Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

‘Right now. And you’re not allowed to say Kilimanjaro. It has to be
somewhere I can imagine going myself.’
When Will’s face relaxed, he looked like someone quite different. A smile
settled across his face now, his eyes creasing with pleasure. ‘Paris. I would sit
outside a cafe in Le Marais and drink coffee and eat a plate of warm croissants
with unsalted butter and strawberry jam.’
‘Le Marais?’
‘It’s a little district in the centre of Paris. It is full of cobbled streets and
teetering apartment blocks and gay men and orthodox Jews and women of a
certain age who once looked like Brigitte Bardot. It’s the only place to stay.’
I turned to face him, lowering my voice. ‘We could go,’ I said. ‘We could do it
on the Eurostar. It would be easy. I don’t think we’d even need to ask Nathan to
come. I’ve never been to Paris. I’d love to go. Really love to go. Especially with
someone who knows his way around. What do you say, Will?’
I could see myself in that cafe. I was there, at that table, maybe admiring a
new pair of French shoes, purchased in a chic little boutique, or picking at a
pastry with Parisian red fingernails. I could taste the coffee, smell the smoke
from the next table’s Gauloises.
‘No.’
‘What?’ It took me a moment to drag myself away from that roadside table.
‘No.’
‘But you just told me –’
‘You don’t get it, Clark. I don’t want to go there in this – this thing.’ He
gestured at the chair, his voice dropping. ‘I want to be in Paris as me, the old me.
I want to sit in a chair, leaning back, my favourite clothes on, with pretty French
girls who pass by giving me the eye just as they would any other man sitting
there. Not looking away hurriedly when they realize I’m a man in an overgrown
bloody pram.’
‘But we could try,’ I ventured. ‘It needn’t be –’
‘No. No, we couldn’t. Because at the moment I can shut my eyes and know
exactly how it feels to be in the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, cigarette in hand,
clementine juice in a tall, cold glass in front of me, the smell of someone’s steak
frites cooking, the sound of a moped in the distance. I know every sensation of
it.’