It turns out the trip was a forewarning for the fate of our relationship. Despite making me dazzled and starry-eyed at the beginning, and treating me to romantic gestures like the trip to Paris, his need to be my everything and have all of my attention, all of the time, left me feeling drained. Even worse, the frightening regularity with which he would challenge how I felt about him and fly well and truly off the hanger sometimes left me feeling a bit scared.

After months of painful picking at the scab of our relationship, we finally stopped speaking for good and I thought that Paris was somewhere I would never want to go again. My ex is from near Paris, which made the idea of being surrounded by a whole city of people that sounded like him feel utterly overwhelming, and going back to a place that so potently reminded me of ‘us’ felt impossible.

Then my dad announced that Paris was the very place he wanted to go over his next birthday weekend. I felt myself tense up immediately at the suggestion. But considering how much I love my dad and that a 20-year long battle with alcoholism (he’s now four years sober, which is great) had robbed him of not only often a roof over his head, a career and lots of friends – but also the chance to visit one of the most beautiful cities on earth – I decided to give him a resounding oui, and count myself in.

How I reclaimed Paris, City of Love, for myself after an earth-shattering break-up