It’s been just shy of a fortnight since I left. A week more since I last saw Noah and there has been no word. Which I should take as a sign, I know. All the logical parts of my brain are telling me I should, but I don’t want to. Perhaps he doesn’t even know where I am? More likely he is distracted by a bevy of Italian beauties and can barely remember what I look like, let alone my name. I could always go to him. I know exactly where he will be. On a lake, with his boat and his dreams. Alone, but free.

I can’t go to him. That’s just too much of a cliché. And weak. I am not weak, not anymore. I will not be the sort of woman who goes running after a man, simply because he claims to love her. Although I do so want to see the lake. To sail past terra-cotta mansions and shorelines dotted with Cypress trees. I want to swim in the clear waters, dive as deep as I can, hold my breath, feel like a mermaid, like a creature who lives in a magical lagoon.

But it is beautiful here, in the town that is known as St. Tropez (sounds like the beginning of a song). I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but there’s a simplicity to this place, if you look beyond all the glitz and glamour. A way of life that follows the tide and the sun. Fishermen who have learnt their skills from generations long since dead and buried. Farmers and artisans hidden in amongst all the millionaires who finally seem to be disappearing back to wherever they go once the summer is done.

The light at dusk here is breathtaking. A muted rainbow of pinks and purples that slowly fade to gray, dipping beneath the horizon and mixing with the constant movement of sea. Crisp, salty air that you can feel rejuvenating you from the inside out. Sunlight that has turned my milky skin golden brown, covered from tip to toe in a crazy dot-to-dot of freckles. Antoine keeps threatening to join them all up, to see what secret pictures there are on my skin.

He is like no one else I have ever met. I feel so at ease, so comfortable around him. He makes me believe I can do, be, anything I want. Tells me I mustn’t hide the truth from myself, which is incredible given how much he has to hide.

I know I am here to help him, as much as the other way around. I know my presence allows him to pretend, for appearances’ sake, that he is just like everyone else. For we all have secrets squirreled away in our hearts, and he seems less capable of concealing them here than in Paris.

On the journey south he presented me with a ring. A single, emerald-cut diamond on a gold band that once belonged to his grandmother. He told me that my mouth hung open like a giant grouper fish when he held it out to me. Then the whole bus began to cheer and holler as he slipped it over my finger and placed a kiss behind my ear, whispering that could we please pretend, at least for a little while.