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I got back on, still not sure if I was doing the right thing. Before I could decide if I was or if I wasn’t, he pulled off, pointing out the Jardin des Tuileries on our left, which I thought might lead up to the Louvre. I held on tightly as we carved our way through gridlocked, beeping traffic on the biggest, most chaotic roundabout I’d ever seen in my life. It was like a wild west of cars and bikes and mopeds coming from all directions, as far as the eye could see. There were no road markings either, so how you were supposed to know which lane to be in, or how to cut across to come off at your turning, I had no idea.
‘Where are we?’ I shouted.
‘Place de la Concorde,’ he called back. ‘Marie Antoinette was beheaded right here, in this square.’
‘Seriously?’ I yelled turning my head as if to catch a glimpse of some relic from the past.
‘So you can think about death again,’ he said, laughing to himself.
Somehow we fought our way through to the other side, passing the Hôtel de Crillon on our right. Wasn’t that where they held those ridiculously old-fashioned debutante balls? A film crew was gathered outside, their camera equipment by their feet, some sort of location truck parked in the bay out front.
‘A beautiful hotel,’ said Léo, when we stopped to let a stream of cars out in front of us. ‘But even the simplest room costs over one thousand euros per night.’
And then we turned onto a very long, straight road. The Champs-Élysées, I thought, spotting the Arc de Triomphe standing majestically in the distance. Red brake lights snaked in front of us like ticker tape, hundreds of them, four lanes deep.
‘What’s that?’ I asked him when we stopped at a junction, daring to hold on with one hand while I pointed to a building with glass domes and bronze chariots sprouting out of its roof.
‘The Grand Palais,’ Léo replied over his shoulder. ‘A very nice exhibition space and art gallery. In the winter, you can skate on the biggest ice rink in the world.’
Another thing that was ‘the biggest in the world’. I was beginning to think his – admittedly quite interesting – facts about Paris were ever so slightly biased.
We pulled off the Champs-Élysées and Léo accelerated now there was less stopping and starting, whizzing past trendy hotels with smoked glass windows, chic patisseries and boutiques advertising haute couture. I spotted Alaïa; Atelier Christian Dior. It was like a different world, this street; I could picture the wealthy women who shopped here sliding in and out of chauffeur-driven cars, stopping for long lunches that probably cost as much as my weekly salary.
‘Hold tighter,’ he shouted, as we drove up onto a bridge and whipped across the Seine. The wind was blowing through my hair, which had long ago escaped its bun; the sun warmed the back of my neck and I could see the Eiffel Tower shooting into the sky right in front of us. I’d always dismissed it as tacky, branding it nothing more than a tourist trap, but now that I could see it properly, or perhaps because of the angle I was seeing it from, it took my breath away.
On the other side of the bridge, we turned into a side street where Léo pulled over and turned off the engine.
‘Come. There is something I want to show you,’ he said, leaping off.
‘What is it?’ I asked him, a buzz of excitement rippling through me. I hadn’t felt like this in ages. He beckoned for me to follow him.
‘You will see,’ said Léo mysteriously, stepping out onto a zebra crossing despite me worrying that the oncoming bus wasn’t actually going to stop.
I hesitated.
‘What are you doing, Hannah?’ he asked, throwing his arms in the air.
‘Do cars have the right of way or people?’ I called to him.
He waved me after him. ‘People, of course. You show the traffic you intend to cross and then you cross.’
‘But what if they don’t see you?’
He shook his head and marched off. I followed him nervously, not sure which way to look first, and of course the traffic simply stopped to let me pass, as I should have guessed it would. What had I imagined? Honking cars full of angry Parisians shaking their fist at me? A pile-up, with me stranded in the middle of the street surrounded by twisted metal? I watched Léo striding off, so carefree and sure of himself, and I wished that I could just do things too, without driving myself mad with all the reasons why I shouldn’t.
A small crowd had gathered on the corner and Léo had already joined them by the time I caught him up. I wondered what all the fuss was about, but when I looked up and saw what they could see, my mouth actually dropped open. Sandwiched between two creamy, balconied apartment buildings was the most perfect view of the Eiffel Tower, right there in front of us. With the cobbled street, the sky with a hint of blue behind the clouds, the pop of green from the trees growing under its arch, I could see why it was every Instagrammer’s dream shot. I immediately put my camera to my eye, trying to capture it in a way that did it justice. I wanted to feel the essence of it and its size, which was much more imposing than I remembered from before, although of course I’d been further away from it then.
‘As you can see, we are not the only ones who know about this place,’ said Léo, watching, amused, as a girl in a beret and a striped Breton top took pictures of herself using a selfie stick. A Japanese guy was photographing his friend, who was looking enigmatically up at the top of the tower with his hands in his pockets.
‘It’s such a lovely view,’ I said, framing an abstract shot of just the very top of the tower.
‘You enjoy taking photographs?’ asked Léo, as I crouched down to look at the scene from a different perspective.
I nodded, standing up, suddenly unable to contain my enthusiasm. ‘I’ve loved it since I was a little girl,’ I told him. ‘Every year I’d ask for one of those disposable cameras for Christmas – do you remember them? – and I’d spend ages deciding how best to use those 27 frames or whatever it was. I’d take covert photos of people doing something that summed up who they were as a person: my mum ironing, for example. The boys from across the road whizzing past on their BMXs, standing up on the pedals. Or I’d go to the park and take what I thought was a very arty shot of a rusty old climbing frame.’
‘Sounds fascinating,’ said Léo, smiling to himself.
‘Well I thought so.’
