of the photographer’s sky blue backcloth, smiling my cautious smile. She’d kept them all, one year after the next, my strawberry blonde hair pulled back from my face by a dark blue hairband in one, and drawn into a neat ponytail in another, but my expression of wary watchfulness never changing.
I picked the last of these school photos from the very bottom of the box. As I opened the cream card cover, another photo fell into my lap. It was an old black and white print, curling and yellowed with age. Probably long forgotten, it must have got stuck beneath the mount by mistake.
Something about the picture – the smiles of the three girls it depicted perhaps, or the elegantly cut lines of the suits they wore – caught my attention. There was an air of continental chic about them. As I looked more closely, I realised that I was right. They were standing in front of a shop window above which was painted the number of the building – 12 – and the words Delavigne, Couturier. When I carried the photo to the window to examine it in the better light, I could make out the words on the enamelled sign affixed to the building, unmistakeably French, which read Rue Cardinale – 6e arrondissement.
I recognised the girl on the left. With her delicate features, fair hair and gentle smile she bore more than a passing resemblance to my mother. I was sure this must be my grandmother, Claire. I vaguely remembered her image from looking through old family albums (where were those albums now?) and my mother telling me that her mother had been born in France. She never said much more about her though, and it only now struck me as strange that she had changed the subject whenever I asked questions about this French grandmother.
Sure enough, when I turned the picture over, written on the back in a looping hand were three names: Claire, Vivienne, Mireille, and the words Paris, Mai 1941.
I knew I was clutching at straws, but somehow that old photograph – a fragment of my mother’s family history – became an important part of my heritage. There was so little left of that side of my family that this tenuous link to one of my ancestors took on huge significance for me. It had sat in a frame, alongside the mother-and-baby photo, and it then kept me company through the remainder of my school days and on to university. And even though I’d already begun to take a keen interest in the fashion business before I’d discovered the forgotten photo in the cardboard box, the picture of those three elegant young women standing on that street corner more than forty years ago certainly played its part in piquing my fascination. Maybe the love of fashion was already in my blood, but the photograph helped to shape my dreams. It had seemed like fate when I tracked down the address – 12 Rue Cardinale – on a school trip to Paris and found myself standing in front of a plate glass window bearing the name Agence Guillemet, Relations Publiques (spécialiste Mode). In that moment, my future was decided. That sign opened up a whole career path that I’d never imagined existed, and drove me on to apply for an internship in fashion PR once I’d finished my degree in Business Studies with French.
I’d hesitated before contacting the agency, lacking the confidence to make an approach out of the blue, and receiving no encouragement from my father. If anything, Dad had always tried to discourage my interest in fashion, seeming to disapprove of my choice of career. But, as if egging me on, my grandmother Claire and her two friends had smiled at me from the black and white photo propped on the desk beside my laptop, as if to say, ‘At last! What are you waiting for? Come and find us!’
And so here I am, in Paris on a September afternoon, straightening my jacket and smoothing my hair into place before I wheel my suitcase along the busy pavement and press the buzzer on the door of the office. The plate glass windows, half-covered by blinds bearing the Agence Guillemet logo that have been pulled down to keep the glare of the afternoon sun at bay, reflect my anxiety back at me and I realise my heart is beating fast.
With a click, the door unlocks itself and I push it open, stepping into a softly