we had met in a little seaside town just north of Marseille in the cool summer of 1975. It had been 2 years now and I could barely remember what life felt like before it all. she was a young writer from Sicily, 20 something with eyes that burned with desire and dreams for a life that simmered somewhere in the dark. for some time it was beautiful, long days spent by the water with the cliffs on each side of the beach, hot walks back to the car, her cheeks warm and red in the s

it was as it had to be, the spring of 1993 in the Alps just north of Lake Garda. hot nights and sleepless days, bathing by the Lake as the sun passed gently over the mountains, cool mornings in the Chalet, her bare feet on the floorboards by the fire. carrying her from the bathtub to the bedroom, the way her skin felt pressed against mine, the way her arms wrapped around my neck and she kissed my shoulder. the handsome young knight with his books and his words, the princess w

it was as if we had met in past lives, probably in more than one. although we had arrived in the first few days of spring in Paris, the city seemed to whisper to me that we had been here before. it was her first time here and the streets were beginning to shed their coats of thick ice from the winter. she seemed to bring with her enough life to return the colour to the cherry blossoms that ran along the river south towards Montmartre. it didn't take us long to tender our way

the winter had finally set in across Paris and the city was beginning to freeze under blankets of snow. some nights we would watch shadows dance on the walls as the snow fell like feathers and the fire smoked in silence. she would rest against my chest for warmth, falling asleep as the sky bled with midnight and my heart bled with pain. although the time for me to write about the love that I found in the summer was beginning to end, I still felt like there was so much more to

it was the summer of 1973 and the heatwave had fallen across our little island off the coast of Sicily. there were some cliffs just a small drive from Scopello where the bluff was sharp and the water blue. it had been 2 years and I finally felt alive again in the heat of the Italian summer. we spent the days in the shade of beach umbrellas and bookshops where all I ever looked for was copies of Hemingway and anything that resembled you. in the evenings we would drink Sangria

it was just past midnight on the road between Villefranche and Cannes, she rested against me in the back of a black taxi with the windows down and the lights of the Riviera flashing past. her head in my lap, my arm around her waist, her mind on the road. her lips tasted of coconut and lime and flecks of salt from the French sea, her eyes a glassy blue and her cheeks warm. she leant across me with intention, pulling her hair behind her ear, resting her head in my lap with her

and so the rain began, a burning desire kept quiet under the drizzle of a cool night sky. Paris in the winter, beautifully frozen, terribly bleak, the city of love, the city of ruin, my city of heartache. she had been gone 3 weeks now and neither of us were to be the same again. in the spring we would sneak into bookshops to escape the cold, I remember holding her gently as she traced her fingers across books with pretty covers and titles that made us laugh. her hand in mine,

we had taken the road south from Biarritz to San Sebastián in late June. the crowds were making their way to Pamplona for the fiesta of San Fermin. a place where wine spilled into the streets and bulls duelled with matadors in the late afternoon. she had always wanted to see them fight, and here was the greatest fight of them all. the road led through the mountains towards València where we would swim again in the dawn before the sun rose. I could see her blonde slicked back