by Alicia Drake
Maman calls me on her mobile.
“Where are you?” she says.
“At the jardin.”
“Have you got Lou with you?”
“Yeah,” I say, “I’ve got Lou.”
“Are you coming home for lunch?”
I don’t reply straightaway. I am watching Lou as she slaps at the mounds around her, her mouth pursed in concentration, her eyelashes long and dark against her cheek.
“I got you Venetian pizza like you like, Paul,” Maman says, her voice silken. “With spicy oil.”
I stand up and brush the sand off my legs. I know what she wants.
“I’ll come,” I say.
Then I turn to Lou.
“Come on, bébé, it’s time to go. Maman needs us.”
Lou looks up at me and smiles. She has teeth now.
She points a stubby finger.
“Gâteau?” she says and she holds one finger up in front of her eye. “Gâteau?” she says again, trying to wheedle one more out of me before we head home.
I bend down and kiss her soft hair. She smells of vanilla and wet sand. I hold out my hand and she grips it in hers. Her hand is damp and sandy in mine. She holds on to my fingers and uses me to stand up, balancing herself against my leg.
“Come on, Lou,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
We walk back along the path near where I first saw Scarlett and Stéphane kissing. The little flowers are out like they were that day. They are different than all the other flowers in the jardin; they are not here for show in grand flower beds or planted in big stone vases. They grow up all on their own; they push their way through the dark earth and the dead leaves, and their beauty makes me sad. I asked a gardener once what they were. He said they’re miniature cyclamen. He said they represent true love.
They are a pale violet color and their petals are thin and unfolding, almost transparent. I bend down and pick one; they have a liquid running through their stems that keeps them standing upright.
The breeze blows through the cyclamen and all the little heads nod and flutter and I think of you, Scarlett. I miss you.
I miss you too much.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Harriet Moore, my agent, who understood Paul from the very beginning and who helped me throughout. I am extremely grateful to my editors, Judy Clain and Paul Baggaley, for their wisdom and editorial direction. I would like to thank Tracy Roe, Pamela Marshall, and Alexandra Hoopes at Little, Brown, and Kish Widyaratna and Nicholas Blake at Picador.
I would like to express my great thanks to Claudia Shear, Lily Reece, and Laure de Gramont, who so generously shared their knowledge, judgment, and insight. I thank Tim Pears for giving me both precious advice and the confidence to go back to my original voice.
Many people helped me in significant ways; thank you to Tom Alden, Alexis André, Alice Armstrong-Scales, Vincent Aslangul, Louise Bartlett, Renaud de Beaugourdon, Nick Birts, Stéphane Brossard, Penny Budgen, Hannah Burbidge, Jean-Pascal and Charlotte Bus, Laurent Buttazzoni, Karen Charlett, Xavier Chaumette, Sarah Cherqui-Fürst, Lucy Cornell, Henrietta Courtauld, Jane Darling, Marie-Laure Dauchez, Marie Donnelly, Sarah Drake, Christian Dumais-Lvowski, Rosalina Enriquez, Laurent Faury, Joséfa Fernandes, Robert Ferrell, Amanda Foreman, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, Felicity Gillespie, Hélène Harvey, Jodie Hutchins, Tran Huu Nghia, Isabelle Jordan-Ghizzo, Lizzy Kremer, Molly Laub, Christian Louboutin, Lulu Lytle, Anna Maxted, Marcus Reuben, Catherine Roggero, Marie-Avril Roux, Fleur Scott, Beverley Thompson, Charlotte Thompson, Sarah Turnbull, Wendy Washbourn, and Rozelle Webster. Thank you to my parents, George and Charlotte Drake.
All my love and thanks I give to Rupert, Lily, Hathorn, Peony, Sapphire, and Gisèle. You inspire me with your love and boundless support.
About the Author
Brought up in Liverpool, Alicia Drake was educated at Cambridge University. She went to Paris for six months and stayed for eighteen years. She is the author of The Beautiful Fall, a book of narrative nonfiction about Paris fashion and creativity in the 1970s. She returned to the UK recently and now lives in the countryside with her husband and five children. I Love You Too Much is her first novel.
Also by Alicia Drake
The Beautiful Fall
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