Free Almost French by Sarah Turnbull

hands doesn’t help matters, naturally. During long days alone, I dwell on my doubts and they flourish under my attention. They give me something to do; a focus. No wonder living here wasn’t turning out to be the Parisian dream life I’d envisaged—it’s not even Paris! My friend is right. When it comes to Paris there is no middle ground—you’re either in or you’re out. Slowly the truth sinks in: we are two metro stops too far.
    It occurs to me my friend may be right about another thing. In Paris, postcodes matter. Whereas in Sydney they are purely functional, their purpose simply to ensure mail ends up in the right place, here they’re evocative and, yes, even romantic. Paris postcodes begin with 75 and end in one of the twenty arrondissements , or numbered districts which spiral out clockwise from the city centre. These last figures are numerical indicators loaded with information and significance. The final five in 75005 conjures up nostalgic images of smoky student cafés full of Audrey Hepburn look-a-likes and dark brooding boys. The 8th arrondissement signals pomp and palaces, smart business lunches and famous French fashion houses. Neighbouring 75016 is all about poodle parlours and stiff cocktail parties with caviar canapés. The four in 75004 transports you to the ancient village streets lined with gay bars and Jewish bakeries in the vibrant Marais quarter.
    But 92300—our postcode—is a numerical no-man’s-land. Like the area it designates, it is devoid of magic and sex appeal, sandwiched between Paris and the luxurious mansions and modern apartments of nouveau-riche Neuilly-sur-Seine. Levallois is lovely and leafy. It is also dull. There are no lively cafés, no decent restaurants open at night. At first I’d thought the area was fabulously multicultural, a hotbed of mixed marriages. During the day the sidewalks are crowded with African and Asian mothers pushing prams. But then it clicked—these women are not related to their pale-faced charges. They are nannies, or nounous as the French call them. The real parents can be seen after school finishes on Saturday, loading children and dogs into cars, off to family homes in the Loire or Normandy.
    Frankly, if I’d wanted trees and blond Labradors that badly, I would have headed home to Sydney’s North Shore. What I want is to live in one of those old white apartment buildings run by a grumbling concierge, round the corner from a crowded café where I could read the newspaper each morning while the barman banters with a regular line-up of red-wine raconteurs. Nearby, there’d be a couple of trustedbistros serving melting chèvre chaud at lunch, heart-warming cassoulet for dinner. I want to step out my front door and be amid the buzz, the bohemian poets, the brasseries, the bums, the crooked boutiques, the achingly beautiful window displays, the chic mesdames with spaghetti legs and neurotic terriers. In short, I want to live in Paris.
    It’s the suburban inertia of Levallois that creates the first tension between Frédéric and me. Although pretty in a well-maintained, middle-class sort of way, for me, cooped up in the apartment day after day, Levallois starts to seem like a prison. The city centre is a twenty-minute metro ride away—longer if you have to change lines—and so it’s not something you do for a quick coffee. I feel stranded and that only exacerbates my loneliness.
    But for Frédéric, Levallois is a refuge. After all, he has an office to escape to, one that is conveniently located ten minutes away in the modern business district of La Défense. ‘We’re lucky,’ he insists. ‘We’re so close to the city centre and yet we can wake up and hear birds singing every morning.’ He doesn’t understand my frustration with where we live. Before moving to Levallois he spent ten years in Paris and although he loves the city, he is stubbornly opposed to the idea of moving back there. ‘Here we’ve got the best of both worlds,’ he