‘This is cool,’ he says, reaching for it. And we’re standing even closer now. My cheeks are warm. ‘What does it mean?’

‘That I’m a Virgo,’ I say softly, with a small smile. My voice is scratchy from the weed and it comes out like a whisper.

‘And that means…’

‘That I’m bad news,’ I say.

He laughs – a big, real laugh – and says, ‘What a coincidence, me too.’ Then he lets go of my necklace and it jangles as it drops back to my breastbone.

And we’re just standing here now.

‘Shit. I really have to go inside,’ he says, not moving.

‘Yeah,’ I say. And I don’t move either.

One moment. Two moments. Three moments pass. Then he takes a deep breath and it comes out jagged; it breaks my train of thought. He takes a micro step back. And then he moves towards the door. I watch as he traces a cross on the keypad. The door buzzes. He pushes it open and a glittery white light spills out into the shadows.

‘Good luck,’ I say, before he goes inside.

And he looks back at me, hesitates for just a moment, and then says: ‘Are you on Instagram?’

I nod, mentally scanning my new account – but there’s nothing on there to identify me as ‘Harper Brown’. No name. No workplace. And only a picture of the Eiffel Tower as my profile picture.

‘@new.girlinparis,’ I say. ‘But there’s a dot between new and girl.’

‘Cute,’ he replies. ‘Well, I’ll see you around, new dot girl in Paris.’

Then he closes the door and he’s gone and it’s just me and the treacle black sky and the yellow globe by the door. The air smells of fading weed and impending rain. But then my phone lights up in the dark: @NoahXartist has started following you. So I do the only polite thing… I follow him back.

Chapitre six

The Paris I used to visit with Harrison is not the same city I’ve lived in for the last five weeks. The former was all cobbled streets, picture-perfect cafés, neon signage, the sound of rain on tin roofs, the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower in the middle of the night on our way back to our hotel room from his shows. It was an untainted projection of the Paris of my mind, a montage of movie scenes from Amélie, the golden hues of impressionism, that kissing photograph by Robert Doisneau and quotes like ‘Paris is always a good idea’. It was pretty, poetic and romantic. But it was soulless, choreographed and two-dimensional compared to the Paris I live in now.

Because there’s a grit to the real Paris I didn’t see back then, an electric sort of madness that only opens itself to you once you’ve been here long enough to see beyond the varnish.

Yes, even in the 6th arrondissement.

Like, there’s a homeless guy who poops on the corner by my flat every morning at the exact time I need to pass by to get to the metro. Nobody says anything. Nobody stares. Then there’s the woman I see at the grocery store almost every time I go in. She’s perfectly coiffed, her makeup immaculate, and she wears her tabby cat in a grey baby-holder strapped to her chest. She just wanders the aisles in silence.