Leaving.

I push the tears far back from the brim of my eyelids, back into a place inside my head where they won't resurface for at least another week. Sighing, I try to breathe in the image of my little room at home, my room, such as to act as a little peaceful memory to serve me some comfort in the weeks ahead of reading, studying and generally feeling stupid as I start, for the first time in my life, as a "foreign student".

My cat could not care. I crouch down to her level on the sofa, where she spends the hours of 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. sleeping off the night before. I tell her "I'll be back at Christmas, Santa is bringing me home and I'll bring you some scallops from Paris." She opens one eye, squeaks, as if to say, "What the hell are you saying? I'm a small cat, trying to sleep and quite frankly, I don't care." The next day, I am told she pushes open the door to my room and gets confused when I am not there/my bed is not warm.

À vendredi, maman; she kisses me bye bye and warns me in the maternal way all mothers do when their child is journeying. I try not to notice my dad struggling to get the suitcase into the boot because the struggle that awaits me when I get it off the luggage belt at CDG to the flat is more than I can possibly think about for the moment. I try not to worry about it just now, (yet it plays in the back of my mind during the two flights I have to take anyway).

At the airport, I must be the first to check in: three hours early and already ridiculously bored. I buy the newspapers and try to muster up the hunger to eat a cherry and custard pastry which must have been "baked" about three months ago. Balancing the pastry, necessary cutlery, hot chocolate and required reading material at the counter, I 'politely' ask a couple of businessmen, "Excuse me please" as I try in earnest, to get away from the counter and into a seat. They ignore me twice, emballed in their self-importance and eventually, I have to push past, worrying that I WILL spill and consequently, cry.

I don't, happily, but am still pissed off. Removing my shoes as part of the latest 'security/hype' measure and walking through in my bare feet proves enough of a humiliation. It is here I switch off. I try not to notice the view of the mountains and all that they promise; what I'll be missing in months to come. I just listen to the announcements about putting on my own oxygen mask before that of my non-existant child first and read, read, read until the too-familiar bump.

The French passport check is laughably easy - "EU passport+20 year old female student" is a waiver in itself. My first words in French as a student in this country stun me, it is so familiar and seemingly too easy. Waiting in the scrum for the bags to bounce their way back into existence, the two businessmen from the airport café push their way in front of me to the conveyer belt.

I have an unbelievable squirm of unadulterated pleasure. Their knuckles are white as they clutch their "French Beginners' Phrase Books".

The RER train which takes me from the airport to my quartier has a four letter code. Which spells out my nickname.

I can't help feeling fate is guiding me home.