By Elaine Weddle

So much depends on being in the right place at the right time.

I awoke this morning because the cat was licking my face with his little rough tongue and all I could smell was his foul fishy breath.  The light was filtering through the shutters and I could hear traffic on the rue de Saint Jarratt.  I couldn’t lie in bed because my hip was aching and my back was stiff …. well, that’s what happens when you’re lucky enough to get old like me.

There’s not much I have to do because there’s only myself and Napoleon to please.  That’s the cat by the way not my husband, he died ten years ago and my children live in the South, they love the beach, the sun, the life. Well, who can blame them?

So, today I left my apartment early. I can’t bend down to pull on my shoes so I went out wearing my red velvet slippers.  That’s what I like about being old, you get away with murder.

I went into the little supermarket on the corner and I heard someone shouting.  I don’t know what they said because I’d forgotten to wear my hearing aids … oh I forget so much these days.  Anyway then I heard a noise that sounded like gun shot and I saw ‘him’.  A tall man in those ugly khaki soldier trousers, black boots, gun pointing into the air and I thought who do you think you are?  He looked at me, straight in the eye. He was sweating but his eyes were dark and cold like a shark.  I’d forgotten to bring my glasses too but I could make out a body lying on the floor behind him.  A woman was screaming.  He was about to shoot and I thought – if you’re going to do it, go on do it! You don’t scare me!  I knew what he was, I’d seen dead eyes like those before and there’s nothing anyone can do.  But, for some reason he walked by to the next aisle.

A woman took me by the arm, she didn’t say anything, just guided me past the chilled cabinets towards the back of the shop.  We took the stairs and there was a strong smell of coffee, spices  mixed with damp and a furtive cigarette or two. It was dark and I stumbled against the wall. I was worried about tripping and breaking my hip as I’d only just had it replaced.  Then someone turned on a light and we were standing in a store cupboard and a young man said we should go into one of those walk-in fridges because it would be safer in there.

So, here we are, sitting in the dark in a huge fridge in the middle of Paris.  Above our heads a young man with an automatic rifle decides whether we live or die.  It’s cold but I’ve been colder.  More than sixty years ago I sat in a wooden hut in a concentration camp. It was snowing. I had no shoes and my hands were blue but, the following day by some chance I was one of the first to be liberated.  I walked out into the sunshine. I was seven and taken to a lovely family in Switzerland, I married a good man, had a family, children and grandchildren. It’s been a good life.

I can’t see my hands but I guess they’re blue now, I can hear the young man’s breathing and I feel for him, he’s got a life to live. The woman is holding my hand because she’s terrified and can’t let go.

I can hear someone on the stairs, shouting….I wonder if I’ll be lucky this time too?