Honeymoon in Paris: A Novella

singing or whistling or playing his gramophone so loudly that the neighbours would thump on the walls in irritation. The sparrows chattered in the ivy that covered our walls, and the distant sound of horses’ hoofs on the cobbles spoke of a slowly waking city, but the little apartment at the top of 21a rue Soufflot was utterly silent.
    I tried not to think about where he might have been, or in what frame of mind. I took off my shoes and hurried up the last of the stairs, my feet muffled on the wooden steps, wanting already to climb into bed beside him and wrap myself around him. I would tell him how sorry I was, how I adored him, how I had been a fool. I would be the woman he had married.
    My mind hummed with my need for him. I opened the apartment door quietly, already imagining him lying in a tangle in our sheets and coverlet, his arm rising sleepily to lift them and allow me in. But when I looked, already peeling my coat from my shoulders, our bed was empty.
    I hesitated, stepped past the sleeping area and into the main studio. I felt oddly nervous suddenly, unsure of my reception. ’Édouard?’ I called.
    There was no answer.
    I walked in. The studio was dimly lit, the candles burning low where I had left them in my hurry to quit the apartment, the long window glowing a cold blue with the early-morning light. The chill in the air suggested that the fire had gone out hours ago. At the end of the room, beside the canvases, Édouard stood in his chemise and loose trousers, his back to me, gazing at a canvas.
    I stood in the doorway staring at my husband, at his broad back, his thick dark hair, before he realized I was there. He turned to me and I saw a fleeting wariness in his eyes –
what’s coming now?
– and the sight of it bruised me.
    I walked towards him, my shoes in my hand. I had imagined hurling myself into his arms all the way back down rue de Babylone. I had thought I would not be able to stop myself. But now, in the still, silent room, something held me back. I stopped a few inches in front of him, my eyes not leaving his, and found myself turning towards the easel.
    The woman in the canvas was hunched forwards, her face mute and furious, her dark red hair tied back loosely at her neck as mine had been the previous evening. Her body spoke of tension, a deeply held unhappiness, her refusal to look directly at the artist a silent rebuke. And a sob rose in my throat.
    ‘It’s … perfect,’ I said, when I could speak.
    He turned to me and I saw he was exhausted, his eyes red with what might have been lack of sleep or something else altogether. And I wanted to wipe the sadness from his face, to take back my words, to make him happy again. ‘Oh, I have been so foolish –’ I began. But he beat me to it, gathering me to him.
    ‘Don’t leave me again, Sophie,’ he said softly into my ear, and his voice was thick with emotion.
    We did not speak. We clutched each other so tightly, as if it were years that we had been separated, not hours.
    His voice, against my skin, was ragged and broken. ‘I had to paint you because I couldn’t bear that you weren’t here and it was the only way I could bring you back.’
    ‘I’m here,’ I murmured. I wound my fingers into his hair, bringing my face to his, breathing the air that he breathed. ‘I won’t leave you again. Ever.’
    ‘I wanted to paint you as you are. But all that would come was this furious, unhappy Sophie. And all I could think was, I am the cause of her unhappiness.’
    I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t you, Édouard. Let us forget this night. Please.’
    He reached out a hand and turned the easel away from me. ‘Then I won’t finish this. I don’t even want you to look at it. Oh, Sophie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry …’
    I kissed him then. I kissed him and I made sure my kiss told him how I adored him from within my very bones, how my life before him had been a grey, colourless thing, and a future without him terrifying and black. I told him in the kiss that I loved him more than I had ever thought I was capable of loving anyone. My husband. My handsome, complicated, brilliant husband. I couldn’t say the words: my feelings were too vast for them.
    ‘Come,’ I said finally, and, my fingers entwined in his, I pulled him by the hand to our bed.
    Some time later, when the street below was alive with the sounds of late morning, and the fruit-sellers had made their rounds, and the smell of coffee floating up through our open window had