more evident than usual, with heavily armed officers patrolling the busier junctions. It’s a reassuring sight, even if it does make my heart race with the sense of fear that lurks just beneath the veneer of city lights and traffic fumes. Simone leads me past the Picasso museum and then we duck into a bar. An acoustic duo play on a small stage at one end of the crowded room over the buzz of chatter and laughter that spills around them.
Simone’s friends wave us over to the pair of tables they’ve pulled together and find chairs for us so that we can squeeze in too, adding our own drinks to the clutter of glasses and bottles. The musicians are good – really good, in fact. And I begin to relax and enjoy the setting and the company. Simone’s friends are a creative bunch and they include a gallery owner, a designer, an actress, a sound engineer and at least two musicians. I guess it’s Simone’s love of music that has cemented some of these friendships. I’m surprised at how easy it is to feel a part of this group of young Parisians. I never made any very close friends at school or at university and I realise now that I never felt I fitted in anywhere at all really. Perhaps that feeling stemmed from the sense of not belonging at home with my father and stepmother. Perhaps that undermined my confidence of my place in the world. For most of my life, I have dwelt in a sort of no man’s land where loneliness has been an easier option than trying to fit in. I always felt that there was a distance between me and my peers who hadn’t had to attend their own father’s wedding to someone new, shortly followed by their own mother’s funeral. Here, in this company of strangers, I don’t feel that I have to explain that I had been all my mother had left and that I had failed to be enough to make her want to stay in this world.
The sound engineer, who introduces himself as Thierry, brings another round of drinks and nudges Simone to move up so that he can pull his chair in between us.
He asks me questions about how I’m finding my job and how I like being in Paris, and I ask him about his work, which takes him to concerts at different venues across the city. I chat away, feeling more confident about speaking French now, and find myself relaxing and enjoying his company.
At first, the conversation among the friends is light and buoyant with smiles and laughter, but then, inevitably, the talk turns to the Bataclan terror attack. The mood around the table immediately turns sombre and I can see the trauma written on the faces of Simone and her friends as the still-raw pain that the terrorist act has cast over the city engulfs us all again. The Bataclan isn’t far from where we are sitting, and Thierry tells me that he knew the sound crew who were working that night. All of a sudden it feels very close to home. As I listen to his words, I watch the lines of pain that cut deep into his face, transforming his easy-going expression into a mask of grief. His friends got out and helped get the band and several members of the audience to safety, but the brutality of the act and the thought of the many young lives lost, or altered for ever through horrific wounds, both mental and physical, have changed the way people see their city. Just under the surface it seems that fear and distrust lurk everywhere.
‘Do you ever worry, when you’re working, that something like that might happen to you?’ I ask him.
Thierry shrugs. ‘Of course. But what can we do? You can’t let terror win. It becomes all the more important to resist the urge to give in to fear.’
I nurse my drink, musing on his words. I hear in them the echo of Mireille’s declaration of resistance and her assertion that it’s up to the ordinary people to decide how life will be lived.
‘Even coming to a bar on a Friday night to listen to some music takes on a new significance for us these days.’ He smiles, and the sadness in his dark eyes is replaced by a flicker of rebellion. ‘We’re not just here to enjoy ourselves. We’re here to make sure that the freedom to live