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In September 2021, Marie sits in a Paris apartment composing a series of recorded messages addressed to Florence da Silva, known as Flo, her former photography teacher. Marie has taken leave from her job as a high school French teacher in the Netherlands and traveled to Paris because the perpetrators of the November 13, 2015, terrorist attacks have gone on trial. She recognized Flo among those caught up in the violence the moment the first reports came in, on a date that was a Friday the thirteenth. Riding a bicycle to the attack sites she has marked on a map, Marie reconstructs the shared history connecting her, Flo, and a man named Philippe Lambert, whom Marie knew briefly and Flo not at all.

Marie begins with Philippe's story. Born in 1954, Philippe is the youngest of four children in a wealthy Parisian family. His father, Christian Lambert, directs the Ministry of Telecommunication. From infancy, Philippe displays a nervous disposition: convulsions, a lazy eye, constant fearfulness. At 13, he grows intensely anxious in the days before his grandmother is killed by a bus, and a pattern emerges. Philippe accurately senses certain disasters before they occur, including the family greyhound's poisoning and a department store fire, but he also raises false alarms. His family dismisses the premonitions. Before university, he undergoes relaxation therapy and learns to suppress his fears. He completes an economics degree, takes a management position at Renault, and marries Laurence Duclos, an Air France stewardess.

When their son Nicolas is born in June 1983, Philippe experiences an unprecedented calm. His catastrophic visions vanish entirely. Meanwhile, Paris enters a period of escalating terrorism, with bombings striking the airport, restaurants, department stores, and other public spaces throughout the mid-1980s. Philippe remains untouched by the city's fear, feeling invulnerable with his son on his shoulders.

In July 1986, 17-year-old Eloïse Schiller, a German au pair from Tübingen, arrives to care for Nicolas. The instant Philippe sees her, he collapses. His old fears return with violent physical symptoms. During the family's August vacation, Philippe begins secretly watching Eloïse, consumed by a compulsive, nonsexual urge to physically restrain her. He is disgusted by the compulsion but cannot resist it. Back in Paris, he develops a routine of following her at a distance each morning, perceiving an enormous shadow of danger closing around her.

On September 17, 1986, Philippe follows Eloïse on her day off. After a distressing encounter with a street musician, she makes her way to Tati, a discount clothing store on Rue de Rennes. Philippe waits across the street. At 5:18 p.m., he screams her name. She looks up, confused and frightened. Philippe tears across the road through traffic and hurls himself onto her, dragging her away from the sidewalk. At 5:20 p.m., a bomb detonates. The attack kills seven and wounds more than 50. Had Eloïse remained beside the garbage container where the bomb was hidden, she would have been the eighth fatality. Philippe falls into a coma from a cerebral hemorrhage. Eloïse, grievously wounded, is transferred to a hospital in Germany. Marie reveals that three years after fleeing her own past with Flo, Philippe became her employer (59).

In August 1989, 20-year-old Marie arrives in Paris with a cheap suitcase, having answered an au pair advertisement. She works for Philippe and Laurence, who now live in a cramped apartment with six-year-old Nicolas and one-year-old Louis. Marie cannot understand spoken French and attends intensive language classes. She discovers the names of previous au pairs written on her room's wall and adds her own: "Marie 1989." Among them is "Eloïse 1986."

Marie recounts the events that drove her to Paris. In October 1987, she is a 19-year-old photography student in a Dutch city she calls D. She enters a bar and is noticed by Flo, a striking woman who teaches narrative technique to second-year students. Flo cultivates Marie over the following months: sending photography books, inviting her to gatherings, and photographing her. Flo tells Marie to lose weight and adopt the nickname M. Marie complies, remaking her appearance under Flo's direction. Flo calls late at night, drawing out detailed accounts of Marie's daily life. Marie does not realize the calls are being recorded.

In the spring of Marie's second year, Flo announces a new book. Marie brings her parents to the presentation, where she discovers the book is called The Making of M. It documents her entire transformation over a year and a half. The exhibition includes candid photographs taken without Marie's knowledge, surveillance footage from a camera installed across from her front door, and edited transcriptions of her recorded phone conversations. Marie is devastated, recognizing she was selected as a malleable subject rather than singled out for any special quality. She notices twin boys from the foundation year being groomed as Flo's next project. Two days later, Marie cuts off her hair, drops out of art school, and eventually finds the au pair advertisement that takes her to Paris.

After the Lamberts' marriage dissolves, Philippe visits Marie's servant's room one evening. He recounts his life and describes his ability as "foreknowledge": knowledge of the future that manifests as a physical sensation on his skin. He insists foreknowledge cannot change events, only perceive them. Marie recognizes a parallel to her experience with Flo but sees a critical difference: Philippe has given her his story voluntarily, making the exchange entirely unlike what Flo did.

On June 27, 1990, during a catastrophic thunderstorm, Philippe tells Marie he is entering a clinic for treatment. He delivers a final warning: He senses danger around her, something far away and unclear. On any Friday the thirteenth, she must stay put and not wish to be anywhere else (203). The threat lies far in the future, long enough for her to forget and then remember (203–204). Marie never sees him again.

Marie returns to the Netherlands, earns a teaching degree, marries, and has children. She keeps Philippe's story and her Paris notebooks in a plastic box but never shares them. In the fall of 2015, Flo's new publisher invites Marie to Paris Photo, an international photography fair, for the reissue of The Making of M. on November 13, 2015. When Marie sees the date, she retrieves the box and knows Philippe's scribbled numbers contain it. She does not respond. She does not warn Flo (223).

Marie reconstructs Flo's day on November 13 in the second person, building it from what she knows and imagines. Flo, now pushing 60 with graying curls, takes the train to Paris for the fair. Her career is experiencing a resurgence. She checks into a hotel on Boulevard Voltaire and dines that evening at the Comptoir Voltaire brasserie next door, striking up a conversation with a charming man named Nelson at the next table.

At quarter past nine, explosions sound outside the Stade de France. Armed men attack sidewalk cafés across the 10th and 11th arrondissements. The Bataclan concert hall siege begins. Just after half past ten, a young man in a long black coat enters Comptoir Voltaire and detonates his explosive vest. Marie describes Flo's last visual impressions: the waitress's white back, and the brown eyes and red wine glass of the man beside her. The bomber is the only fatality at the brasserie, but 120 projectiles are removed from the building and the wounded. Flo survives but permanently loses her sight.

In her final passage, Marie traces the chain of events back to its origin, wondering what might have happened if Flo had never noticed her (231). She sits at the window of her Paris rental, describing the view with exacting precision: zinc roofs, chimney pots, pigeons crossing the sky. She performs the exercise Flo taught decades ago: looking, seeing, naming. Through the act of seeing and telling, the story now exists (232).