I move forward, looking around for somewhere to hide.
Over in the dim far corner of the space I see what looks like an old mattress. There appears to be something on top of it.
I have that feeling again, like I did downstairs when I found the concierge. I don’t want to step any closer. I don’t want to look.
But I do, because I have to know. Now I can see what it is. Who it is. I see the blood. I understand.
He’s been up here all along. And I forget that I am meant to be hiding from them. I forget everything apart from the horror of what I’m looking at. I scream and scream and scream.
Mimi
A scream tears through the apartment.
“He’s dead. He’s dead—you’ve fucking killed him.”
I let go of my mother’s arm.
The storm in my head is growing louder, louder. It’s a swarm of bees . . . then like being crashed underwater by the waves, now like standing in the middle of a hurricane. But it still isn’t loud enough to shut out the thoughts that are beginning to seep in. The memories.
I remember blood. So much blood.
You know how when you’re a kid you can’t sleep because you’re afraid of the monsters under the bed? What happens if you start to suspect that the monster might be you? Where do you hide?
It’s like the memories have been kept behind a locked door in my mind. I have been able to see the door. I have known it’s there, and I have known that there is something terrible behind it. Something I don’t want to see—ever. But now the door is opening, the memories flooding out.
The iron stink of the blood. The wooden floor slippery with it. And in my hand, my canvas-cutting knife.
I remember them pushing me into the shower. Maman . . . someone else, too, maybe. Washing me down. The blood running dilute and pink into the drain, swirling around my toes. I was shivering all over; I couldn’t stop. But not because the shower was cold; it was hot, scalding. There was a deep coldness inside me.
I remember Maman holding me like she did when I was a little girl. And even though I was so angry with her, so confused, all I wanted, suddenly, was to cling to her. To be that little girl again.
“Maman,” I said. “I’m frightened. What happened?”
“Shh.” She stroked my hair. “It’s OK,” she told me. “I’m not going to let anything happen. I’ll protect you. Just let me take care of all of this. You aren’t going to get into any trouble. It was his fault. You did what had to be done. What I wasn’t brave enough to do myself. We had to get rid of him.”
“What do you mean?” I searched her face, trying to understand. “Maman, what do you mean?”
She looked closely at me then. Stared hard into my eyes. Then she nodded, tightly. “You don’t remember. Yes, yes, it’s best like that.”
Later, there was something crusted under my fingernails, a reddish-brown rust color. I scrubbed at it with a toothbrush in the bathroom until my nail beds started bleeding. I didn’t care about the pain; I just wanted to be rid of whatever it was. But that was the only thing that seemed real. The rest of it was like a dream.
And then she arrived here. And the next morning she came to the door. She knocked and knocked until I had to open it. Then she said those terrible words:
“My brother—Ben . . . he’s . . . well, he’s kind of disappeared.”
That was when I realized it could have been real, after all.
I think it might have been me. I think I might have killed him.
Sophie
“He’s dead. He’s dead—you’ve fucking killed him.”
“I have to go, chérie,” I tell Mimi. “I have to go and deal with this.” I step onto the landing, leaving her in the apartment.
I look upward. It has happened. The girl is in the chambres de bonne. She’s found him.
I remember pushing open the door to his apartment that terrible night. My daughter, covered in blood. She opened her mouth as though to speak, or scream, but nothing came out.
The concierge was there, too, somehow. But then of course she was: she sees, knows, everything—moving around this apartment building like a specter. I stood looking at the scene before me in a state of utter shock. Then a strange sense of practicality took over.
“We need to wash her,” I said. “Get rid of all this blood.” The concierge nodded. She took Mimi by the shoulders and led her toward the shower. Mimi was muttering a stream of words now: about Ben, about betrayal, about the club. She knew. And for some reason she had not come to me.
When she was clean the concierge took her away, back to her apartment. I could see my daughter was in a state of shock. I wanted to go with her, comfort her. But first I had to deal with the consequences of what she had done. The thing, in all honesty, that I had considered doing myself.
I found and used every tea towel in the apartment. Every towel from the bathroom. All of them, soaked through crimson. I wrenched the curtains down from the windows and wrapped the body in them, tied it carefully with the curtain cords. I hid the weapon in the dumbwaiter, in its secret cavity inside the wall, and wound the handle so it traveled up to a space between the floors.
The concierge brought bleach; I used it to clean up after I’d washed the blood away. Breathing through my mouth so as not to smell it. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. I couldn’t vomit, I had to stay in control.
The bleach stained the floor, leached the varnish out of the wood. It left a huge mark, even larger than the pooling blood. But it was the best I could do, better than the alternative.
And then—I don’t know how much later—the door opened. It wasn’t even locked, I had forgotten that in the face of the task ahead of me.
They stood there. The two Meunier boys. My stepsons. Nicolas and Antoine. Staring at me in horror. The bleach stain in front of me, blood up to my elbows. Nick’s face drained of all color.
“There’s been a terrible accident,” I said.
“Jesus Christ,” Nicolas said, swallowing hard. “Is this because—”
There was a long pause, while I tried to think of what to say. I would not speak Mimi’s name. I decided that Jacques could take the blame, as a father should. This was, after all, really his mess. I settled on: “Your father found out what Ben had been working on—”
“Oh Jesus.” Nick put his face in his hands. And then he howled, like a small child. A sound of terrible pain. His eyes were wet, his mouth gaping. “This is all my fault. I told Papa. I told him what Mimi had found, what Ben had been writing. I had no idea. If I’d known, oh Jesus—”
For a moment, he seemed to sway where he stood. Then he rushed from the room. I heard him vomiting, in the bathroom.
Antoine stood there, arms folded. He looked equally sickened, but I could see he was determined to tough it out.
“Serves him right, the putain de bâtard,” he said, finally. “I’d have done it myself.” But he didn’t sound convinced.
A few minutes later, Nick returned, looking pale but determined.
The three of us stood there, staring at one another. Never before had we been anything like a family. Now we were oddly united. No words passed between us, just a silent nod of solidarity. Then we got to work.
Jess
Even in my darkest moments over the last couple of days, even learning what Ben had got himself into, I haven’t allowed myself to imagine it. Not finding my brother like this, how I found Mum.
I sink to my knees.