Annette was born in Stockholm in 1965. Jules kept her passport. In the photo, she looks like the blond singer in ABBA, Agnetha. That’s surely why my mother, who was called Sandrine, picked her as a pen pal, at school in 1977. My mother had gone for the Swedish option because she was a fan of the group. Which might seem strange, since they sang in English. As for Annette, she wanted a French pen pal because France has the largest surface area of stained-glass windows (ninety thousand square meters), and she wanted to become a master glazier.
Jules kept all their letters. They had written to each other in English for seven years. At first, they told each other what their bedrooms were like, what they loved eating, doing, how many children they’d have later on, described their cat and their goldfish. Whenever they traveled, they sent each other postcards.
Normally, they would have stopped writing to each other before too long because, at middle school, there are other things to do than write letters in English to a girl you don’t know. But they didn’t do what was normal. They began their correspondence in 1977 and met in 1980. After that, they saw each other every year. Until they died together.
As the years go by, the letters become increasingly personal. They talk about their family, their love affairs, their joys, their disappointments, their desires. They send each other photos, mainly Polaroids, which Jules and I have shared between us. Some we even cut in two to have the half we were each after.
Thanks to Annette, I learned things about my mother that no one could have told me. Like her childhood spent in the lodge of a building in Rue du Faubourg-St-Denis, where her mother was the concierge. She never knew her father. In her letters, she talks about life in the building, the tenants, the landlords, the tiny space where she would dance to ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”; the Michael Zager Band’s “Let’s All Chant”; The Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime”; and Visage’s “Fade to Grey.”
My mother always loved music, all kinds of music. When she met my father, who was planning to become a record dealer, she was bound to fall in love with him.
She belonged to a theater group called Plume Paradis. I think she was funny and naturally cheerful because, on the photos, she’s always laughing a bit more than the others. She had brown shoulder-length hair, was small, a bit chubby, and had the smile of an American movie star.
In 1983, the year they were eighteen, Annette and Sandrine went camping near Cassis. They pitched their tent in a camping site close to a rocky inlet, twenty minutes from the harbor. They swam all day and feasted on apple donuts.
Jules has a small diary that belonged to Annette in which she wrote lots of sentences in Swedish, which we translated with the help of the Internet. Sentences such as these:
“The light is white.”
“It’s like someone’s scrubbed the houses with bleach—there are never any puddles.”
“It smells lovely.”
“You get dry without a towel.”
“There’s sugar on the donuts.”
“The insects sing.”
“I’d never been sunburnt, it’s like a long-lasting slap.”
Six days later, while buying an ice cream at the harbor, they meet Alain and Christian Neige.
In Annette’s diary, it says:
“I could tell the two boys apart straight away: one is always looking at me, and the other isn’t.”
“They’re leaving tomorrow.”
“They’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“They’re leaving next week.”
“They’re staying with us till the end of the vacation.”
The following year, Sandrine and Annette met up with Christian and Alain in Lyon to spend the summer with them. At Lyon-Perrache station, the twins were waiting for them with a green convertible 2CV. Which cracked them up.
They had seen each other since Cassis, but not all together.
Alain had been to Stockholm twice, to stay with Annette’s family. Christian to Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, numerous times.
After Alain’s second visit to Stockholm, he’d asked for Annette’s hand in marriage, which she’d found very romantic but a little hasty. And she was only nineteen, after all.
In any case, Annette had opted to do her stained-glass window training in France. She’d found a master to whom she could be apprenticed in the Mâcon area. Which was only about a hundred kilometers from Lyon. So Sandrine had also decided to move to Lyon with Christian. They’d just need to find themselves an apartment for four.
The twins, both studying musicology at university in Lyon, were planning to become record dealers and composers. Christian would root out the rare LPs, and Alain would compose pieces of music, as well as running their business.
From Lyon, it took them three days to drive up to Milly in their 2CV, even though there are barely 170 kilometers between the city and the village. Every time she spotted a church, Annette would cry, “STOP!”
While Annette was studying each stained-glass window and taking photos of them, the other three had drinks on terraces.
Dozens of churches later, when the car finally pulled up outside the house, it was already July—July 14, to be precise. Kids were playing with firecrackers on the streets.
On the radio, the Bronski Beat hit “Smalltown Boy” played constantly.
The father of my magician neighbor told me that they were beautiful to look at. But most beautiful of all was Annette’s blond hair. And her face, too. He’d never seen such a pretty girl in real life. For him, they’d only existed in his TV-listings magazines. When I was little, this same neighbor said to me, “She was bien roulée, your aunt.” I didn’t know what bien roulée meant—well put together. I thought of the roulé à la fraise that Gran makes. That he meant my aunt looked like a Swiss roll.
So the four of them got out of the 2CV singing: Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away, all imitating Jimmy Somerville’s voice. And then they kissed Gran. Well, not quite. The twins kissed Gran, and Gran shook hands with Sandrine and Annette. And then the four of them sat down under the so-called arbor (four bits of wood with wicker fencing over the top).
Gran placed a bottle of port, ice cubes, and six glasses on the cast-iron table. She said Armand would be home shortly.
That day, Gran had made seafood couscous. Not a traditional July 14 dish, but the twins had insisted on it.