Still, I shouldn’t be so blasé. That poor girl in the newspaper, Matilde Beaumont, was probably blasé too, and now look: one night she disappeared without a trace and four months later her body was found in a forest to the south-west of Paris. If I was still writing my ‘How not to get murdered’ column, the takeaway from Matilde’s story would be: always walk with your keys between your fingers and stay the fuck away from the woods.

But that window is my favourite part of the room. The rest of it is all old white-grey paint and enclosed spaces. I have no closet – just a hanging rail and piles of folded clothing in my suitcase beside it. Not that I’m complaining. According to glum Wesley, apartments in Paris usually take six months, four guarantors, a shady landlord, hefty insurance and a pound of flesh to secure, and so I wouldn’t even have an apartment if one of Mum’s school friends (Anne) hadn’t taken pity on me. She’s very rich, very blonde, lives somewhere in North America now, and she has a place here she rarely visits. It’s in the 6th, bordering the 7th, right by Jardin du Luxembourg and Montparnasse. Yes, I live in Postcard Paris. My apartment building has one of those grand wooden doors with an enormous black knocker, a cobbled courtyard and a chandelier that magically turns on whenever you walk down the stairs. It feels a bit like being a Disney princess.

I pull out my earplugs and reach for my phone. The time reads 6.55 am. I’m up five minutes early and that feels like a minor victory. It’s always nice not to be ripped from sleep by the church bells that ring every morning at 7 am.

I sit up, my limbs heavy, and look out the window: this morning the sky is streaked with pink cloud. I snap a picture and upload it to the Instagram account I set up when I moved here: @new.girlinparis. I add #goodmorning and #paris then take my phone through to the living-area-slash-kitchen and flick on the light.

To my left is a white sofa (just a matter of time before I spill something on that) with a series of pink, terracotta, olive green and yellow striped pillows and an old Louis Vuitton luggage case as a coffee table. In front of me sits a big bookshelf full of books and CDs, a lamp and another Louis Vuitton case. Above that is the only window in this part of the apartment – it’s on the ceiling and requires a stick and a special knack to open it. And to my right sits a table, two chairs and a big wooden cupboard I found my sheets and towels inside. Behind me is where the coffee lives. The kitchenette: two hot plates (one is broken and the other has two settings: off or volcanic), a microwave where I heat up the creamed spinach I pretty much live on (I’m definitely going to develop some sort of nutritional deficiency soon, but at least it won’t be scurvy), a sink, a fridge, and just enough room to open one, but not two, of those appliance doors at once. Anne’s bedroom and ensuite (which I’m under strict instructions not to enter and aside from once, just to look around, I’ve complied) is to the right of that, just past the main bathroom.