The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(48)

‘Coffee’s good,’ I murmur, because it is. Scalding and tobacco bitter.

He nods. ‘Almost as good as PodGods,’ he says.

‘That’s very loyal of you,’ I laugh.

‘Sure you don’t mind wandering in the snow?’ he asks me. I blink a couple of times, thinking, and then I realize. I know what we’re doing. Freddie and I have done this before in London; he likes to throw away the guidebooks and just follow his nose, discover his own version of the capital, or Paris, or wherever. In London we found a hidden garden and lay on our backs in the sunshine, and we ate lunch in a backstreet pub that hadn’t changed so much as a wall tile since Victoria was on the throne, and he bought me a silver and blue agate bracelet because it was the exact same shade as my eyes. We found our very own London, and today we’re about to find our very own Paris.

‘Let me think about that for a second,’ I say, sliding my coffee cup on to the bedside table next to his phone. ‘Do I mind walking around the world’s most romantic city in the snow with you?’ I lift the covers and slip into his arms as he stretches to rest his coffee down next to mine. ‘Can you promise me hot chocolate?’

‘I’ll promise you anything if you take your clothes off,’ he grins.

I press my face into his chest to stop myself from asking him to promise to stay alive. He kisses the top of my head, and we stay like that for a while, the warmth of him seeping into me.

‘I can’t feel my toes.’

Freddie and I are sitting on a bench alongside the banks of the Seine. We’ve had the most glorious morning following our noses down winding streets and through public gardens, all of it accompanied by steadily falling snow. The Eiffel Tower is a looming shadow shrouded in mist, but even brief glimpses of its iconic outline are enough to make me unreasonably happy. We’re in Paris. I came here once before, a whistle-stop school French trip for a few days, and my prevailing memories are of being herded around the city, and of a sardine-packed visit to Notre-Dame. I certainly never imagined I’d come back and walk the same city in a snowstorm with Freddie Hunter; he wasn’t even my boyfriend back then. It’s a strange thought. I can barely remember a time in my life when his name and mine weren’t inextricably linked together.

‘Hungry?’ he asks me and I laugh because I know he’s dying for me to say yes – he has the appetite of a herd of wild horses.

I nod and he pulls me to my frozen feet. ‘Can we find somewhere warm?’

He pulls my bobble hat further down to cover my ears. ‘Yes.’ His phone buzzes in his coat pocket, but he ignores it.

‘Do you need to get that?’ I say, because work have been blowing his phone up on and off for most of the morning.

‘Nope,’ he says. ‘Whoever it is can piss off. I’m in Paris with my favourite girl.’

I smile because it’s a lovely thing to say, but I shiver too. It might have been the snowflakes settling on the exposed skin at the back of my neck, or it might have been because the Freddie I knew would never have been able to resist checking it wasn’t something urgent. Although things in this life often feel exactly the same, they’re very subtly different. It’s unsettling.

Every street we look down seems to have a breathtaking monument lolling nonchalantly at the end of it, all of them calling us to come closer and comment on their grandness. It’s a city built to be admired, never more so than today with the snowstorm bleaching the scene greyscale and dramatic. It’s as if we’re starring in our own black-and-white movie. Parisians wander past us immersed in each other or heads down, intent on getting where they need to be; the city belongs to them in the winter, before the hordes of tourists move in as soon as it warms up. Today it’s theirs and, miraculously, it’s ours too.

‘Wow,’ I say, slowing in front of a colossal building surrounded by soaring stone columns. My city map informs me it’s La Madeleine, a church.

‘It looks almost Roman, doesn’t it?’ I lay my hand against one of those monumental columns as I wander up the wide steps, irresistibly drawn inside by the sheer scale and grandeur. Freddie joins me and we walk slowly hand in hand across the marble floor, awestruck by the size and beauty of the place. It steals my breath; decadent chandeliers cast a warm glow over the lavish frescos decorating the domed ceilings and there is an overwhelming sense of peace and reverence, an oasis in the hustle of the city. We’re not religious people, Freddie and I, but still I’m moved by the history and the atmosphere of reflection. We reach a bank of white taper candles lit by visitors in remembrance of lost loved ones, and when I glance at Freddie I find him digging around in his pocket for change. I can’t manage any words as he slips coins into the donation box and picks up a couple of candles. He rarely talks about the father he lost as a child; he was too young to have many memories to cherish but still his absence has been keenly felt. It’s one of the things that used to bug me the most – that he wouldn’t open up to me about it. But that’s just how he was brought up. His mum is very ‘live for the moment’. I sometimes think it comes over as selfish, but it’s probably more that she is a product of her own upbringing too. She was a beauty queen in her day, very adored and looked after by her own parents and then by Freddie’s dad. And then by Freddie.

I’m not sure why he hands me a candle too; for my grandparents perhaps, or out of politeness. I watch him sigh as he chooses a place for his act of remembrance amongst the other candles. Some stand tall, others have burned down to almost nothing. And then he turns and lights the wick of my candle, and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes – it’s as if he knows. He holds my gaze, and for a little while we just stand and stare at each other. This is it. This is all of our tomorrows, every day of our love concentrated into one small light that will burn out too soon. My hand shakes as I try to decide where to place my candle. In the end I stand it beside Freddie’s.