She held the pen firmly in her hand as she deliberated over the note she was leaving for Tom.

I tried to ring but your phone was off. Something has come up and I’m away for the next two days. I’ll call if I can. Love, Gx

She paused at the front door, glimpsing the photo of them all one summer in Mallorca, in what felt like another lifetime. But then she stepped outside into the awaiting minicab, and the house receded in memory so that all she could think of was what lay ahead.

Paris was a bustling autumnal scene as they stepped into the private car that met them at Gard du Nord and drove them straight to the Champs-Élysées.

‘I thought we could drop off our bags before heading out,’ Ivan said as they stepped onto the pavement in front of the Four Seasons. ‘I know you like low-key, but this time the choice is mine …’

Their suite was a tapestry of plush beige velvet and embossed gold silk curtains leading to a balcony overlooking the Eiffel Tower, the sky darkening around it as evening fell.

‘Ivan,’ she said, turning to him, and he smiled.

‘You like it?’

‘I like it a lot.’

‘So,’ he asked the following morning once they had bathed and were resting on the bed, Tchaikovsky wafting across the room from the stereo. ‘What do you want to do?’

She breathed in luxuriously. ‘I don’t think I’m ever leaving this mattress. It’s like lying on a cloud.’

Stretching back into the mound of pillows, she felt the sunlight seeping through the window and warming her skin.

‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, kissing her shoulder. ‘But we have come all the way here, it would be rude not to leave the hotel room at least once.’

‘True,’ she conceded, her eyes drifting across the rooftops of the city she hadn’t returned to since that year of university.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said and she squirmed beneath his gaze.

‘You are,’ he replied, matter-of-factly. ‘I just almost can’t believe that you’re mine.’

There was a flicker in his eye and she drew back in order to see him better, surprised by the intensity of his words.

‘I mean, as much as anyone is anyone else’s,’ he corrected himself. ‘Not in the sense that I’m going to lock you in a glass box in my cellar …’

‘Well, that’s an important distinction,’ she said, pulling herself out of bed, tightening her dressing gown as she slipped her feet into a pair of hotel slippers, her heart pounding both with joy and a feeling she couldn’t quite put a finger on.