An American in Paris

by Siobhan Curham

Genres: Historical Fiction; Jewish Fiction; War & Military; Women's Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Paris, 1940: Walking through Montmartre that morning, arm in arm, we saw soldiers spreading through the streets like a toxic grey vapour. ‘You must write about this,’ he whispered to me. ‘You must write about the day freedom left Paris.’ As Nazi troops occupy Paris, American journalist Florence is determined to save her adopted home and the man she loves. Florence arrived in the city in 1937 on a beautiful summer’s day, with dreams of adventure, and fell in love with Otto, an artist with the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. Otto left his homeland to escape persecution, but now, as swastikas are draped along the city’s wide boulevards, everything he was running from has caught up with him. Florence and Otto begin work with the Resistance to sabotage the Germans right under their noses. Florence’s society columns now document life with food shortages, curfews and constant fear, and contain hidden coded messages for the Allies. While Otto pins up the anti-Nazi posters he designs by candlelight in their tiny apartment, knowing he would be shot on sight if caught. But with every passing day, Paris becomes more dangerous and the fight for freedom seems more hopeless than ever. When Otto is arrested and imprisoned, Florence feels she might finally be beaten, until she is offered a secret mission to help turn the tide of the war in Europe. If she accepts, she has a chance of saving Otto. But she could also lose her own life in the attempt… A sweeping wartime story of the enduring power of love, the devastating cruelty of war and resilience of the human spirit. This is a novel that will capture your heart and never let it go. Fans of The Alice Network, The Lost Girls of Paris and The Nightingale will be absolutely gripped from the very first page. Readers love An American in Paris : ‘ A dazzling and sweeping tale of love… Unforgettable.’ Bookish Jottings, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘It WILL be one of those novels that EVERYONE talks about for a long, long time.’ Bibliomiast, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ A gripping wartime drama that will have your heart in your mouth.’ French Village Diaries, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ I can honestly say it is divine and I simply adored it… The book is truly beautiful… It is a real gem of a book and a fantastic read that I encourage all those who love historical fiction to pick up.’ Whispering Stories Book Blog, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ An enthralling story that puts readers in the middle of the chaos surrounding World War Two… Grabs readers from the beginning and won’t let them go until they finish the last page… I loved absolutely everything about this novel and won’t hesitate to claim it as my favourite historical fiction read of 2020.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ I loved every second of this book… Teaches us to be strong and that true love can give you a strength you never knew existed… I highly recommend curling up with this lovely story and reading it from cover to cover!’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ This book has it all… Action and intrigue, friendship and most importantly love… Great WWII novel about strong women and the roles they played during the war.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘A great dual timeline historical fiction novel that kept me entertained throughout… This book has a little bit of everything… Intrigue, mystery, twists and turns, love, loss, romance, and sadness.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Fantastic World War Two era read… You will love this book. I found both main characters to be believable and interesting. I was immediately swept up in their stories.’ Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release date: January 4, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

As the ship’s horn let out an almighty blast, I turned away from the crowds of people lining the harbour – the men raising their hats, the women waving their handkerchiefs – and tilted my face to the sun. My beloved Walt Whitman once said: ‘Keep your face always towards the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you.’ As the June warmth kissed my skin I pictured the shadows of my former life falling behind me. Joe Fraser and his bloodshot eyes and stale whisky breath. The manager of the Nylon Club and my ex-boss, Roxy, refusing to believe my account of what happened. Or rather, choosing not to believe me. There’s an important difference. Then I pictured a shadow that was formed of sorrow rather than anger: my daddy, on his farm in Arkansas, surrounded by the chucks, horses and cattle. When I wrote him I was joining a dance troupe in Paris, he wrote back: ‘So even New York City wasn’t able to break you in, then.’ My daddy was a man of few words. So few, in fact, I could pretty much write them all on a cigarette card:

Mornin’.

I’ll be off to milk the cows, then.

Evenin’.

I took my cigarettes from my purse. The card inside was from a series of crazy predictions about the future, titled: The Age of Power and Wonder. I looked to see what today’s prediction would be. My previous favourite had been a card prophesying that one day, television presenters would be able to broadcast live from the seabed. I gazed over the railings at the widening expanse of water between the ship and the harbour. While I loved the notion of being able to journey to the seabed and film whatever weird and wonderful critters might be down there, now I was about to be afloat on the ocean for at least six days, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know what might be lurking under the waves. Leastways, not until I was back on dry land.

I looked back at the card. ‘A time is coming when men will no longer need to employ men to do menial work,’ it read, next to a picture of a goggly-eyed figure made from metal, kind of how I imagined the Tin Woodman from the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to look. ‘Many experiments have been made in providing domestic mechanical servants,’ the card went on. Hmm. Didn’t men have that already, in the shape of women? I lit my cigarette and glanced around. Some of the passengers were starting to head inside the ship, no doubt to become acquainted with their cabins. But I was enjoying the salt air and sunshine too much – and boy, did I need it.

I moved along the deck towards the rear of the ship. I was pretty sure there had to be a technical term for the rear, just like left and right were port and starboard. I decided to make it my mission to learn all I could about seafaring from this trip. I never liked to pass up the opportunity for a little self-education. I found a spot by the railings and drank in the view. The sea stretched out like a fresh grey slate in front of me, which felt kind of symbolic. The further out we got, the more the breeze picked up, whipping around my neck and waking me from the daze I’d been in ever since Fraser attacked me, or tried to attack me. He hadn’t figured on my acrobatic skills coming in just as useful for self-defence as they did for dancing. I thought of my high kick cracking into his chin and finally I was able to smile at the memory – now I knew he wouldn’t be able to dispatch one of his hoodlums to deal with me. A thick black plume of smoke billowed from the ship’s funnel and there was another loud honk of the horn, as if the captain, or whoever the hell blows the horn on a ship, was celebrating the fact that my daring dream was coming true.

When I’d told my old school pal Rosalie I was going to France, her jaw had fallen open and she’d stared at me like I’d told her I was setting sail for Timbuktu.

‘You can’t spend your whole life running away from things, Florence,’ she’d said with a dramatic sigh. Dramatic sighs were Rosalie’s speciality, and she seemed to reserve the most dramatic for me. But what she didn’t understand was that I was never running from things, I was always running to them. To something better, brighter, more filled with adventure. It was why I’d left Arkansas for New York, and it was why I was leaving New York for Paris. I believed with every fibre of my being that life was far too precious to waste a single moment someplace that wasn’t making me happy. Or, as my beloved Walt would say: ‘Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem.’ I wanted my life to be a great poem – or a great song and dance at least! And if I couldn’t make that happen in Gay Paree then, quite frankly, there was no hope for me.

As Sage struggled to open her make-up-clogged eyes, she glimpsed a blurred trail on the bedroom floor. Adidas trainers… heeled boots… camisole top… crumpled T-shirt… skinny jeans… much larger jeans… boxer shorts, fraying at the waist… bra… men’s socks… thong… empty condom wrapper. As she searched through the fog of her hangover for the story behind the trail, she heard the ragged breath of someone in the bed beside her and tequila-flavoured bile burned in her throat. Only a week ago she’d written a post about how the first moments upon waking were critical in determining how your day would pan out.

‘Starting your day with nourishment, gratitude and joy sets you up for an awesome day to come,’ she’d written. ‘Write a gratitude list. Drink lemon water. Move your body.’ She’d posted a heavily filtered photo of herself holding a gratitude journal alongside the caption, with a hipster-style jam jar of lemon water artfully positioned at the front of the shot. Sage was all too aware that if she moved her body right now, she would more than likely vomit. So she lay, corpse-like, and tried to recollect the chain of events from the night before that had led her to here. She had a flashback of pounding music and lightning strobes. The chink of glasses. The downing of ‘Shot! Shot! Shot!’s. A man pulling her towards him on the dancefloor. His arms around her. Her head resting briefly on his shoulder. The sweet sensation of being held. Cut to club toilet. Snorting a line between the welt-like cigarette burns on top of the cistern. Picking up her phone.

Sage frowned as she tried to recall what had happened next. The fog of her hangover was too thick to penetrate and dread began budding inside her. She gingerly leaned over the edge of the bed and scanned the floor for any sign of her phone. The man lying beside her grunted. Why had she brought him back here? She never brought hook-ups back to her place, for obvious reasons. Another fragment from last night drifted back to her: ‘I’ve missed the last train out of London. An Uber back to Brighton will cost at least a ton. Be a sweetheart…’

She sat up and it was as if the whole world had tilted on its axis. Fighting the urge to retch, she looked around the room. Her bag was lying on its side by the doors to the balcony. Somehow, she managed to stumble her way over to it. But all that was inside was her purse, a pack of cigarette papers, some gum and her emergency tampon. Then she had another flashback, this time of leaning against the toilet wall, talking into her phone. Maybe she’d called someone? Or had she made a video? Had she posted a video? Her head started pounding. The man in her bed rolled over, belched and opened his eyes.

Another of Sage’s posts came back to haunt her, one she’d written on Valentine’s Day. ‘If you don’t love yourself, you’ll never be able to truly love another #selflove #selfloverules.’ She’d posted it along with the photo of a spray-painted heart she’d found on a wall in Brick Lane. She didn’t really get the statement to be honest, but it was something she’d seen a million times online and in magazines, so she knew it would garner a lot of likes. And it had. Forty-five thousand, six hundred and seventy-one to be precise. But surely what had happened between her and Tom was living proof that the statement was complete crap. She’d had no trouble loving him during their three-year relationship, in spite of his cheating and her subsequent self-loathing.

‘Morning, sexy,’ last night’s man said, shifting into a semi-upright position. It wasn’t until he lustfully eyed her up and down that she realised she was naked.

‘Morning.’ Her voice came out dry and raspy. ‘Have you seen my phone?’

The man shook his head and reached for his own phone on the nightstand beside him. His arms were covered in tattoos, a mismatching collage of a serpent, anchor, Celtic cross and what looked like a football club emblem. As he started scrolling, rage bubbled inside of Sage. In her list of what not to do when waking up in bed with another human, scrolling through your phone was right at the top.

‘You’re going to have to go,’ she said coldly.

He looked up. ‘What, don’t I even get a cup of tea?’

‘I don’t do bed and breakfast,’ she replied, looking on top of her dressing table. There was still no sign of her phone. Damn. Had she left it in the club?

‘Don’t be like that,’ the man wheedled. God, she hated wheedling voices, especially when she had a clanging headache.

‘Like what?’

‘So uptight.’

‘I’m not uptight,’ she snapped.

‘Yeah, well you certainly weren’t last night,’ he said, with a chortle that made her already clammy skin crawl. Then he frowned. ‘Have we met before – before last night, I mean? You look kind of familiar.’

Her stomach churned. ‘I very much doubt it.’ She turned away and pulled a T-shirt and some joggers from her wardrobe. Please, please, please, just get up and leave, she silently willed as she quickly got dressed.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said, picking his jeans up from the floor.

‘Thanks.’

‘Must have cost a fair bit, being in Primrose Hill. Isn’t this where all the celebrities live?’

She remained silent.

He put on his T-shirt. It said: ‘SPACE IBIZA’ on the front. That figured. He had the craggy face, floppy hair and gold Cuban neck chain that screamed raver. Elderly raver. Last night in the dim lighting of the club he’d seemed boyish and fun, but now… Now he looked as if he was well into his forties, which meant that technically he could be old enough to be her father. Sage had another awkward flashback, of her hands pulling at that T-shirt, tugging it over his head. She swallowed hard. Why had she done this again? Why had she had another soulless one-night stand? She knew they always left her feeling hollow.

The man hoiked up his jeans and put his phone in his back pocket. ‘All right then, love, I’ll be off.’

I’m not your love, Sage thought. Cue another flashback, of her on top of him, his hands cupping her breasts. The comfort of feeling him inside her. The power of hearing him moan. The rush of her orgasm. That was why she did it. These days, it was the only time she actually felt something. But however powerful the wave of ecstasy, it left as quickly as it rushed in, sucking her will to live out with it. She stood rooted to the spot as the man walked past her. Don’t go. I’m not really a bitch. Please, could you just hold me again? She snapped to her senses and followed him out of the bedroom in time to see him glancing at the framed YouTube awards on the wall in the hallway.

‘This way,’ she said, guiding him to the door. ‘The lift’s just outside on the left.’

‘OK, thanks.’ He looked at her curiously again.

‘Bye,’ she said, practically pushing him out of the door.

Once he’d gone and she’d heard the reassuring ping of the lift doors opening, she leaned against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she headed for the kitchen and put some coffee on to brew.

‘This kitchen’s wasted on you,’ her mum, Elizabeth, had said, laughing, the day she came to visit for the first time. And it was true. The kitchen was larger than the entire studio apartment Sage had been living in before. With its acres of black marble counter space, huge stove and American-sized fridge and freezer, it was the kind of kitchen built for a family or someone who loved to cook. Sage was neither of those things.

‘Yeah well, the fridge will come in handy for all my leftover takeaways,’ she’d joked back. ‘And you know you’re welcome to come any time and cook me dinner.’

They’d both laughed at this. Elizabeth was as reluctant a cook as her daughter, or rather, she had been. Sage felt a sharp stab of pain as she mentally corrected her mum’s tense from present to past. It was coming up on a year since Elizabeth had died and Sage still hadn’t got her head around the fact that she was really gone. She searched the loaded dishwasher for the least dirty cup and gave it a rinse. Then she opened her laptop and went straight to her YouTube page to check she hadn’t posted anything there last night.

Thankfully, the page was exactly as she’d left it the morning before, with a video extolling the virtues of clean eating. She’d posted it while licking the fat from her fingers following a bacon and sausage ciabatta. The number ‘213’ hovered in red over the notification bell, a sign that always used to give her a heady dopamine hit, but now it elicited nothing. She opened another window and clicked on her Instagram page. As soon as it opened, she saw a sight that made her mouth go even drier. The most recent post was an image of her, with black make-up smears beneath bloodshot eyes and her top half falling off her shoulder. Then she saw the little ‘play’ icon that made her realise it wasn’t a photo, it was a video. She clicked on the post and read the first of the 498 comments.

‘What a state! #trainwreck’

‘Isn’t it time Sage Segal got cancelled? #loser’

‘I can’t believe she said that!!! ☺︎☺︎’

With trembling fingers, Sage pressed ‘play’.

I arrived in France having learned two things: number one, the rear of the boat was called the stern. Number two, tragically, I did not possess sea legs, which was hugely ironic considering what my legs were able to do and how far they’d gotten me. I was so grateful to get back on dry land, I felt like throwing myself onto the harbour floor and wailing a thousand thank yous. But I really didn’t want my French adventure to get off on the wrong foot, and besides, I was too weak from hunger for any kind of prostrating. Pretty much the only thing I’d been able to stomach the entire trip was water and dry crackers. As I held my case close to me and hurried to the station, I vowed that if I ever did return to America, it would be by plane. After all, if it was good enough for Charles Lindbergh, it was good enough for me. I smiled as I thought of my eleven-year-old self, huddled by the radio in the kitchen, listening breathless to the news that Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis had touched down in France safely. Once I’d done my chores, I spent the whole of the next day racing around the farm with my arms outstretched like the wings of a plane.

After an unfortunate mix-up at the station, which saw me mistaking the gentlemen’s bathroom for the powder room, I found my way to my train carriage and hoisted my case onto the shelf above my seat. I used to be self-conscious about my height, just as I was self-conscious about my lack of curves – I used to hate it as a kid when Daddy called me his ‘string bean’; oh, how I longed to be called something soft and voluptuous, like ‘peach’ – but by the time I’d turned twenty-one I wasn’t all that bothered. I guess I’d come to see the advantage of having legs like a pair of stilts and how they were a ticket to a life of high-kicking adventure.

Once my case was safely housed, I sat down and began my favourite sport of observing my fellow passengers without it appearing as if I was observing them. Pretending to read provides a magnificent cover for this pastime. So I took my battered copy of Walt Whitman poems from my purse and opened it on a random page. Well, I say random, but due to chronic over-reading, it automatically fell open at the start of my favourite, ‘Song of Myself’. I glanced over the top of the book at the woman sitting opposite me. Instantly, my heart sank. She was so perfect, she looked more like a china doll than a flesh-and-blood human being. Her hat was tilted so that it cut a sharp angle across her forehead, and tumbling out from beneath were the most perfectly styled black curls I had ever seen. She was wearing an immaculately tailored dress, the colour of claret, nipped in at the waist to accentuate her hourglass hips. And her lips were as plump and glossy as a juicy ripe strawberry. I’d chosen to wear my favourite grey trouser suit with a rose-pink fedora for my arrival in Paris but, seen through the prism of this mannequin of perfection, I felt très dreary and awkward. This must have been what Bessie meant in the postscript to her last letter: ‘PS: The women here are so chic they make you want to be just like them AND stab their eyes out with envy.’

The doll woman shifted her gaze from the window to me. I quickly looked down at my book and read the first line to boost my flagging spirits: ‘I celebrate myself and sing myself.’ I closed my eyes and imagined Walt with his bushy white hair and long white beard actually uttering those words to me. I’d first started pretending that Walt Whitman was my long-lost grandfather when I was about thirteen. With no mom, and a father who preferred talking to cattle than humans, it had seemed like the most enterprising option. If I couldn’t have a family member to confide my greatest hopes and deepest fears in, then dang it, I’d invent one!

A sharp-suited man entered the carriage and sat down next to doll-woman. I spied him glancing sideways at her legs. Then he said something to her in French. For a moment, I was mesmerised. Is there any language more beautiful than French? For all I knew he could have been saying, ‘I like to feast on slugs and rotting eggs,’ but it still would have sounded divine.

Doll-woman said something in response, her voice as soft and melodic as a lullaby. Bessie used to say that my Southern drawl was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard, but obviously that was before she moved to Paris, when she’d only had the nasal twang of New Yorkers to compare it to. I gazed blankly at my book and let their voices wash over me. I only knew a few words of French at that point, but it was my greatest ambition to become fluent before I left Paris. If only I’d known then that by the time I left Paris, I would be fluent in so much more.

The train’s whistle blew, followed by a loud hiss of steam, and we slowly started chugging from the station. I gazed out of the window as the drab grey stone brightened into the vivid green of fields. Oh boy, was I happy to see grass and trees. There had been times at sea, usually when I was hunched over the toilet in my cabin, retching, that I’d started giving up hope I’d ever be reunited with terra firma again.

The man’s voice grew louder and even though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, I could definitely detect an undercurrent of innuendo. It was something I’d become an expert at fending off in the four years I’d been dancing. Usually, the sharpness of my tongue was enough to defuse it. Or, in Joe Fraser’s case, the deftness of a well-aimed kick. I gazed back at the trees, comforting myself with the fact that I was now a whole continent away from Fraser and his warped fantasies.

Doll-woman said something with a new sharpness to her tone. I glanced over just in time to see the man look away, red-faced. I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed that the first French man I’d encountered had turned out to be a sleaze. I had been hoping that once I was in the country that had invented romance, I’d finally meet a man who didn’t have his brain located in his pants. A man who would talk to me for hours about music, life and poetry. A man who would woo me with imaginative gestures that would inflame my very spirit. Surely a man like this had to exist? Knowing my lousy luck, my perfect soul mate did exist, but was living in an igloo in outer Antarctica, or somewhere equally unreachable. I looked back at my book. I didn’t need a man, I reminded myself. I was more than capable of making a song of myself.

Five hours later, as I hauled my suitcase along what felt like a never-ending road to nowhere in the heart of Paris, I felt like less of a song and more of a funeral dirge. I’d decided against taking the Métro to Montmartre and chose to walk from Gare Saint-Lazare instead, reasoning that a gal can only take so many new adventures in one day. I thought I’d be safer walking, less likely to get lost. Bessie had said in her letter that it should take no more than half an hour to get to my new lodgings – ‘Twenty minutes on your long legs.’ But I must have made a wrong turning somewhere. To make matters worse, the sun was like a furnace. The deodorant I was wearing was supposed to ‘Turn armpits into charmpits’, according to the advertisement, but I feared the smell that was now emanating from them was more akin to a cesspit. I paused to wipe my brow and take a breath. Automobiles raced past like shiny black beetles scuttling. Everyone who passed me on the sidewalk seemed so carefree and gay – and so certain of where they were going! I have to say that by that point, the French language was beginning to lose its charm for me. The thought of being lost and alone someplace no one could understand me was more than slightly alarming. I took a right down a side street, as much to get some shade from the tall buildings as anything, and I spied an elderly man in a flat cap and shirtsleeves, sweeping the path outside his shop. I headed over to him.

‘Excusez-moi?’

‘Oui?’

So far, so good. I held out Bessie’s letter with the address of my lodgings on it. ‘Could you tell me how to get to Montmartre, to this address please, I mean, s’il vous plaît?’

The man frowned at me, then looked back at the page. He chattered something in French, which I had no hope of understanding, pointed along the street, then gestured right.

‘Thank you. Merci!’ I exclaimed and carried on my way.

I walked until I saw a turning on my right, and there, looming above the narrow street was a sight that made my heart sing with relief. Could it be…? I looked back at Bessie’s letter. ‘Look out for the church on top of the hill that resembles three huge white breasts,’ she’d written. Bessie was obsessed with the human anatomy, especially when it came to pleasure. ‘The church is called Sacré-Coeur. Climb to the top of the hill and you will be in Montmartre!’ I was so happy to see the church, I found a sudden burst of energy, which lasted approximately three minutes – the time it took to reach the foot of the hill and be presented with the tallest, steepest set of stone steps I had ever encountered. The thought of dragging my case up this man-made mountain was too much to bear. So I opened my case and took out the bottle of soda I’d bought at a kiosk outside the station. It was warm and sickly, but in that moment, it was like drinking nectar from heaven. I downed about half the bottle, then put it back in my case and began my ascent. But after about five steps, calamity struck. I obviously hadn’t shut my case properly, because all of a sudden it flew open and all of the contents scattered in a wide arc around me.

‘Darn it!’ I yelped as I crouched down and started to retrieve them as fast as I could. All the while, I was aware of feet hurrying by me. Feet no doubt belonging to the effortlessly chic and carefree French, the polar opposite to me, with my frazzled hair, cesspit armpits and burning cheeks.

I heard a man say something in French right behind me and then a hand appeared, holding a pair of my nylons. Oh, Lord have mercy!

‘Thank you!’ I said, grabbing them without daring to look at the hand’s owner.

‘Aha, you are English,’ the voice said. I was so overjoyed to hear my native tongue, I spun around.

The owner of the voice was tall and wiry and about my age, with floppy brown hair and big brown eyes as a soulful as a puppy dog’s. But it was his smile that I noticed more than anything. It was so relaxed, a smile that conjured words in my mind like ‘lolling’, ‘ambling’ and ‘meandering’.

‘Actually, I’m American,’ I said, when I’d finally composed myself enough to speak.

‘How do you do?’ He held out his hand. The formality of his address was in sharp contrast with his appearance. His shirt was half-untucked with sleeves rolled up, and his trousers were baggy with a patch on the knee.

I had no option but to shake his hand, still crouching there on the steps, surrounded by my undergarments. ‘I guess I didn’t shut it properly,’ I said by way of explanation as I repacked my case, then shut it and checked the catches twice over.

‘An easy mistake.’ He treated me to that sleepy grin again. ‘Hey, did you forget this?’ He handed me my book of Walt Whitman poetry.

‘Oh, yes, thank you.’

‘May I compliment you on your taste?’

I frowned at him. Was this guy a chancer, or was he genuinely a fan of Walt?

‘Are you familiar with his poems?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

I still wasn’t sure if he was feeding me a line. I realised I was hardly a prime catch, what with my frizzy hair and sweaty armpits and all, but some men truly weren’t fussy. ‘So, which is your favourite poem of his?’

‘“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing”,’ he replied instantly.

Hmm. I still wasn’t convinced. At the ripe old age of twenty-one, I’d become pretty cynical when it came to men. ‘Do you have a favourite line from the poem?’

He nodded. ‘“It grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green.”’ He gazed off dreamily to some trees on the hill. ‘I love how Whitman saw leaves as joyful exclamations. I have never looked at a tree in the same way since reading that poem.’

I stared at him, fighting the urge to grin. I loved that line too. Every spring when the leaves grew back on the trees on our farm, it felt as if they were joyfully uttering: We’re here! We’re back again!

‘Would you like some help?’ he asked, looking back at me. ‘With your case?’

Ordinarily I would never have admitted defeat. But it was so hot and I was feeling so weak by that point, I had no choice but to nod numbly.

‘Which is your favourite poem of his?’ he asked, taking the case from me.

‘“Song of Myself”.’

‘That isn’t a poem, that is a bible!’

‘What do you mean?’

His cheeks flushed. ‘I mean it is something to live by, no?’

By this point I’d started to wonder if I was having some weird kind of heat-induced hallucination. Ever since I’d first read ‘Song of Myself’, I had tried to live my life by it. I’d never thought of it as a bible, though, and I had to admit, I kind of liked the idea. I sure found a lot more inspiration in the Gospel According to Walt than I did in the gospels I’d studied in Bible lessons at school.

‘Where are you headed?’ he asked as we made our way up the steps.

‘To my new lodgings.’ A shiver of excitement ran up my spine as I uttered those words.

‘You are living here, in Paris?’ His eyes widened.

I nodded. ‘How about you?’

‘I am just visiting – this time. I plan to move here for good next year.’ He gave a wistful smile. ‘I am Otto. Otto Weiss, from Austria.’

‘Nice to meet you, Otto Weiss, from Austria. I’m Florence. Florence Thornton from Arkansas.’

‘Ah, you are named after the most beautiful place in all of Italy.’

‘You’ve been?’

‘Yes, as a child. My parents an. . .