It was at this point that Michael started to twig as to whom the story might be about and he suggested to the elderly vintner that they should probably leave any remaining story untold. However, the old man insisted that they continue to the end, as they were almost there. Michael acquiesced and the story continued.

Both Brigitte’s husband, André-Louis, and the father of the children, Jean-Michel, were present at the hospital when the two children were born, a boy and a girl. After a brief, rather intense, discussion, witnessed by the old vintner’s sister, it was agreed between the two men that the boy would go with Jean-Michel and the girl with André-Louis. It seems that either Brigitte was not consulted on the matter or that she agreed with the decision. In any event, the children, both healthy, were borne away to Amiens by Jean-Michel, in the boy’s case, and to Truchtersheim by Brigitte and André-Louis in the case of the girl. For propriety, Jean-Michel was registered as the boy’s father and André-Louis managed to have himself registered as the girl’s father. This split of fatherhood was insisted on by Brigitte and, as far as the hospital was concerned, all was in order, albeit a bit odd. Jean-Michel returned to Amiens with the baby boy and Brigitte and André-Louis to Truchtersheim with the baby girl. There was no further contact between either of the two men and Brigitte’s visits to Amiens ceased, at least unless she was accompanied by her husband.

The years passed and Brigitte and André-Louis had a third child, Triphaine, and Brigitte taught literature in Strasbourg until, in 1991, they moved to live in Amiens. Why they made that move is unknown. Whether it was because her parents were aging, which they were, whether it was because of the family business, or whether she missed her son whom she had not seen for fourteen years is not known. But the fact remains that Brigitte and André-Louis relocated to Amiens, where her young son, now around fourteen years old, lived with his “parents”. She then got a job teaching French and Latin at the Lycée la Providence – the very school where her long-lost son was a student. It was not long before a relationship was established between the two, and the rest is history.