Helen closed her laptop with a feeling of relief, like slamming a prison door from the inside. Three years at the advertising agency had taught her a lot—deadlines, stress, the ability to sleep four hours a night. But they hadn’t taught her happiness.
Outside the window of her London apartment, a gray November rain turned the street into a watercolor wash. Helen stared at her reflection in the glass—her pale face, dark circles under her eyes, her hair pulled back carelessly. When had she become so tired?
The decision came suddenly, like a gust of wind. A train ticket to Nice. One. That same evening.
Morning greeted her on the Côte d’Azur with generous sunshine and the scent of the sea mingled with the aroma of pine. Hélène stepped off the train, took off her high heels right on the platform, and stepped barefoot onto the warm tiles. Some people looked back in surprise, but she didn’t care. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t care.
She rented a small studio apartment in the Old Town, in a house with peach-colored shutters and geraniums on the balcony. The owner, Madame Bernard, an elderly woman with kind eyes and gray hair pulled back into an elegant bun, immediately invited her to coffee.
“Are you running away?” she asked, pouring espresso into tiny cups.
“I’m coming back,” Helen answered, surprised by her own words.
The days flowed slowly, like honey. Helen woke with the dawn—not to the alarm clock, but to the light filtering through the sheer curtains. She learned to buy fresh bread from the corner bakery, where the baker already knew her by name and always added an extra croissant “for joy.” She learned to drink coffee not on the run, but sitting by the window, watching the city awaken.
Walks along the Promenade des Anglais became a ritual. The sea here was different—not gray and cold, like in Normandy, but piercingly blue, almost unreal. Hélène would sit for hours on the rocks, listening to the waves crash against the shore, and it was the best cure for the city noise that still rang in her ears.
One day, she stumbled upon a small market in the Cours Saleya. Artists were selling their paintings, old men were playing pétanque under the plane trees, and the air was thick with the scent of lavender and ripe tomatoes. Hélène bought watercolors—for the first time in ten years. At university, she dreamed of being an artist, but a “serious career” overcame her dream.
Now she drew every day. Clumsily, with mistakes, but with such joy that Madame Bernard, looking into her room one day, clasped her hands:
— Voilà! You’ve come back to life, ma chérie!
In Nice, Hélène discovered the magic of small villages: Èze with its medieval streets clinging to the cliffs; Villefranche-sur-Mer with its colorful houses reflected in the bay; Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where every stone exuded art.
She rode buses, got lost in narrow alleys, and conversed with locals in broken French. They smiled at her accent, treated her to homemade wine, and told her stories. Here, no one asked about her position or salary. Here, they were interested in her as a person.
One evening, in a tiny trattoria in Monaco where she wandered by chance, an Italian waiter brought her a glass of prosecco.
“From the boss,” he said with a smile. “He says he hasn’t seen such a happy face all summer.”
Helen looked at her reflection in the window and didn’t recognize herself. Tanned skin, sun-bleached hair, eyes that sparkled again. And a smile. A real one.
Weeks turned into a month. The London agency called, wrote, demanded she return. Helen turned off her phone and went to the beach. She lay on the warm sand, closed her eyes, and listened to the cries of seagulls, the laughter of children, and the lapping of waves.
At that moment she realized: she hadn’t run away. She had found herself.
When she stopped by the little café on the waterfront that evening—the one with the blue chairs and the view of the bay—an old pianist was playing. The melody was simple but poignant. Helen ordered a glass of rosé and pulled out her sketchbook.
The hand moved of its own accord—lines, colors, light. The embankment, the sea, people appeared on the paper. But most importantly, she herself appeared, sitting here, in this moment, alive and free.
“It’s magnificent,” someone whispered behind her.
Helen turned around. The elderly artist in the beret nodded at her work.
“You have talent. And, more importantly, you have a story in your eyes.”
“What story?” she asked.
— The story of how a man remembered what it was like to breathe.
Hélène never returned to London. She wrote her resignation via email, sitting on the balcony of her studio with a cup of morning coffee. There was no fear. Only ease.
She found a job as an assistant at a small art gallery in the Old Town. The pay was paltry compared to her previous one, but it was enough. It provided for bread, wine, paint, and freedom.
In the evenings, Helen painted. Her work began to be noticed, then bought. Not for fame or money, but for the soul. And that was all she needed.
Standing on the embankment one sunset, when the sky turned shades of peach and lavender, Helen thought about the girl who three months ago sat in a gray London apartment and did not understand why she lived.
“Merci,” she whispered to the sea, to the sun, to this land that had accepted her and given her back herself.
The waves rustled in response, and in that rustle there was a promise: here, on the Côte d’Azur, she was finally home.