All of the guests are seated now, their glasses refilled. Their smiles beam across the table to me as Luc stands.
‘So, ma fille chérie, our friends wanted to share their favourite places with you for your journey.’ Tobi picks up a gift box covered in what looks like pages from an atlas, tied with a huge bow the colour of the summer sky. The gathered guests smile as they pass it towards me. Their collective excitement is palpable as the box reaches my hands; twelve held breaths as I untie the ribbon and lift the lid.
Inside, lying on a bed of primrose yellow tissue paper, is a leather journal embossed with a gold-leaf phoenix.
‘This is beautiful.’
‘Look inside, Miss Phee,’ Luc says.
The first ten pages are covered in a patchwork of handwriting – some small and studied, some flamboyant and looped, written in a mix of blue, black, red and green inks. The rest of the book has quotes at the top of every other page, written in Luc’s beautiful hand-lettering. Each one comes from a classic novel. It must have taken him hours to complete.
‘The pages at the front are lists of our favourite things to see in the places you will be visiting,’ Tobi smiles. ‘All suggestions of course, but things your guidebooks might not tell you.’
‘And the rest of the book is yours to write in,’ Luc adds, his hand warm on my shoulder. ‘All of your adventures, all of your thoughts.’
I am stunned by their kindness and what this gift signifies. Not only love for my journey but support for my fledgling writing. Halfway between sobs and laughter, I stare at them all. ‘I – I don’t know what to say…’
Tobi takes my hand. ‘Say nothing. Write instead.’
* * *
The next day, on my way back to Tobi and Luc’s, I decide to walk down a street that I’ve always passed by but never ventured into. It leads me to a small paved square with a little green park at one side. Square Jehan-Rictus. I’m surprised to find it packed with tourists. When I follow the line of their trained camera lenses, I see why.
On blue tiles mounted to one wall of the garden, the words I love you have been written in hundreds of languages. The effect of so many versions of the same phrase is beautiful – and utterly overwhelming.
So many words, all expressing the same thing. Crossing borders both physical and psychological, crossing the divide between languages and religions – the single unifying emotion that makes us all human. It’s a powerful statement in a world more attuned to hate and suspicion. Love isn’t a soppy, frivolous emotion: it’s powerful, honest and potentially world changing.
I don’t regret saying I loved Sam because I do – but those words have so much more power than I realised, and I understand that now. Coming at him as they did, completely unannounced, must have felt like the impact this mural has had on me. Even if he loves me – or is on the way towards it – being presented with it so suddenly must have been overwhelming. And typed, too, not said.
I take my new notebook from my bag and start to write. I want to tell Sam immediately, call him right now and say that I understand. But that would be wrong. If he loves me, he’ll tell me. I have to trust him.
Instead, I pour out my heart in the pages of the journal. Until now, everything I’ve written has been about what I’ve seen: this is the first time my heart has strayed onto the page. The words appear in my mind faster than my hand can capture them and it’s almost as if they are being dictated to me from somewhere else – as if the many-accented voices of the mural tiles are calling out to me.
When I’m finished, I read it back.
It’s powerful – far from perfect, but the emotion sings from the marks I’ve made on the page.
In that moment, I make myself a promise: in this journal I will be completely honest. I will write down everything I think and feel, alongside the places I see and the people I meet. If Sam and I make it through this year, I will let him read it. If he loves me on the day we meet again, this will be my gift to him.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ A lady smiles as she stands beside me. She is tiny and has a camera around her neck with a huge lens attached that seems to be almost half her height. ‘A guy in the café across the street told me about it. There are a thousand I love you messages, in over three hundred languages.’
‘Would you take my picture in front of it?’ I ask, the thought appearing as I say the words.
‘Of course,’ she says, accepting my camera and waiting for me to find a space in the posing tourists beside the mural.
Afterwards, I buy a coffee from the café across the street and take a seat in the garden opposite the mural. Each couple and group find their language on the wall and pose for photos. It’s lovely to watch.
‘Excusez-moi, parlez-vous anglais?’ A young man is standing by me when I turn.
‘Yes I do.’
‘Oh great. Would you mind taking our photo? We’re on our honeymoon.’
After the man and his beaming bride pose for their photograph, we get talking. Giselle and André are from Prince Edward Island in Canada. They met at high school and when they tell me how they met, I am stunned.
‘We only met because our math teacher mixed up our assignments. I would never have had the guts to talk to her if it weren’t for that mistake.’
‘And I’d been in love with him since the first day of school, but he’d never even looked at me before. It was a random error but for us it was the start of everything.’
Listening to their story I’m struck by how both of our situations could have been called mistakes or bad luck in the beginning. Getting someone else’s paper and having the embarrassment of asking the other person for it back; being stranded at a train station for six hours on the day your biggest adventure is due to begin, meeting someone in the middle of your panic…
My heart is warmed by the young lovers’ story. Maybe one day Sam and I will be by a landmark like this, sharing our story of how we met to inspire someone else reeling from a crazy serendipity that’s sent their lives spinning in a new direction.
Maybe in the end we are all just stories waiting to be shared.
* * *
Later still, on a bench in the park near Sacré-Cœur where I told Luc about what happened at St Pancras when my train was delayed, I write an email to Sam.
* * *
Hi Sam,
* * *
I’m almost ready to leave Paris and last night Tobi, Luc and their friends gave me a gorgeous travel journal with lists of all their favourite places in France and Italy. I’m heading to Troyes first – I found a great place on Airbnb that’s right in the heart of the town. Probably won’t be there long enough for another scary Scottish postcard (in case you have more in your arsenal) but feel free to message me if you like.
Can I just say something? I haven’t wanted to address it before but today I realised how forward I was saying I loved you. It was a spur of the moment thing, not a test. I don’t need to hear it back or anything. It is how I feel but I understand how it came out was probably a shock. I’m sorry for chucking that at you.
I hope things went well with the person who knew your dad. I think what you’re doing is amazing, Sam. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for.