As determined as she is, she is facing a web of secrets and intrigue where it seems that everyone she meets is wearing a mask of some kind. Jess begins asking questions about her brother and about his life and getting very few answers. The other residents of the building seem unaccountably hostile to her. Nick seems like a nice guy but claims not to know where Ben is however, he offers to help Jess find him. The apartment is quite palatial and Jess doesn't understand how her brother could have afforded it on a journalist's salary, but then she learns that he got the apartment through Nick Miller, a friend of his from Cambridge, who has an apartment in the same building. No note, nothing to explain his absence, and his neighbors are, to put it mildly, not helpful. When she arrives in Paris with all her worldly goods and makes it to Ben's apartment, there is no Ben there.

But when she contacts Ben asking for help, he invites her to come stay with him. Jess was long shunted around in foster care and never really had a place she could call home. Ben was adopted by a wealthy family who gave him all the advantages of that wealth. They lost their parents when they were quite young and their paths diverged. Jess, who lives in Brighton, has recently lost her job and is now homeless and virtually penniless.

Ben receives a text from his half-sister Jess Hadley asking if she can stay with him for a while. The apartment in the title is the home of Ben Daniels, a British journalist.

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