In the Uber taking her to Boulogne-Billancourt, in the outskirts of Paris, on the night of February 24 to 25, 2023, Emma (whose name has been changed) was consumed by nerves. Throughout the ride, she exchanged messages on WhatsApp with her friend Jade (whose name has also been changed), who tried to reassure her: “You go there in femme fatale mode,” “It’ll be fine don’t worry.” Emma, who was 24 at the time and recently separated from her first love, had finally agreed to meet that night with a man who was only a few years older than her and had been courting her for a month on Instagram.
She had put on some lip gloss for this “date,” which she saw as a way to take her mind off the break-up. Emma confided in Jade that she was feeling “stressed” beforehand. “I want to go back to my neighborhood. This isn’t for me,” she wrote in a text. The date wasn’t with just a random person, though. She was on her way to the home of Achraf Hakimi, a star footballer for Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) who had just led the Moroccan national team to the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar two months earlier.
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