When I was 5, one afternoon during the summer holidays, I was standing on a small wooden chair on the balcony in front of the kitchen of my family’s apartment. Leaning on the balcony, I looked at my brother Patrick, who was playing in the garden, in the sandbox.

Suddenly, he asked me: “Michèle, please, I want to enter the house, open the door for me!”

But my mother, who had heard him, said to me: “No, Michèle, don’t open the door for him, he just went out to play, he has to stay outside!”

I told my brother, but he got angry. He absolutely wanted to go home. So, discreetly, I got down from the chair and ran to the corridor to open the door for him.

At this precise moment, we heard a very, very loud noise, as if a plane had fallen on the house: in fact, it was the balcony of the upper floor which had collapsed onto our balcony, destroying it entirely!

I had just escaped death thanks to my big brother!

We have long kept this wooden chair, glued (but it lacked small pieces) in memory of this miracle!