The Paris Apartment Read Free

slam it several times against the wood. The sound echoes down the street: someone must
     hear it. I can just make out a dog barking, from somewhere deep inside the building.
    I wait five minutes. No one comes.
    Shit.
    I can’t afford a hotel. I don’t have enough for a return journey to London—and even if I did there’s no way I’m going back.
     I consider my options. Go to a bar . . . wait it out?
    I hear footsteps behind me, ringing out on the cobblestones. Ben? I spin round, ready for him to apologize, tell me he just
     popped out to get some ciggies or something. But the figure walking toward me isn’t my brother. He’s too tall, too broad,
     a parka hood with a fur rim up over his head. He’s moving quickly and there’s something purposeful about his walk. I grip
     the handle of my suitcase a little tighter. Literally everything I own is in here.
    He’s only a few meters away now, close enough that by the light of the streetlamp I can make out the gleam of his eyes under the hood. He’s reaching into his pocket, pulling his hand back out. Something makes me take a step backward. And now I see it. Something sharp and metallic, gleaming in his hand.

Concierge
    The Loge
    I watch her on the intercom screen, the stranger at the gate. What can she be doing here? She rings the buzzer again. She
     must be lost. I know, just from looking at her, that she has no business being here. Except she seems certain that this is
     the place she wants, so determined. Now she looks into the lens. I will not let her in. I cannot.
    I am the gatekeeper of this building. Sitting here in my loge : a tiny cabin in the corner of the courtyard, which would fit maybe twenty times into the apartments above me. But it is
     mine, at least. My private space. My home. Most people wouldn’t consider it worthy of the name. If I sit on the pull-down
     bed, I can touch nearly all the corners of the room at once. There is damp spreading from the ground and down from the roof
     and the windows don’t keep out the cold. But there are four walls. There is a place for me to put my photographs with their
     echoes of a life once lived, the little relics I have collected and which I hold onto when I feel most alone; the flowers
     I pick from the courtyard garden every other morning so there is something fresh and alive in here. This place, for all its
     shortcomings, represents security. Without it I have nothing.
    I look again at the face on the intercom screen. As the light catches her just so I see a familiarity: the sharp line of the nose and jaw. But more than her appearance it is something about theway she moves, looks around her. A hungry, vulpine quality that reminds me of another. All the more reason not to let her in. I don’t like strangers. I don’t like change. Change has always been dangerous for me. He proved that: coming here with his questions, his charm. The man who came to live in the third-floor apartment: Benjamin Daniels. After he came here, everything changed.

Jess
    He’s coming straight for me, the guy in the parka. He’s lifting his arm. The metal of the blade gleams again. Shit.I’m about to turn and run—get a few yards on him at least—
    But wait, no, no  . . . I can see now that the thing in his hand isn’t a blade. It’s an iPhone, in a metallic case. I let out the breath I’ve
     been holding and lean against my bag, hit by a sudden wave of tiredness. I’ve been wired all day, no wonder I’m spooking at
     shadows.
    I watch as the guy makes a call. I can make out a tinny little voice at the other end; a woman’s voice, I think. Then he begins
     to talk, over her, louder and louder, until he’s shouting into his handset. I have no idea what the words mean exactly but
     I don’t need to know much French to understand this isn’t a polite or friendly chat.
    After he’s got his long, angry speech off his