray of day-old pastries, to my left is the cashier, standing in front of rows of liquor and stationery, today’s newspapers laid out in front of her. Gone are the photographs of Matilde Beaumont and in their place lies a picture of a man with glasses and a big, bold headline I can’t really understand. It’s something to do with immigration. And in front of those papers, weaving a line, are three customers.
An elderly man with a walking stick, a woman in a short skirt and then, just behind her: Thomas.
Shit.
He’s wearing dark blue jeans and a black long-sleeved jumper with a big white Endroit logo on the back – a not-so-subtle reminder that he works for a proper media company and I work for an online magazine and I should have just kept him as a contact and not fucked him.
I rush towards the safety of the baguettes; I never replied to his just let me know you’re okay text, so I scuttle past, making sure he doesn’t look back and see me. The last thing I want right now is to be drawn into an awkward conversation about how my parents have enjoyed their visit to Paris. But Thomas doesn’t look up. He’s too busy smiling down at his phone, typing, like someone just sent him the funniest text in the universe. This should make me happy – now I don’t need to find a new laundromat – but for some reason it doesn’t.
I grab a baguette and move past the chocolates, grab an apple, a tomato and a bunch of bananas from the trays of over-priced fruit and vegetables to my right, and then head down the alcohol aisle. I can see the lady with her tabby cat up ahead of me as I pick up a bottle of my favourite red and a few little bottles of Scotch. Then it’s cheese, creamed spinach and coffee. I carry my heavy basket back to the front of the shop, peering around the corner to see whether Thomas is still there. Wondering whether maybe I should talk to him after all.
But he’s not.
And here’s the thoroughly illogical bit: something twinges inside me.
There’s an emptiness.
This feeling happens sometimes, seemingly out of nowhere. Like a big black hole opens up inside me and all of a sudden I’m scared that the rest of the world is right to couple up and I’m the wrong one, even though every damned day I’m given evidence to the contrary. Let’s all refer to exhibit A, Noah’s wife, shall we?
But reason doesn’t work in moments like these. In fact, I’ve only ever found one thing that does.
So I reach for my phone, go to my favourite dating app, and reply to Nicolas’s last message with: What are you doing tonight?
* * *
Nicolas is pronounced Nee-koh-lah. He’s already corrected me twice in the forty long-arsed minutes since we met. He’s wearing black jeans and a blue button-up shirt, there are coins or keys in his pocket that jingle with each step as we make our way down the rain-stained pavement towards his apartment. I was right, by the way: five foot eleven was code for five foot eight. But, whatever, he’ll do. I’m not looking for a soulmate, I’m looking for a palate-cleanser. A distraction from the existential angst.
My breath tastes like the Malbec I just downed, the moment his hand awkwardly found its way to my knee and he finally, timidly, suggested going back to his place like I’d been in that bar for his conversational skills. And now here we are, en route, at 8.25 pm. I’ll probably be home by 10 pm, which is perfect really. I’ll be asleep by eleven. Nee-koh-lah isn’t worth puffy eyes.
‘Is it far?’ I ask. This is the second time I’ve asked this question in the last three minutes. But Matilde Beaumont’s killer is still out there and Nee-koh-lah’s silence is making me jumpy. What if he’s really a psychopath and trying to remember where he left his duct tape and plastic sheeting?
‘Just on the corner,’ he replies, saving me from myself. He has a thick French accent that could be sexy, but when you’ve done this as many times as I have you learn to gauge things upfront. Things like: Nee-koh-lah is going to have a hairy back. Mark my words. So the two cancel each other out.
I wrap my arms around myself – I need to start wearing a thicker coat – and listen to our footsteps on the pavement. They’re just slightly out of sync: click-clunk, click-clunk, click-clunk. I hope the sex isn’t like that: jarring, wrong, but I do pelvic floor exercises; I’ll make it work.
‘Here,’ he says, smiling at me.
I wait as he punches in his door code – a flash of Noah, the joint, him punching in the door code
that night at the gallery – and we move inside. His hand is hot on my lower back as he guides me down the hallway to a big white door.
He pulls out a metal key, inserts it into the lock, the door swings open and I move inside. He flicks on the light and I look around. It’s sparse, there are books on a light wood bookshelf and a kitchen that looks like it is rarely used. But there’s no Dexter-type set-up, just your stock-standard bachelor pad. I’m safe.
I can see the bedroom through an open door on the far side of the room – the characterless white linen of a bed, a pile of things on the floor I can’t recognise from this distance, the legs of a chair. I’m guessing there’s a big mirror in there too. Nee-koh-lah strikes me as a mirror guy. He’d probably be into handcuffs too, but I lost mine in the move from London and haven’t replaced them yet.
I hear the door click shut and look back to him. His dark eyes are on mine now. He’s wondering whether he needs to offer me a drink or if we can just do this thing. He decides on the latter. Reaches for me, his one arm around my waist, the other behind my head, and now his mouth is on mine. He tastes of vodka and his lips are tight. His tongue darts in and out like a lizard. Then he reaches under my skirt, pulls down my underwear and stockings – the air is cool on my skin – and then: slap.
His hand hits my bum.
It stings. Burns.
And as he rubs it and pulls his hand away, I think, Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Slap.
Because twenty hook-ups ago this might have been exciting, it might have felt new, my heart would have been beating hard and my breath would have been fast. But now, it feels formulaic. Like every guy on every app gets his sex tips from the same forum.
Nee-koh-lah is just another short guy who thinks he’s Christian Grey.
* * *
Twenty minutes later he’s lying in bed, smoking a cigarette, as I pull on my stockings and then my skirt. I look over at him as I reach for my jumper and pull it on: he’s on his phone. Scrolling. Pretending I’m not here even though ten short minutes ago he was pulling my hair and saying shitty things into my ear he thought I couldn’t understand. I was right, by the way, there is a big mirror beside the bed; he watched himself the whole time. And he does have a hairy back.
I’m seriously considering a side-gig on the psychic network channel at this rate.
I glance over at him and he just keeps scrolling. If I were a different girl, this might hurt my feelings. But I’m keen to get the hell out of here within the next two minutes so the fewer distractions, the better.
‘I’m going to go,’ I say.
He grunts something in response. I reach for my bag on the floor by the end of the bed and say ‘Bye’. Because, you know, politeness.
He waves but doesn’t even make a move to get up. So I head through to the beige living room, picking up my shoes and slipping them on. My jacket is lying on the sofa, and as I grab for it, my gaze lands on my wrist. Peeking out from under my sleeve is that broken half-heart Noah drew on Friday night; it’s still visible. I lick it and try to rub it off as I open the front door, close it behind me, rush through the security gate and head onto the cold street. I turn left towards the metro, putting my jacket on as I walk, then reach into my bag and pull out my phone.
As though telepathically linked to that drawing on my wrist, the one I’m still trying to rub off, there’s an Instagram message on my screen from Noah.
We need to talk. Call me. My number is +1 (917)…
My heart beats quickly in my chest – she’s such a little traitor – as I read the words again. But then it registers: his number begins with +1. He’s given me a US number. Of course he has. He’s probably got two phones, like every cheating husband in the history of the world.
So I don’t care what he has to say; no way am I calling him back.
Instead, I put in my earbuds, scroll through to a murder podcast and press play.
The metro is right there in front of me – a red and white sign in the dark. The streets are relatively quiet, and the air is chilled as I move with a few other people down the stairs that smell of damp and urine into the fluorescently lit station. And as I push through the cold metal turnstiles and head to the platform to catch my train home, the narrator tells me the story of yet another woman who went missing without a trace.
Chapitre onze
My phone beeps as I rush down the stairs and the chandelier light flicks on. I’m carrying a bag of rubbish in one hand and my phone in the other. It’s just gone 8.14 am so I’m late.
I press the release button and push open the door downstairs and head across the courtyard to the room with the bins.
The door is already open and, as I get closer, I can hear something coming from inside. A low mew. A kitten? I move inside and look around but it’s not a kitten. It’s my neighbour. The one with no curtains. She’s wearing a big pink jumper, her wavy dark hair in a low bun. Her back is to me, her shoulders hunched forward. They’re shuddering. She’s crying.
Shit.
I start to back out quietly – somehow intruding on her crying feels so much more invasive, so much more intimate, than seeing her lie naked on her bed touching herself. And we’ve never had a conversation. I don’t even know her name.
I hold my rubbish bag away from me so it doesn’t rustle as I edge out the door. But then she lets out a proper sob. A desperate, gasping-for-breath sort of sob. And something twinges inside me. Because I know that kind of sob too well. I can’t just leave her here like this.
‘Bonjour,’ I say, my tone unsure.
She turns to look at me; her eyes smudged with mascara. ‘Bonjour.’ She smiles, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffing loudly before turning away again.
She doesn’t want to talk about it. I should go.
And so I lift the lid, drop my rubbish into the bin and quickly turn to leave but, just as I get to the door, the sobbing starts up again in earnest.
Shit.
‘Are… are you okay?’ I ask gently in French, turning back to her.
‘Yes,’ she says in English, sniffing loudly. ‘I will be fine.’ Then she reaches into the cardboard box beside her and pulls out some sort of white garment. There are clear plastic buttons down the front and they catch the light as she holds it up for me to see: boxer shorts. ‘Fucking mens.’
She says it just like that: ‘mens’, plural.
Her arm moves and my gaze follows it. She’s picking up a heavy duty pair of steel scissors that are lying on the recycling bin beside her. They make that shhhh sound as they open and then: snip, snip, snip. Pieces of pale fabric fall into the bin, but her breath seems to slow with the action and her shoulders noticeably relax.
Right.
This all makes sense now.
A breakup.
‘Yeah,’ I say, glancing down into the cardboard box beside her. There’s a shirt in there too – light blue and white checks. This must be about that guy I saw with her a couple of times. ‘Fucking men.’
Snip. Snip. Snip.
‘He disappear!’ she says, looking at me. Her eyes are big, dark and wild. And then her face crumples and she starts to cry again. Her cheeks flush pink. ‘He didn’t even say goodbye.’
I think about Harrison. And me, in those first weeks after he left. I’ve never felt so alone, so out of control, so weak.
That’s when I learned what those sobs mean.
Because heartbreak is such a strange beast; to anyone looking on, it seems like no big deal. Get over it, they think. ‘Your ex wasn’t that great anyway,’ they say. You can see the confusion in their eyes and it makes you feel pathetic. So you master the art of saying, ‘I’m fine,’ and then you go back to searching every crowded street for their face, every traffic jam for their car. But here’s what I’ve learned about hearts: love makes them fragile. And when they snap, it’s rarely a clean break. Those sharp and jagged edges lodge themselves between your ribs, they puncture your lungs, so even breathing hurts. It’s crippling,
humiliating, scary. And the damage lasts a lot longer than it ‘should’.
Which is why I promised myself last time that I’d never go through that again.
So chop away, dear neighbour. Whatever gets you through. You’ll get no judgement from me.
But now her cries turn to an embarrassed laugh and then comes a bravado I recognise. She’s thinking, I seem so stupid, so weak. Like we aren’t allowed to mourn. Like sorrow is not simply the watermark of being human; we can deny it as much as we like, but there it is, still visible, when held up to the light.
‘But I don’t cry. I cut!’ she says.
I give her a small smile, pretend I believe her and then glance down at my phone: 8.21.
‘I’m going to be late,’ I say, giving her a you-will-be-fine smile. ‘But if you need anything just knock on my door, okay?’
‘Okay.’ She reaches into her box again and pulls out the shirt. I can hear the fabric snipping as I head past the cars and across the courtyard and press the buzzer to get out of the enormous brown wooden door.
And as I rush to the metro beneath a perfect blue sky, ornate black balconies decorated with red pot plants set against it, I think to myself, Thank god I’m no longer in love. And then I check my messages.
There’s one. It’s from Camilla.
I just got a screening call from Vogue! They want to interview me!
* * *
The elevator doors open, and I walk casually across the office floor, over to my desk like I’m not the last one here and sweating from the jog from the station. But I’m feeling righteous, like a modern-day fairy godmother, what with Camilla’s interview (I texted her straight back to tell her it was me who’d sent them her resume) and my being there for my neighbour. Not even the sight of twelve certain roses sitting on Claudia’s desk can fuck up my mood this morning. Everything is well in the world. As long as I don’t think about Noah, or Agnès Bisset, or Sabine, or that video…