Two weeks ago we were in Margate, my best friend and I. The tomatoes were too young, slices of flavourless sponge on my tongue. The first sign. Bedford, Caroline, I’d told him when he’d asked. Vendeuse, unfortunately; Gallerist, ideally; Paris. There was something in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. He was slicked back hair and bad grammar, ardent eyes and snakebites – oh, far too many snakebites – but there was something there. I’d felt it, sharp and true. When he came to find us, his smiles were angled at her. It’s fine, I said. I understand, I said. I don’t want to compete, I said. She shrugged.

It rained off and on – English summer, English seaside. Lying in bed at night, I heard the gulls screaming outside my window. In the afternoons, I walked the beach. Wind-whipped, I cuffed my trouser-legs and sat on the sand, salty and shivery in the weak sun. I tried to take pleasure in finding translucent sea glass, half-buried, in watching my footprints dissolve when the waves came in frothy. In the evenings, we jived in anonymous rooms. I wore a turtleneck sweater, and my lipstick didn’t budge. She wore her feelings lightly, chiffon layers stripped off day by day. Coeur d’artichaut. We thought that would be the end of it. I drifted along behind her towards the next one, and the next one after that. The band was hot, and the dance floor was full. I glanced over at her, but she was busy spinning.

He stood there, just there, beside me, both bashful and brash as he snaked an arm around my waist. His fingers played my hip like a guitar, tapping and shifting along with the melody. I didn’t feel like shouting over the music so I smiled, and he smiled back. It didn’t take much. He said the right things. They were simple and sweet. For once I felt seen. A plant thrust suddenly into the sun after weeks of darkened rooms. I’ve been thinking about changing my ticket, he whispered.

Let’s get two things straight from the start: No one is falling in love with anyone. No one is changing their life. I whispered to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Hold these as truths, and you can do whatever you like. It felt extraordinarily civilised. It felt like Peggy Guggenheim. But those were just words, and when he looked at me, they didn’t make much sense anymore. I couldn’t help myself. I tumbled. I fell. Margate, Paris, Darwin. No, not Darwin. A tiny town. You have to zoom in. There. These too were just words, points on a map. The internet effaces distance, up to a point. The internet reduces us to words, too. Words only hold power if you let them. Now I wait for words, sweat trickling down my back, licking dribbling gelato, red lipstick bleeding out into miniature tributaries at the edges of my mouth. Now the trains run late. An omen.

D: Whatchu doin?
D: Hows ur day? :)
C: My heart stopped looking at a Titian today. Mission Michelangelo later, though not really sure if I want to bother
D: Whats that?
C: Hmm?
D: Mission michaelangelo?

There seems to be so much explaining, and all of it mundane. I feel stupid retracing my steps, cracking open my sentences. Nuance is lost. I can see the bottom of the pond.

C: Going to see more art
D: thats nice :)
C: You know, I really do like talking to you, but I can absolutely stop
D: overthinking! Xx

This is chemical, Rosie texts me. She is in Vancouver. She is on set. She is up at five, sitting on a folding chair in the half-light. It’s powerful and it’s lovely and it’s very real, but this is a short story, not a novel, she writes. When you’re apart, there’s nothing there. That was Adrian. I woke up one morning and it made no sense. Find a nice Italian. Someone with curly hair.

She’s right, but I make excuses. I wait eagerly for those texts, heart jumping despite each juvenile U, each sentence lacking proper engagement. He asks after me. He tells me nothing. When he starts spelling out the word instead of the letter – a tacky reminder of what this really is – I start to think I have a shot. I couldn’t possibly. You’re allowed to want more, I tell myself. Je suis fou de vous, Michel Polnareff croons through my earbuds, my limbs, my bones. It is peak summer. You’re allowed.

C: How’s things?

It’s the morning there, now. He’s seen it. There is no reply. Restless, I shuffle into my shoes, and take a walk down to the Duomo. When I sit on a stone bench, the heat settles into my bones. In the night, the cathedral shines. The marble frontice gleams against the night sky, pale ivory, pine green, dusky pink. In the night, I can tolerate looking up, taking in its contours.

Ghiberti’s gates glowing against a sky blacker and more velvety than Paris. There are no stars here, either, but it feels like there could be. Vendetta city, baby, but it’s a Saturday night and the streets have that muffled Monday quality. Any remnant of Medici feeling’s been sucked dry from the marrow and replaced with an injection of synthetic consumerism. It’s not what I thought it would be, this Renaissance Disneyland. As a city, Florence feels parochial and out of context. I keep looking for movie theatres and gyms, sure signs of local life.

Still no reply. I hit the corner bar, the one with the overpriced menu and sprawling terrace. It’s the only thing open this late. Directly facing the monument, there are misters attached to the edges of the faded, coral awning so I know it’s going to be bad. The waitress is distracted and slow. She only has two tables, so she leans over the bar. She is giggling with the bartender, her hair wild where it emerges, untamable, from the teeth of a plastic claw clip. I wait and smile when she comes, order a Spritz and snap a photo. Spritz o’clock, I caption. He sees it.

In the mornings, I go to museums – the Uffizi, the Accademia, the Bargello. I soak up paintings, so many paintings, until they all begin to swim together – medieval gold leaf panels; pained, anaemic Christs; anonymous Renaissance men; long-dead women with lustrous skin and perfect, golden hair. The Americans jostle loudly behind me, pushing their way forward to snap a photo – no flash! – and the Japanese wait in silence, juggling selfie sticks. Abroad, we are all reduced to cliché. Abroad, we are most and least ourselves.

On the terrace café at the Uffizi, I spend too much money on a caffè shakerato. A family of five spends half an hour shouting mundanities at the table next to mine, and leaves their trash all over the table. They have come all the way from St Paul to see the Dah Vinseee – that’s how the Italians say it, right? Grandma Alice needs to lie down; Joshua is on one, then two, then he is whining and his mother is hauling him towards the toilets by his ear. When they are all gone, I tidy up the detritus. The bin is only a few paces away. The servers don’t notice. Maybe they’re used to it. Maybe I am overly cautious.

A docent in a crisp, white shirt, and black cigarette pants tells me to take the long exit, not to miss the Caravaggio. Her skin is tanned to a gleaming gingerbread, teeth bleached American white. When she gestures, she jingles – she is dripping in silver necklaces, bangles from wrist to elbow. I hesitate for a moment, wishing I could take her picture. Then she frowns, a crease floating down between her eyebrows. In my head, I snap the picture and keep moving.

I do see the Caravaggios, though I don’t take to the dark canvases the world so loves. My taste is flawed. I have no time for Michelangelo. Ghosting through the galleries, I imagine which items I’d spirit away to my private collection. This, not that. Bedford Jeune, I tell myself. Maybe not Guggenheim money, but Guggenheim spirit. The best pictures are tucked away near the exit on the ground floor. They aren’t the most famous. They are the ones people rush past, oversaturated and hangry, towards the cafes at the edges of Piazza della Signoria. They are not the ones the people come to see. They are not the ones Peggy would buy, either. I stand before The Three Graces, a small, square canvas in a gilt frame. Hung along with several other female nudes, it’s easily my favorite grouping. There’s nothing memorable here. There are no crowds, no Plexiglas. Here, I am alone. I assign more value to these three girls dancing in the dark than to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo. ‘Il Poppi’, the museum’s label reads.

C: Did you mean those things?
D: What things? bout u?

I pause. Is it reticence or disregard? I do not want to play this game.

C: Just be kind to me
D: Don’t worry you’re overthinking xx

At the Bargello, I overhear the guard explaining that the facility used to be a prison. I cast an eye over the vaulted ceilings, painted with crests and gold leaf fleur-de-lis. The rooms are wide and long with massive, stone fireplaces. There are no signs of cells or iron or cryptic prison graffiti carved into the walls. I decide it must have been a prison in the same vein as Château de Vincennes – a one-time gentleman’s penitentiary. No, it was the headquarters of the police, the internet tells me. The internet is precise: executions, plots, and siege. Now, the courtyard is adorned with marble nudes. A naked stare for a naked body. Here, there is no one to look back at me, see my looking, and draw conclusions. The stone is luminous in the indirect light: smooth marble curves, delicate bones and veins in the hands, chiselled abdomens leading towards nests of curls at the groin, the rounded stomachs of the women, their generous breasts and wide thighs, the shell of an ear, blind pupilless eyes. I would have been the feminine ideal in the Middle Ages, a voice behind me says. Her tone is jocular, but I’m attuned to the hint of bitter almonds, that ache. For so long it’s been my own. But that was then, and this is now.

D: How are you? ;)
C: Tired. Couldn’t sleep. I was a bit distracted
D: Oh were u … ;) ;) were u being naughty?
C: Could have been the canicule. Could have been fantasising about being fingered by some musician I met. We’ll never know
D: Oh damn thats hot!!

He begins to type. He stops. He starts. He stops.

D: ... making you cum hard with just my fingers …

I wait for him to continue. He doesn’t, and I put the phone away. I have run out of words that feel safe to say. For the first time, my mind is full of writhing images that need reining in: fingers, lips, twining limbs. I think about writing it all down, no holds barred, something just for me – the kind of language that would make me wary of how I held the pages on the train. I imagine him reading it, half-hard, wanting me.

C: What are you thinking here?
C: Tell me. I’ve been so open with you

Another boy, one from long ago, likes six of my photos in a row. I feel the likes come in, phone buzzing against my thigh. He is not the only one. I have lost twenty-four kilos since I last posted a picture of myself on the internet. I remain the same person; they reveal their shallow depths. Do they think I have amnesia? I’ve lost weight, not my mind. D does not reply. I take a savage bite out of my focaccia. Cool Girls don’t eat bread. Cool Girls run the game. Cool Girls are impervious to feeling. I am not a Cool Girl.

I write to my best friend. I tell her about paintings. I tell her about my heart. I think it’s time to give up and just enjoy bread, I say. What’s the point if this just leads to feeling this way? Listen, she replies. I talked to him. It’s just what I’ve been telling you. He’s a mess. He can’t keep up with you, so stop eating bread, she writes. Pick another one. You can’t stop now.

On the last day, I walk to the Palazzo Pitti. Disappointment gnaws, vicious, at my heart. The inside of the palazzo is gold-gilt dazzling and I try to focus on it. Every room is the same. The air-conditioning units are wheezy. Outside, the Boboli Gardens are bleached bone. I stagger up the gravel incline, trying to keep to the sliver of shade along the right-hand side of the path. Grit catches in my sandals and I kick up a cloud of dust even when I try to pick up and place my feet precisely. I give it up when I realise there’s little difference. At the top of the incline, there is a statue of a god, stabbing a triton downwards into the water. A fountain, presumably. I peer into its depths. The water is a murky mosquito trap. The grass is dead.

Outside the windows, Italian countryside comes and goes in flashes. Vineyards. Lake Garda. Industrial parks. Vineyards again. The man beside me jockeys for control of the shared armrest. His polo stretches taut over the pregnant curve of his stomach. I finally let him have it, lean my cheek against the window and close my eyes. I feel the sunlight on my face through the glass. I can’t stop wanting, so I dig this hole deeper.

C: Venice soon, on the train. Whatcha up to?
D: Watching tv in bed :)
C: What show?
D: That 70s show
C: Love!

I wait for something, anything, but he doesn’t continue. The train slows down, and the scrub and the low, boxy houses give way to the lagoon on either side of us. For a moment, he is gone. It’s like Summertime, and I smile to remember Katharine Hepburn leaning out the window with her Kodak camera. You can’t open them now, the windows, but soon enough I am there – same bustle, less style, more tack, until the city bursts into panoramic glory right in front of me and my heart lets loose this pent-up sigh, as if it had spent the last three years clenched. It is always like this, Venice.

The vaporetto at Ferrovia is heaving. Tourists and their suitcases spill out of the waiting area. I walk the eighteen minutes to the apartment instead, hauling my bag over picturesque bridges and across the sunbaked campos. When I arrive, I haul myself up four flights of narrow stairs into another humid, sticky apartment. My host shows me how to light the stove, hands me my keys, and then he is gone. I slick on red lipstick and take to the streets.

I walk fast, faster than is necessary. In Piazza San Marco, I say a silent hello to the pigeons, to the basilica, to the stone-winged lions, to Caffé Florian. I follow the yellow signs directing me through campos and down narrow alleys until I am almost running – running – across Ponte dell’Accademia. Everywhere I look, riots of oleander burst bright and seductive, like insidious jasmine, over stone walls. I rest my hands on the gorgeous glass hunks welded into the gates of Peggy Guggenheim’s Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. Cracked white marble steps lead down into blue-green canals. Sienna and mustard villas. Splintering front doors open directly onto the lip of the canal. Glossy, wood-panelled water taxis. Aperol at every table, the brightest tangerine. Even the street lamps have pink glass. Venise est un poème. When I finally come to rest on the steps of Salute, the sky is streaked pink and purple and that deep, resonant blue, and I feel like weeping. I am aesthetically full. I am too much or too little. There is no in-between.

Days pass. I attempt to change course, revise my focus. I sit on the terrace with tea, writing in my exercise book until lightning appears on the horizon. I am teaching myself Italian. Diario di viaggio. Cronache illustrate. Andiamo. Eccolo. Ciao. I can say useless pretty things, and un tavolo per uno, per favore; sto cercando piazza San Marco; Dov’e la toilette? I rewatch Summertime, wonder if calling a waiter carbonari is the Italian version of calling out garçon at a Parisian café – a hard no. I google it. Carbonari – an informal network of revolutionaries; a secret society; the charcoal makers. No, there’s no b: cameriere. Giusto. The moths flutter around the screen of my laptop, and after half an hour or so fat drops land on the backs of my hands where they move over the page, crunching conjugations. I call it a night, crawl under the covers, turn out the light. Tomorrow, Peggy, I tell myself. Tomorrow.

Riding the vaporetto, I lean over the railing, face into the wind. A water taxi – Ya Ya emblazoned across its stern – almost collides with us. Our driver is yelling, arms flying. The driver of the taxi is turned around, tossing it back at us, boat full speed ahead. No one is looking where they are going, not even the gondolas bobbing at the edges of the canal. Waiting for certain collision, I am disappointed. Venetians have perfected the fine art of controlled chaos. At the Accademia, I disembark. The narrow alleys are less crowded here. Here, I can breathe. Direzione Peggy Guggenheim. The courtyard is empty, and I buy a ticket from a smiley, young American girl who asks me where I’m from. I say France, and refuse to elaborate when she frowns.

Stepping through the doors, I am restored. I am here. Glossy terrazzo floors: pink, white, grey. Paintings, large and small, on every wall. On the Beach, Arc of Petals, The Empire of Light – Picasso, Calder, Magritte – the canal just beyond, peeking through the wrought iron doors. In this museum, I take my time. It takes stories to turn the key. I read the names of the paintings, and appreciate the ones who use their words. The Sun in Its Jewel Case. Windows Open Simultaneously. Very Rare Picture on Earth. Sad Young Man on a Train.

C: I’ll regret this tomorrow, but why don’t you come to Paris? I don’t have too much going this summer. Come. It would be lovely to see you
D: I could ... I don’t have work at the moment …

I wait. He waits. I don’t encourage him further. He needs to choose. He needs to decide.

D: Don’t regret anything xx

So how’s it going with D, my best friend asks. Six days now without a word, I explain. She cannot understand why this is so hard for me when it comes so easily for her. I want to liquefy and seep into the cracks between the tiles. I want to slink into the canal and become a creature of the lagoon. I require a convent, now. Just pick another one, she says. Peter likes you. Hook up with Peter. I worry about you sometimes. You’re gonna end up a man-hating feminist lol.

I am a man-hating feminist, I want to say. I am the gorgon you fear. But I compartmentalise, like I always do. I put the phone away, resist the urge to drop it into the canal – plunk – like a stone, lean back against the white marble façade of Peggy’s palazzo. Boats glide past. Taxis, vaporetti, gondolas, service boats hauling office supplies, letters, groceries in large cardboard boxes.

I do not want to start crying, so of course I do. I smile sardonically at the girl taking selfies across the terrace. I shrug as if to say, sunscreen, hey, whatcha gonna do? This is infatuation, but I have travelled that shallow track before. No, something feels different here. A click in the lock. I close my eyes and think back to when our eyes met across the room; when we talked about life and what we wanted from it; when we danced to the wrong song in our room, close, so close, his hand in mine. But we are not there and he is somewhere and I am on Peggy’s terrace on the Grand Canal and there is a girl taking five million selfies in front of me with the aid of her selfie stick. I am grateful, for once. I will not be asked to assist. To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself, Peggy said. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.

I spy a dandelion waving in the wind, its stubborn roots between two paving stones. I pluck it. I blow. The tufts refuse to fly when I direct my breath with precision. An omen. A sign. I book an opera ticket. At La Fenice, when the lights dim down and we make our way to our boxes, eggshell blue, I allow a man to brush against me in the crush. When he finds me again, I let him buy me a drink at intermission. Then another, afterwards at Caffè Florian, until we are floating on a sea of accordion and strings and expensive Negronis. Sexual exorcism, I think. Deaden the palate. Then start again. This man is Argentinian. He has a name I can’t recall even five minutes later, and when he asks me to go home with him, I say yes. I do not want this man. I do not want to fuck, but I want to stop feeling. In his room, the air is close and his tongue tastes sour, but Peggy, I think. I start as I mean to go on.

I have an irrepressible taste for destruction. It only takes knowing I shouldn’t to prompt me to hit send. Burn the bridges, and let it be extreme. The faster the better. Do it now! Disappoint me, I’m begging you. Leave me for dead on read. Break my heart before breakfast so I can tell myself I told you so; you were not allowed – I knew he would all along. A large part of my heart longs to be the heroine of a tragedy – the best love stories end badly – so sober, drunk, I look for holes in all the pretty things he said, hold them up to the sun, tug and test the fibers. But this isn’t a love story. Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe this is just more of the same. We’ve opened the bottle, but need to let it breathe. So I don’t. I use him, or we use each other. When he is asleep, I sneak out. I do not leave a trace. I do not leave my number. I do not feel bad. On this night, I am someone else.

Weaving along the narrow lanes towards my apartment, I text D – drunk, effusive, honest. I set the bridge on fire. There can be no trace of it, not after this. Not even the piers, alone and absurd, sticking up out of the earth. Les mauvais mots vont me libérer.

In the morning, he has seen it. For a half-second, regret, for now it really ends. He is the easy breezy kind, but he is not honest. A door has been shut. He is no longer someone I should keep talking to, but I do. Oh, how I do. This is how it works. I run myself into the ground.

I go down to the galleries. I take pictures, so many pictures. I see one I like. The canvas is large, much too large for my studio apartment. Colours streak across the square. The details are exquisite. The artist captures the light just right, but turns the world upside down. I google her name. She is young, just starting out, but she has made it here, to this gallery with its modern, sharp angles and cool, expensive receptionist. Her eyes, defiant, stare out of a full moon face. I hand over my credit card. Just like that. Ship it to Paris, I tell the man. How much? 