Page 15 of Thirty Days in Paris

But for now her life was her own. Time spooled out in front of her in reams, unpunctuated by appointments and commitments and deadlines, so she could no longer complain that she didn’t have any. She’d written so many features about carving out ‘me’ time, the importance of putting yourself first in order to keep everyone else afloat, that suddenly having every minute of every day free to do whatever she liked was a little overwhelming. It was second nature to check her diary, and the to-do lists she made, for all the tiresome necessities that went with running a house and the lives contained within it. Stuart had been pretty hands-on as a husband and dad, for which she was grateful, but she was aware that what she was experiencing was a luxury, and it was her duty to make the most of it.

Her regime, she decided, was going to be to write as much as she could in the morning, when she was her sharpest. Once she had hit a reasonable word count, the rest of the day would be hers to do whatever she liked. She knew she would have to be strict with herself, for it would be all too easy to procrastinate. The writer’s worst enemy, procrastination, second only to being distracted by the internet – and, of course, one could fuel the other. She had decided not to hook up her laptop to the apartment’s Wi-Fi, for then she couldn’t wander online under the pretence of doing some research. She didn’t need to do any, after all. It was her story, in her head, and everything else she needed to know was waiting for her outside.

But first, she had resolved to go for a run each morning. She was well aware, despite her mistrust of Stuart’s obsession, that her own fitness was not all it could be. Sitting was the new smoking, potentially as dangerous to your health as a twenty-a-day habit. To start the day with a gentle jog would hopefully go some way towards offsetting what was fondly known as ‘writer’s arse’. She pulled on her gym kit and trainers and headed out into the pearl-grey morning.

She knew there was a circuit of about one mile around the Tuileries – a distance she thought she could manage and that was, most important of all at this point in her regime, flat. She ran down the terraced steps into the manicured perfection of the gardens and headed for the path between the horse chestnuts, keeping a slow and steady pace, enjoying the sharp, bright November air, the bareness of the branches overhead, the satisfying crunch of the pale-yellow surface beneath her feet. At the far end, she slowed to a brisk walk and found herself in front of Rodin’s The Kiss. Her eyes travelled slowly over the marble figures, and for a moment she was taken back in time to the memory of exploring another body, all the passion and the intensity. She felt her throat tighten with longing. She would probably never feel that wonder again.

She left the park and headed back along the colonnades of the Rue de Rivoli, where the shops were starting to open, with their glittery shiny souvenirs of Paris: key rings and snow globes and fridge magnets. She turned back onto the Rue Saint-Honoré, and smiled as she passed the high-end boutiques that sat oh-so-casually alongside cafés and bars, chocolate shops and florists. The contents of the windows made her mouth water, and she found herself swooning over the cut of an outsized bouclé coat, the swoop of a tulle skirt, the tobacco-brown suede of a pair of ankle boots.

She promised herself that if she worked hard, she would treat herself to something each day. It might be something small: a tiny box of chocolates or a magazine. Or it might be something from the list she had written, of classic items she wanted to invest in: a trench coat, a white shirt, a signature perfume. She had set aside some money from the house sale to give herself a makeover so she could embark on her new life as a single woman. And where better to create a new identity than Paris?

There were other things on the list too. Places to go. Monet’s Water Lilies. Saint Laurent’s atelier. Maybe Versailles.

And people to see. Perhaps.

She had been right to come here. You couldn’t hide from something, somewhere, someone you had fallen in love with, for the rest of your life, just because things had gone wrong.

For a moment, she let her imagination wander, recalling the faces of the past, but now was not the time. She found a patisserie and went in, eyeing up the tarts and cakes and pastries lined up in the cabinet – chocolate and strawberry and lemon, all perfectly glazed and iced. After her run, she felt justified in leaving with a plump pain au raisin in a brown paper bag.

As she walked back to her apartment, she felt elated. Was this the runner’s high Stuart had been banging on about? No, she decided. Her lightness of heart was all about freedom and possibility and her own potential. The joy of stumbling across a masterpiece on her morning run. As she bounded in through the entrance door and pressed the button to summon the lift, she was beaming from ear to ear.

As the lift clanked down and ground to a halt, she stood to one side to let the occupant out. It was a young woman in her early thirties, dressed in an elegant yellow coat.

‘Bonjour,’ sang Juliet.

‘Hey,’ said the girl with a smile. ‘How are you doing?’

Juliet made a face, laughing. ‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Oh no, sorry. It’s just our landlord told us there was an English lady moving in.’

‘Just for a month. I’m Juliet.’

The girl held out her hand. ‘Melissa. I live with Bernard, right next door.’

‘It’s nice to meet you. And I’m guessing you’re not French either?’

‘I’m from Boston. But Bernard is Parisian.’ She pronounced it Pareezhan. ‘I’ve lived here five years now. So what are you doing here?’

Juliet was slightly taken aback by her blunt questioning. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m on a bit of a life break. Revisiting my lost youth. Trying to find myself.’

‘À la recherche du temps perdu?’

‘Kind of. And I’m writing a book while I’m here. Trying to, anyway.’

‘Oh. What kind of a book?’

‘Good question. Right now it’s exactly a memoir/coming-of-age mash-up, but I’m waiting to see where it will take me.’

‘I’ve always wanted to write a book,’ Melissa laughed. ‘A kind of Parisian Miss Marple, head-to-toe in Chanel, with a little miniature dachshund as a sidekick. Maybe you can inspire me to get started?’

Juliet smiled. If she’d had a pound for everyone who said that, she’d be in head-to-toe Chanel herself, but she didn’t say anything.

‘So what brought you to Paris?’ she asked instead.

‘I came here as a student and never left. Fell in love with the guy in the apartment upstairs from me.’ Melissa’s eyes sparkled. ‘Now I run tours. All kinds of tours. Food tours. Literary tours. Art tours. Any kind of tours you want.’ She made a face. ‘Even Emily in Paris tours.’

Juliet laughed. ‘Sounds fun.’

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