Just as well he liked the rain, for Paris offered plenty of it in November. It was a curious thing, early winter’s rain. In lieu of the fat drops sent by the summer humidity to deplete themselves against the glass, the chill preferred to leave a thin prism of fluid grey, which warped the quaint rooftops of the ninth arrondissement into grotesque spirals and sent Eiffel scurrying off to the far edge of the rain to bow his head and to be alone in the cold with his melancholy.

Had it been three years already? He rolled over and stared at her picture. She hadn’t changed. She still had that thick, black hair that curled out here and there from beneath her bonnet. A tiny nose perched itself above audacious apple-red lips that conveyed the faintest suggestion of a smile. He took the photograph and held it in front of him, running a thumb over the smooth skin of her face that three years ago, had received his tears as he held her close. Now he brought the frame to his face and breathed in her scent of soap and lavender.Yes, everything about her spoke of life and hope, even though her eyes had never opened and her feet had never touched the ground.

Now he let her photo rest back on his bedside table and sent his hand into the top drawer in search of her poem, the one he had written in the silence that very night as Clémentine slept off the anaesthetic in the soft, orange light of a Parisian Christmas Eve. He withdrew a crumpled paper, unfolded it and read aloud, even though he knew it by heart. The rain stopped to listen.

There it was again…that familiar lump in his throat that for the last eight months accompanied the sharp irony of the last line. It hadn’t always been that way, quite the opposite…until the strange forces claimed them and they began to drift apart.

Robbed of Giselle who would have exploded his self-centredness and without Clémentine to ridicule his self-pity, he had no obligations, no responsibilities. Like Giselle locked in her frame, he too was forever young.