My plane to Sydney leaves early in the morning and I don’t plan to catch any sleep before I have to leave for the airport. I can sleep on the plane—it will beat weeping after saying goodbye to Camille for the next few months. Last night, after a goodbye dinner with Ben and Flo during which she broke the news that she would be away for Christmas, Camille booked her ticket to visit me in Sydney for the holidays. I’m not sure I would be able to board the plane tomorrow morning without the certainty of that purchased ticket. And there’s still the possibility of me coming to Paris to interview Steph in the meantime. I called her up and asked. She’s thinking about it. Perhaps I’ll have a reply by the time I land.

But tonight, it’s all about Camille and me. About the physical connection we will miss for long months. We need to make more memories that will last us long enough to carry us through. I don’t even care if she wants to videotape us having sex. She can aim three different cameras at me if she so wishes. It doesn’t matter. All I want is to have her in my arms, her lips on mine, her soft skin against me, her warm hands all over me. I want to be so intoxicated with her that it will feel as if she’s still with me when I board the plane, when I walk into my empty house and pick up my life again.

“Are you all packed?” she asks, standing naked next to the bed I’m already lying in.

“Yep.” After one too many shopping sprees while Camille was at work, I’ve had to leave a few pieces of clothing behind that no longer fit into my suitcase. “Come here.” I reach out for her and she takes my hand. She kisses each of my knuckles slowly, almost reverently.

“It’s the last time I’ll be crawling into my bed with you for a while. I need to take a moment.”

Her sensitivity to this moment touches me. Not once during these six weeks together have I gotten the impression that Camille is any less in love with me than I am with her. Before I arrived here I wondered whether things would be different for her without the gloss of holiday and the Sydney sun shining upon us. But it turns out I shouldn’t have worried. She taught me the French term for it: coup de foudre. I can almost pronounce it without an Aussie accent.

When Camille finally does slip underneath the covers, I feel myself well up. I’ve gotten so used to having her close, to hearing her breath when I wake up in the middle of the night, and seeing her smile first thing in the morning.