Where You Belong Read Online Free Page A

merits of the two cities, he would laugh and shake his head. “London is essential to me because it’s a man’s city,” he would remark, and wink at Jake.
    I had supposed he was alluding to those very British private clubs for men filled with old codgers reading The Times, the male-dominated pubs, cricket at Lords, football at Wembley, and the Savile Row tailors who appealed to his desire for sartorial elegance when not on the battlefront covering wars. He had never really discussed it in depth, but then, he had been like that about a lot of things, an expert at brushing certain matters aside if he didn’t want to talk about them.
    Thoughts of Tony intruded, swamped me, instantly washing away the mood of a few moments earlier, when I had felt almost happy again. I came to a stop abruptly, leaned against the wall of a building, taking deep breaths, willing the sudden surge of anguish to go away. Eventually it did recede, became less acute, and taking control of my swimming senses, I walked on purposefully.
    It struck me as being rather odd, the way I vacillated between bouts of mind-boggling pain at his loss and the most savage attacks of anger.
    There were those tear-filled days when I believed I would never recover from his death, which had been so sudden, so tragic, when grief was like an iron mantle weighting me down, bringing me to my knees. At these times it seemed that my sorrow was unendurable.
    Miraculously, though, my heartbreak would inexplicably wash away quite unexpectedly, and I would feel easier within myself, in much better spirits altogether, and I was glad of this respite from pain, this return to normality. I was almost like my old self.
    It was then that the anger usually kicked in with a vengeance, shaking me with its intensity. I was angry because Tony was dead when he should have been alive, and I blamed him for his terrible recklessness, the risks he had taken in Kosovo, risks that had ultimately cost him his life. Unnecessary risks, in my opinion.
    Destiny, I thought, and came to a halt. As I stood there in the middle of the street, frowning to myself, I suddenly understood with the most stunning rush of clarity that if character is destiny, then it had been Tony’s fate to die in the way he had. Because of his character . . . and who and what he was as a man.
    II
    After crossing the Place Saint-Michel, I made my way toward the Rue de la Huchette and walked down that narrow street, which long ago had been immortalized in a book by the American writer Elliot Paul, very aptly entitled A Narrow Street. After reading the book, I had been drawn to this particular area of Paris, and for the three years I was a student at the Sorbonne I had lived right there on the street, in a quaint little hotel called the Mont Blanc.
    The hotel came into my line of vision almost immediately, and as I strolled past, I glanced up at the room that had been mine, and I remembered those days in a swirl of unexpected nostalgia.
    Thirteen years ago now. Not so long really. But in certain ways they seemed far, far away, light-years away, those youthful days when things had been infinitely simpler in my life.
    So much had happened to me in the intervening years; I had lived a lifetime in them, and I had become a woman. A grown-up woman, mature and experienced.
    Glancing across the street, I eyed the El Djazier, the North African restaurant that had once been my local hangout . . . what a habitué I had been of that strange little nightspot full of colorful characters.
    Sandy Lonsdale, an English writer who had lived in the hotel at the same time as I did, had constantly predicted I would disappear one night, never to be seen again, whipped off to some disreputable brothel in Casablanca or Tangier by one of the seedy guys who lurked in the restaurant most nights.
    But of course that had never happened, the seedy men being perfectly innocuous in reality, and I had taken enormous pleasure in teasing Sandy