I reached for the basket of bread and I grabbed a slice and dipped it into the sauce beside my pork chops and I ate rather greedily because I didn’t know what else to do, I couldn’t think of anything better to say than that I was glad she had come to me. It was pathetic. I took a sip of my wine. I held her hands and I curled my fingers into them and I said that I would never hurt her.

That’s when I realized I would have to meet Jenny’s father and make a good impression. And that’s when I asked Jenny if she would move in with me and I felt such utter joy when she said that she would. Oh Paris, how could I ever thank you enough?

We finished our meal and the last swig of the wine gave me a warmth in my body and I suggested that we make a move if we were going to Musée d’Orsay. Jenny’s eyes seemed to brighten. I thought in that moment how the eyes are incapable of lying and I said again that I was glad she had come to me.

The talk about Jerome was in the past, as though Jenny had shed a skin like a snake does in the sun. She was my beautiful creature and she was all mine and I felt it in my blood. I felt an excitement, like the feeling in the final countdown to an exam, the last minutes before an interview, that focus that you have to call into force, the need to run and the urge to fight that need. And the way you talk yourself up, your rehearsed spiel, in the warm office filled with sunlight which will not look as good on grey winter mornings once you have secured the position. An anecdote that you mention casually that shows your ability to work in a team. The memory of a past job in the office beside the Italian deli on the Quays where you first thought to purchase brioche and the way you felt nervous ordering it with a latte to go, acting like brioche was something you were accustomed to, how you kept your voice constant when you asked for a couple of the small almond fingers, dusted with icing sugar, as an afterthought.

And those were the times.

25. Christmas Eve

December 1996

I put so much energy and hope into searching for the perfect gift for Jenny, our second Christmas together, in the end buying a photo frame from one of those household shops that were appearing in the city full of novelty tat that we didn’t know we didn’t need.