Emerging from the metro station, Hannah opened her eyes on a strange world into which she’d stumbled by chance. All was new and filled with a radiance she’d never known before in the antipodean world she’d left behind. Hippies were twanging their guitars along the River Seine, and flower sellers, good and bad artists, and precious bookstall owners, were hawking their wares along the promenade with its ancient cobblestones that had witnessed so many historic events, including bloodstained revolutions. She felt herself seduced at every turn. Perhaps there was such a thing as your spiritual home, quite distinct from where you were born? She would find out.
The Frenchman she’d met while travelling across the Channel had offered her the use of his apartment for two weeks. Why not? she thought. Her tourist’s trip through the Mediterranean countries could wait. Surprisingly generous and eccentric to a fault, these French, she thought, which was opposite to what she’d been told to expect. She’d found his street in a Michelin Guide bought at the Gare du Nord: rue Servandoni, in the sixth arrondissement. One change and out at the metro station near the Seine.