“Traveling alone gives you a lot of time to think. A lot.” She inserts a light chuckle. “Too much at times, I guess. Because I do believe there’s a danger in overthinking. I’ve always been more a woman of action. I’m a mother. Action has been my go-to mode for the past twenty-five years.” She falls silent for a few seconds.

My turn. “What will be the first thing you do when you get back to Paris?”

She purses her lips together. “I land on Friday morning. Deliberately timed that way because it’s a public holiday in France, so I can have breakfast with my children. Ben will be coming up from Marseille for the long weekend. He’ll pick me up from the airport and we’ll go to Flo’s together.” Her voice breaks a little. She breathes in deeply, takes a few more seconds, recrosses her legs. “I miss them so much. It has come and gone in waves. In the beginning, it was really bad. I was Skyping them every other day. Then as I got more comfortable, I managed to keep my distance—literally and figuratively. But now, so close to seeing them again, it can sometimes well up in me with such force.”

“Not long now.” My own voice doesn’t sound so stable.

“Then I met you.” A feeble smile appears on her face. “And I already know I’m going to miss you like crazy.”

Maybe this is when we talk about it, address the elephant that’s been in the room with us for a few days now. We’ll have it on tape forever if we do.

“Are you sure I can’t put you in my suitcase? Sneak you out of the country unnoticed so no one will give you a hard time about it?”

“Getting a half day off work already required Caitlin talking to my producer behind my back. The show’s season is long, and there are still quite a few weeks to go.”

“When is your last show?” Camille squirms in her seat.

“Early July.”

“Come to Paris in July, then. Fifty percent of the locals leave town after the quatorze. It’ll be like having the city all to ourselves.”

“You want me to come to Paris?”

Her nod starts small at first, but soon transforms into an extremely convincing one. “Of course I do.”

“You say that now, but July is still two months away.”

“So?” I can tell she’s itching to get out of her chair. “Two months is nothing.”

“Two months of what?” It’s excruciating to be thinking of a camera while having this conversation. But when a camera is trained on me, I’m always aware of it. I can’t help it.