Dozens of young fans gathered on Sunday at the Tuileries gardens in Paris to pay tribute to British singer Liam Payne, a former member of the group One Direction who died Wednesday at the age of 31 in Argentina and who marked their childhood, journalists from the AFP.
“It’s a piece of my innocence that left with him,” said Romane, 23, in tears.
“With the group, he brought me a lot of joy, a lot of laughter. (…) It was like an air bubble that was not reality,” she adds.
“I have a hard time realizing that he is no longer here,” reacts in French Robert Wemyss, a 22-year-old Irishman, “a fan since the age of eight” of One Direction.
Arriving in Paris on Saturday to work as an “au pair”, he wanted to pay tribute to the one who “marked his entire childhood” with dozens of other fans, including many young women, gathered in the Tuileries garden , a place chosen “to see the Eiffel Tower”, by the initiators of this tribute.
Bouquets of flowers, roses and lit candles were placed at the foot of a parapet, in front of a black and white photo of the singer, a “memorial”, like those organized in several cities around the world and particularly in the United Kingdom. , where he was from.
“Every week the whole family watched the talent show +The in the early 2010s and officially split in 2016.
“I have a hard time accepting this society that doesn’t treat people like him humanely. They were children when they started with so much pressure on them. They all suffered from psychological problems and it was like a ball of snow”, he concludes, with tears in his eyes but “comforted by the fact of talking about it and being reunited with others in the same suffering”.
For Anne Garraud, 19, who also says she “grew up with him”, it’s “like losing a member of (her) family” and “in truly horrible conditions”.
“He was my whole life, my favorite singer, he helped me through difficult ordeals in middle school, in high school, like harassment and meanness,” comments Fanny Meuret, 24, who “discovered the group at the age of 10.”
Liam Payne died on Wednesday at the age of 31 after falling from the balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a context of “consumption of alcohol and narcotics”, according to the first results of the investigation.
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