Honeymoon in Paris: A Novella

correctly, Sophie, it was you who seduced me that first time. Or does that not suit your newly remembered version of events?’
    ‘This is meant to make me feel better? That I was the only one of your models you didn’t try to make love to?’
    His voice exploded into the quiet studio. ‘What is wrong, Sophie? Why do you wish to torture yourself like this? We are happy, you and I. You know I have not so much as looked at another woman since we met!’
    I began to applaud, each sharp clap breaking into the silent studio. ‘Well done, Édouard! You have remained faithful all the way to our honeymoon! Oh, how admirable!’
    ‘For God’s sake!’ He threw down his napkin. ‘Where is my wife? My happy, glowing, loving wife? And who is this woman I get in her place? This suspicious misery? This pinch-faced accuser?’
    ‘Oh, so
that
is how you truly see me?’
    ‘Well, is this whom you have become, now we are actually married?’
    We stared at each other. The silence expanded, filled the room. Outside a child burst into noisy tears and a mother’s voice could be heard, scolding and comforting.
    Édouard ran a hand over his face. He took a deep breath and stared out of the window, then turned back to me. ‘You know that is not how I see you. You know I – Oh, Sophie, I don’t understand the genesis of this fury. I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve such …’
    ‘Well, why don’t you ask them?’ I thrust my hand out towards his canvases. My voice emerged as a sob. ‘For what can a provincial shop girl like me hope to understand about your life, after all?’
    ‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ he said, and threw down his napkin.
    ‘It’s being married to you that is the impossibility. And I’m starting to wonder why you ever bothered.’
    ‘Well, Sophie, you are not alone in that at least.’ My husband fixed me with a look, whipped his coat off our bed, then turned and walked out of the door.

Chapter Five
    2012
    When he calls, she is on the bridge. She cannot say how long she has sat there. Its wire sides are almost obscured with padlocks on which people have inscribed their initials, and all along it tourists stoop, reading the initials on the little pieces of metal, scrawled in permanent pen or engraved by those with forethought. Some take pictures of each other, pointing to the padlocks they think are particularly beautiful, or have just placed there themselves.
    She remembers David telling her about this place before they came here, about how lovers would secure the padlocks and throw the keys into the Seine as a mark of their enduring love, and of how when the padlocks were painstakingly removed by the city authorities they simply reappeared within days, engraved with everlasting love, the initials of lovers who, two years on, might still be together or might by now have moved to different continents rather than breathe the same air. He had told her how the riverbed under the bridge had to be dredged regularly, harvesting the rusting mass of keys.
    Now she sits on the bench, trying not to look at them too closely, beyond the simple spectacle of them, their shimmering surfaces. She does not want to think about what they mean.
    ‘Meet me at the Pont des Arts,’ she had said to him. Nothing more.
    Perhaps there was something in her voice.
    ‘I’ll be twenty minutes,’ he’d said.
    She sees him coming from the Musée du Louvre, his blue shirt becoming more vivid as he gets closer. He is wearing khaki-coloured trousers and she thinks, with a pang, how much she loves the sight of him. How familiar his shape is to her, even after such a short time. She looks at his soft, ruffled hair, and the planes of his face, and the way his walk always has a touch of impatience, as if he’s keen to get to the next thing. And then she sees that over his shoulder he has the leather bag in which he carries his plans.
    What have I done?
    He doesn’t smile as he approaches, even though it’s clear he has seen her. He walks up to her, slowing his pace, then drops his bag and sits down beside her.
    They are silent for some minutes, watching the tourist boats glide past.
    And finally Liv says, ‘I can’t do this.’
    She looks down the route of the Seine, squinting at the people who, even now, are stooping to examine the padlocks.
    ‘I think we’ve made the most awful mistake. I’ve made a mistake.’
    ‘A mistake?’
    ‘I know I’m impulsive. I see now we should have slowed things down. We should