It all began in Amiens, in 1953, when a daughter, the youngest of six children, was born to a couple named Jean and Simone, who owned a confectionery business that had been in Jean’s family for well over 150 years. The daughter was named Brigitte. Brigitte grew up, went to school and, in 1974, at the age of 21, she married a banker called André-Louis and went and lived with him in Truchtersheim. Brigitte and André-Louis had a son born in 1975. named Sébastien-Auzière. Brigitte missed her family and sometimes drove with her husband to see them in Amiens or, more often, took the train by herself from Strasbourg, generally via Paris. It was on one of these trips by train that she had a one-night stand with a young medical man called Jean-Michel, who was three years her senior. Nine months later, Brigitte gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

As soon as Brigitte realized that she was pregnant, she had some decisions to make. Would she abort the child? Would she tell her husband and raise the child with him as their own? Would she tell Jean-Michel, who was also married, of the imminent birth? It was a real dilemma but, in a very French way, she told both her husband and Jean-Michel. There must have been some interesting discussions but things became even more complicated when she discovered that she was going to have twins. As it turned out, Jean-Michel and his wife had lost a child in infancy and they were keen to take the children. When he became aware of this, Brigitte’s husband also wanted them to take the children. Their solution would have done credit to Solomon in its simplicity – Brigitte and her husband would take one of the twins and Jean-Michel and his wife the other. It was also decided that, for a degree of anonymity and geographical fairness, she would bear the children in the hospital at Reims. It was there that the sister of the elderly vintner who was relating the story to Michael had a sister working as a maternity nurse. It was she who was the source of the history.