This Book Made Me Think of You(28)

A lump rises in her throat as she reads. She just about manages to hold it together, but as she slips the letter back inside the pages of the book, an idea forms in her mind. A wild kind of idea that she never would have let grow in the past, not with work to consider and a million other self-imposed things holding her back from dreaming big. But what does she have to lose now? Why not be the kind of person to make a decision inspired by something as simple as a book?

“You know what, Joe?” she says out loud to the empty room. “Maybe I can do even better than just reading about Paris…”





Eighteen




“Sixty-one Rue Lepic, Montmartre,” Tilly says through the taxi window, clutching the handle of a suitcase filled with spring dresses and romance novels. The driver asks her to repeat herself three times until she eventually hands her phone over, showing him the apartment’s address on the screen.

“Ah, 61 Rue Lepic, Montmartre,” he repeats, nodding and pressing a button that releases the car’s boot. Tilly hauls her case inside, then climbs into the back seat, giving one last glance back at the imposing building of the Gare du Nord, not quite believing she is actually here.

As the taxi sets off down the busy street, Tilly rolls down the window to better take everything in, listening to the sound of horns honking, scooters zipping past, and feeling a pleasant breeze against her face. The city flashes by like a montage from a film: bustling bistros where people eat and drink on pavements; tall, ornate Haussmann buildings with wrought iron balconies and silver roofs; wide, tree-lined avenues; and little squares dotted with benches and statues. Through the window of the taxi that winds its way through the city, Paris is exactly as she had imagined.

Are you at the apartment yet? comes a message from Harper.

Not yet. Just on the way now. Thanks again for setting me up with this place at such short notice.

No problem. One of the perks of working at Voyageur: contacts all over the world. Let me know if you need me to hook you up with a hut in the Maldives, I could probably get you a great deal.

I think three weeks in Paris is probably enough for now.

I’m so proud of you for doing this, Tils.

She smiles as she slips her phone back in her pocket, resting her face against the taxi window. The decision to come here still feels so spontaneous, so unTilly. Is three weeks too long? How is she going to fill her time? Will she get lonely? But as the city flashes by, the questions that filled her mind right up until the moment she clicked “buy” on her Eurostar ticket recede into the background. The sun is shining and she is in Paris.

Before long the taxi stops halfway up a steep cobbled hill lined with tall old buildings, directly in front of a bakery. To the left is a large, ornately carved wooden door with the number 61 above in tiled art nouveau letters.

“On est arrivés.”



* * *



—

By the second floor of the staircase that winds its way up through the old building, Tilly is out of breath. By the third floor, she wishes someone had thought to install a lift or at the very least a bench somewhere in the stairwell. Finally, she and her suitcase make it to the fifth floor, and she finds a key under the mat. The door is a little stiff but after a firm shove, it swings open.

The entire room is filled with light that floods in through tall windows and a pair of balcony doors and shines on the smooth herringbone floor. There is a tiny kitchen area that leads onto an open living space with a deep armchair, a coffee table covered in elegant photographic books, and a small table and two chairs. An open doorway leads through to a separate bedroom where Tilly can spot a large bed made up in soft gray linen sheets.

She heads straight for the balcony doors, pulling them open and stepping out onto a balcony that wraps the length of the living room and bedroom. There are a metal table and matching chairs and a few pots of yellow tulips. And there beneath her is Paris.

The silvery-blue rooftops spread in an intricate maze, chimneys and roof decks creating a jagged skyline. She can spot winding streets, tucked-away courtyards, and terraces brimming with plants. Directly below is the street where she arrived earlier, a woman walking a small dog past the bakery and a bicycle rattling down the hill in the opposite direction. She steps out a little further, taking in the streets that climb higher and higher right to the top of the city, where there, glowing bright white in the spring sunshine, are the domes of the Sacré-C?ur.

She takes a photo and sends it to her sister.

This place is BEAUTIFUL!

Isn’t it? I thought you’d like it. So, what’s first on your Paris list?

Tilly steps back into the apartment, leaving the balcony doors ajar so that a fresh breeze fills the room, making the long linen curtains flutter. Reaching into her backpack, she pulls out her copy of A Moveable Feast, spine already cracked from reading it on the train, and removes her letter from Joe from between its pages.

Dear Tilly,

I’m trying hard not to have regrets. The truth is I’ve had a great life and there’s not a bit of it that I’d change. But there are some things I wish we’d had time to do together. I wish I’d taken you to Paris. We talked about it, but somehow other things got in the way and it just never happened.

If I could, I would take you there right this second. I’d take you to the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré-C?ur and on a boat trip along the Seine.