Superstition, some might say. But I’ve seen the evidence myself, or at least heard of it. Giselle, my mother’s mother, deserted by her failed-artist husband after giving birth to a second daughter. Tante Lilou, widowed when her handsome Brit husband rolled his car into a ditch the day they returned from honeymooning in Greece. Maman, abandoned by her mysterious young lover when she turned up pregnant. And me, of course. But that is a story for another time.
