would have made it. Vivi’s determination to keep going – and not only that, but to keep trying to find ways to sabotage the Nazi war effort – speaks of an awe-inspiring strength of character. The concentration camp system was set up to be totally dehumanising for the inmates. But it couldn’t break Vivienne’s spirit: she never lost her humanity right up to the very end.
When that end came, though, Claire was left alone. Not only did she have to bear the guilt of having been the cause of Vivi’s arrest in the first place, but she also had to carry the guilt of survival with her for the rest of her life, alongside the scars left by those traumatic eighteen months in the camps. She went on to marry and to have a child. I’ve worked out that my mother was born when her own mother was almost forty . . . it must have taken many years for Claire’s broken mind and body to heal enough for her to be able to sustain a pregnancy. And so Felicity was named for the happiness that she represented to her parents – a miraculous child born to a woman who had survived so much.
Now that I am able to understand it better, I have come to see my mother’s death in a new light. Her final act may have been to take her own life by swallowing a handful of pills and a half-bottle of brandy, but I know that what killed her was the fragility that she had inherited. Born in peacetime, she was still a child who had to carry the legacy of war and it was a legacy that bestowed upon her burdens of her own: the burden of embodying happiness; the burden of those trauma-induced genetic changes that were passed on to her; the hard-wired fear of abandonment. These were the factors that created the perfect storm of despair and hopelessness that overwhelmed her and finally led her to commit suicide.
It helps me to know this, to be able to understand so much more about my mother’s life and death. But it terrifies me as well. How can I escape the same fate? In a world that seems filled with fear and panic, what can I do to stop the cycle repeating itself? Do I carry that same fragility in my own genetic make-up? Am I helpless, or is it possible for me to retake control of my life?
I realise that I can’t find the answers to all these questions on my own. Perhaps I shouldn’t be such a stubborn, independent Breton or Brit. It’s time to be brave enough to ask for help.
And so it is, sitting within the sheltering arms of Mireille’s tree, that I summon up the courage to make an appointment with a counsellor. If it is easier for me to express myself in a foreign language, maybe it will help me talk freely, at last, about the burdens of my own.
1945
‘Mireille, there is great news!’ Monsieur Leroux seized her and hugged her when she opened the door in response to his pounding. ‘They’ve found Claire in one of the work camps! I tracked her down through the Red Cross. She is alive. She’s been ill, and they’ve been caring for her in the camp hospital, but now she is well enough to be evacuated. I’m going out there, to bring her back to a hospital here in Paris where she can continue her recuperation. And I’ll to try to find Vivi too. Claire will have news of her, surely. If Claire has survived then there’s hope that Vivi has as well. You know how strong she is! Perhaps Claire will be able to tell us where she is.’
Mireille’s heart felt as if it would burst with the mixture of emotions that bubbled up at the sight of his joyful face. ‘Where is Claire?’ she asked.
‘A camp called Dachau. Near Munich. I’m leaving today. As soon as I know more, I’ll let you know. They’re coming home to us at last, Mireille, I feel certain.’
Claire’s eyes fluttered open as sunlight streamed through the windows of her hospital room. Her hands looked as though they belonged to someone else where they lay against the clean whiteness of the turned-down sheet. At the end of her skeletal arms, their skin reddened and scarred with acid burns, her knuckles were swollen knobs of bone, her fingertips cracked and hardened. It was hard to believe these