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Mathieu doesn’t have many distractions. He doesn’t watch television, he doesn’t need its help to be mentally handicapped. There’s only one thing that seems to make him slightly happy, and that’s music. When he hears music he beats his ball like a drum, in time.

His ball plays a very important part in his life. He spends all his time throwing it in places he knows he can’t get it back on his own. Then he comes to find us and takes us by the hand to the place he’s thrown it. We get the ball back and give it to him. Five minutes later he’s back looking for us, he’s thrown the ball again. He’s quite capable of repeating the performance dozens of times a day.

It’s probably the only way he’s found to make a connection with us, to get us to hold his hand.

Now Mathieu’s gone to look for his ball all by himself. He’s thrown it too far. In a place where we can’t help him get it back …

It was nearly summer. The trees were full of blossom. My wife was expecting a second baby, life was beautiful. He was due to be born just as the apricots ripened. We waited impatiently, and a little anxiously.

My wife must have been worried. To avoid upsetting me, she didn’t dare say so. But I did. I just couldn’t keep my fears to myself, I had to share them. I couldn’t help myself. I remember telling her with my usual tact, “Imagine if this one’s abnormal too.” I wasn’t just trying to make conversation, more reassuring myself and warding off bad luck.

I definitely thought it couldn’t happen a second time. I know those who love us most are best equipped to hurt us, but I don’t think God loves me that much; I’m not that self-centered.

With Mathieu, it must have been an accident, and accidents don’t happen twice; as a general rule, they’re not repeated.

They say terrible things happen to people who least expect them, who never think of them. So, to make sure it didn’t happen, we thought about it …

When Thomas is born he’s gorgeous, blond with dark, dark eyes, an alert expression, always smiling. I’ll never forget how happy I was.

He’s beautifully crafted, a precious fragile thing. With his blond hair, he looks like a little Botticelli angel. I can’t stop taking him in my arms, tickling him, playing with him, making him laugh.

I remember confiding to my friends that I could now see what it felt like having a normal child.

I’ve been too hasty with my optimism. Thomas is sickly, he’s often ill, he’s had to be hospitalized several times.

One day our family doctor has the courage to tell us the truth. Thomas is handicapped too, like his brother.

Thomas was born two years after Mathieu.

Everything’s falling in line, Thomas will get more and more like his brother. It’s my second end of the world.

Fate has been heavy-handed with me.

Even the corniest tearjerker TV film trying to make its hero heartbreaking wouldn’t dare put something like that in the script, for fear of overdoing it, not being taken seriously and, ultimately, making people laugh.

Providence gave me the title role of the model father.

Do I look the part?

Will I be a good model?

Will I make people cry … or laugh?

“Where we going, Daddy?”

“We’re going to Lourdes.”

Thomas starts laughing, as if he understands.

With the help of a charity-worker, my grandmother has been trying to persuade me to go to Lourdes with my two boys. She wants to pay for the trip. She’s hoping for a miracle.

It’s a long way to Lourdes, twelve hours on the train with two kids you can’t reason with.

They’ll be better behaved on the way back, Granny said. She didn’t dare say “after the miracle.”

Anyway, there won’t be any miracle. If, as I’ve heard say, handicapped children are a punishment from heaven, I can’t really see the Blessed Virgin getting involved by performing a miracle. Surely she won’t want to intervene on a decision made by a higher authority.

And when we get there, with the crowds, the processions, the darkness, I could lose them and never find them again.

Could that be the miracle, then?

When you have handicapped children you have to cope—on top of everything