IT WAS A childhood wrapped in comfort, reverie and freedom. Long summers in the south of France at the family home, amid almond trees and lavender, literary friends and cousins, former Maoists and acolytes of Fidel Castro. Dinners late into the night, when the familia grande would gather to put the world to rights. Guests went barefoot in the dried grass, and naked in the pool. The seasonal rituals reassured; the political dreams inspired. Until the day that Camille Kouchner's twin brother, whom she calls Victor, told her that their stepfather had visited his bedroom in the night. "He stroked me, and you know…" They were, she writes, 14 years old. Victor was sworn by their stepfather to silence. "If you talk about it, I will die," he implored his sister. The night-time visits continued for two or three years. It took nearly three decades, and her mother's death, before Ms Kouchner heard a lawyer name this crime for what it was: incest.
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