Dozens of young admirers gathered on Sunday at the Tuileries garden in Paris to pay tribute to the British singer Liam Payne, former member of the group One Direction who died Wednesday at the age of 31 in Argentina, and who marked their childhood, journalists noted of the AFP.
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“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 and 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 all [son] childhood” with dozens of other admirers including many young women, all gathered in the Tuileries garden, a place chosen by the initiators of this tribute, “to see the Eiffel Tower”.
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 came from.
“Every week, the whole family watched the telecrochet show The X Factor“, adds Robert Wemyss, “and I went to many concerts of him and Niall Horan”, another member of the group which enjoyed early fame in the early 2010s and who officially split in 2016.
“I have difficulty accepting this society which does not treat people like him, humanely. They were kids when they started, with so much pressure on them. Everyone suffered from psychological problems and it was like a snowball,” 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 [sa] family” and “in truly horrible conditions”.
“He was my favorite singer all my life. He helped me get through difficult ordeals in middle school and 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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