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Summary
Mimi, Jess, The Concierge, Nick, Jess, Sophie, Jess, Mimi, The Concierge, Jess, Nick, Jess
Mimi
Mimi is overwhelmed when Jess enters the penthouse, spilling her wine and excusing herself to go to the bathroom. There, she reflects on Ben, with whom she was obsessed. She spent hours watching him through her window, making him the subject of many of her paintings.
Jess
As Mimi goes to the bathroom, someone knocks on the door and Sophie goes to answer it, leaving Jess alone with the intimidating Antoine, who rudely tells her that nobody wants her there. Sophie returns with Nick, who takes Jess up to the roof terrace to look at the view. They discuss the residents of the building and Nick speaks about a summer he spent traveling around Europe with Ben during their college years.
The Concierge
From her courtyard apartment, the Concierge anxiously observes Jess and Nick on the roof terrace. A news report on her radio updates her on the riots taking place in Paris and she notes that the radio was a gift from Ben.
Nick
On the rooftop terrace, Nick reflects upon his past experiences with Ben, in particular a trip that they took to Amsterdam with friends. While the other boys are excited by the red-light district and decide to attend a live sex show, Nick refuses to go despite the teasing of the others, and Ben joins him for a walk. They smoke a joint and Nick confesses to Ben that on his 16th birthday, his father took him to a brothel and then mocked him when he expressed his reluctance to sleep with the women there.
Jess
In the present, Jess asks Nick about his college trip to Amsterdam, but Nick evades the question. As they chat, they lean in close and almost kiss each other before the motion-sensor lights turn off. Feeling cold, they go back inside and Jess heads towards the bathroom. Curious, she sneaks around the luxurious apartment, going into a study where she rifles through some cabinets and finds both an old Russian passport belonging to Sophie and an old photograph of Sophie, her husband Jacques, and three children. To her shock, she realizes that the children are Antoine, Nick, and Mimi. While she previously assumed they were merely neighbors, she now understands that they are a family.
Sophie
Once the others have left, Sophie speedily drinks the remaining wine, allowing it to spill down the front of her shirt, which she rips off. She is relieved that the others are gone, especially Antoine and Nick, her stepsons. She thinks about the time when Ben asked her about the garden that she dutifully maintains in the courtyard of the building. She is rattled, however, when Nick observes that she does not have a native French accent. Later, she asks Jacques to tell Ben to leave the building, which he owns, though he scoffs at her presumption in making a demand of him.
Jess
Back in Ben’s apartment, Jess reflects upon her surprising discovery and wonders why Nick concealed the fact that he is related to Antoine, Sophie, Jaques, and Mimi from her despite offering to help her to find Ben. In Ben’s French language dictionary, she finds a note written by Ben which indicates that Jacques’ financial records make no sense, as he is selling bottles of wine at prices far higher than their value. She sends a picture of the note to Theo, hoping that he can make sense of it. She hears the doorknob of the apartment turning and, after grabbing a knife, she goes and confronts the intruder: the Concierge. The Concierge says that she did not know that Jess would be inside the apartment, and Jess relents at the sight of the seemingly harmless old woman, allowing her to leave.
Mimi
Mimi attempts to rest in her apartment, but Camille reminds her that they are hosting a Halloween party later that night in the basement of the building. Though she is reluctant to join the party, Mimi feels that she must go ahead with it to avoid drawing attention to herself.
The Concierge
The Concierge watches as young people make their way through the courtyard of the building to reach Camille and Mimi’s Halloween party. She reflects upon an earlier time when Ben visited her small apartment and gifted her an electric fan. He questioned her about the photos on her wall and, surprised by his interest and unaccustomed to speaking about herself, she told him that the person shown in all of her photos is her daughter, Elira, who moved to Paris many years ago to work as a dancer.
Jess
Jess is shocked to hear boisterous noise coming from the courtyard and she discovers that someone in the building is throwing a Halloween party. Realizing that someone at the party might have useful information about Ben, she cuts a bedsheet into a ghost-costume and goes to join the party.
Nick
In his apartment, Nick reflects upon his deceptions while smoking a cigarette and listening to the sounds of the partygoers coming from the courtyard. He never lied to Jess, he reasons, but rather, simply permitted her to assume that he was English and that the various individuals living in the building were nothing more than neighbors. He thinks about an evening three months ago, when he invited Ben to meet his family for dinner in the penthouse. Ben was able to quickly win over Nick’s father, Jacques, who insults his own sons during the meal. Ben also makes a reference to their time in Amsterdam, making Nick nervous.
Jess
At the crowded party, Jess struggles to enter any conversations until she is spotted by Camille, who speaks openly about Ben, whom she claims was well-liked by everyone in the building. When Jess asks her about the evening that Ben disappeared, however, Camille quickly ends the conversation.
Analysis
These chapters of the novel expand significantly upon its exploration of economic inequality and class differences. As Jess becomes increasingly suspicious of many of the residents of the building, she begins to rely on Nick as the only sympathetic figure she has met there, though she takes note of his expensive tech gadgets and clothing, as well as the fact that he can afford the rent on an expensive apartment even while he is between jobs, a luxury she can barely imagine. Further, Nick speaks nostalgically about traveling with Ben during their college years, staying in cheap hostels, washing their clothes in laundromats, and getting from city to city by inexpensive means. Jess realizes that he romanticizes the only period of his life where he experienced a rougher mode of life that offers a stark contrast to his privileged lifestyle as a wealthy young man living in a luxurious apartment. For Jess, however, there is nothing romantic about poverty, and she notes bitterly that Nick’s version of “roughing it” still required more money than she could comfortably spend. This trip to Paris, after all, is the first time that she has ever left the United Kingdom, and she was only able to raise enough money to afford the train ticket by breaking the law and robbing her former employer.
Jess’ discovery that Nick is a member of the Meunier family who owns the apartment building further widens the gap between them. Though he poses as a self-made businessman, he admits in his own narrative that he has been a failure in his business investments, relying upon money from his family and ultimately returning to the family home in Paris. Though he feels guilty about his subterfuge, he acknowledges that he enjoyed playing the role of “Nick Miller,” a persona with more independence than he has. Despite being a member of a wealthy family, Nick is deeply unhappy, perceiving himself as a failure for his inability to gain independence from his dependence upon his father, who funds his lifestyle. Though she resents his privileges, Jess nevertheless acknowledges that she is attracted to his posh accent and polite, upper-class manners.
Class differences also define her relationship to her brother, Ben, who has access to forms of privilege out of Jess’ reach due to his adoption by a wealthy family. Unlike Nick and Ben, she has no memories of traveling across Europe, nor of elite universities such as Cambridge. The rich and poor, Jess notices, even speak with different accents, and Ben’s accent changed as he accommodated himself to his new upper-class surroundings. His experience navigating both low- and upper-class environments contributes to Ben’s chameleon-like ability to adapt himself to different audiences. At Cambridge, he was able to pass himself off as another wealthy boy from an upper-class family, though, as Nick notes, his experience of past hardships adds an extra edge to him, making him more interesting to others. In order to charm others, Ben matches his accent to whoever he is speaking with, alternating between an upper class and lower-class accent depending upon his surroundings. When eating dinner with the Meuniers, he shows his comfort in speaking about fine wine and antique rifles, impressing the hard-to-please Jacques. While speaking with the Concierge, however, he adopts a different persona, charming her with his humility and asking questions about her life. Jess, in comparison, struggles to adapt to the upscale settings of the novel.
