deep in families. They can be inherited, passed down the generations from one to the next, ruining lives as they go. Perhaps that’s what happened to my mother. But I won’t let it happen to me. Now that I understand where that trauma came from, I can see it for what it is. And by finding the courage to turn and face it, I have the opportunity to stop it in its tracks.
What gives me even more hope is that during my sessions with the counsellor she has told me that new research has found that the effects of inherited trauma can be reversed. Our brains and our bodies have the capacity to heal, to build resilience that will help us to counteract the vulnerabilities that inherited trauma predisposes us to. She’s given me some books to read which say that to be able to do this, the mind has to reframe and release the trauma so that the brain can reset itself.
I realise that the story of Claire and Vivi (who was really Harriet) has allowed this to happen for me. I know now that I can heal the past damage that I’ve carried with me all my life so far. More than that, I realise that I can decide to set down the weight of it at the side of the path that is my life and to walk on without it.
Now that I know the whole story of my grandmother, I sit in stunned silence, thoughts whirling in my head. I touch the charms on the bracelet passed down to me by my grandmother and my mother: the thimble, the tiny pair of scissors, the Eiffel Tower. I understand the significance of each one now.
I came to Paris feeling rootless, without a family of my own. I was looking for something, although I didn’t know what it would be. A photograph brought me here. I reach over and pick it up, in its frame, and I imagine I can hear the echoes of the girls’ laughter as they stand on the corner of the street, outside Delavigne Couture, dressed in their Sunday finery as they set off, one May morning in Paris, to visit the Louvre.
Because of them, Simone and I are here now. Not just here working for Agence Guillemet and living in the apartment under the eaves of the building in the Rue Cardinale; they are the reason that we are here at all. What if Mireille hadn’t gone to save Claire on the night that Billancourt was bombed? What if Vivi – my great-aunt Harriet – hadn’t protected and helped Claire to survive the terrible ordeals of torture at the hands of the Gestapo, solitary confinement in Fresnes prison, and almost two years in the hell of Dachau concentration camp?
I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them. I owe them my life, too.
When that photograph was taken, those three young women – full of hopes and dreams – had their lives ahead of them. It seems to me that they epitomise a love for life. They weren’t to know, on that May morning, just how far that love was going to be tested.
And then I think of my mother. How deep do depression and despair have to drag a person until, at last, they reach a place where they can’t bear to go on? Claire and Vivi showed how much the human spirit can endure: brutality, cruelty, inhumanity – all of these can be borne. It is the loss of those you love that is unbearable.
All of a sudden, I realise that through hearing the stories of my grandmother Claire and my great-aunt Harriet, I have finally come to understand what it was that killed my mother. It was grief. No matter what it might say on the death certificate, I understand, now, that she died of a broken heart.
My history has set me free. The past has given me a future. Perhaps it is a future that involves staying on in my dream job at the Palais Galliera, because Sophie Rousseau has passed my CV on to the director of the museum and I’ve been invited to attend an interview. It’s a daunting prospect. I want this job so much it hurts. But I will give the interview my all and accept the outcome, whatever it may be, because I’m not scared to live my life any more, whatever it may bring.
I understand, too, that I have been scared to love, because