When I met Gisèle Pelicot

Also this week: a first in my career, and maternal joy with anxiety

It’s not the first time I’ve regretted not being able to speak French fluently, but on this occasion, I felt it most acutely. When explaining to the publishers of Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir why the woman who’d been at the centre of France’s largest rape trial should trust my deputy editor, Liz Rawlings, and I at BBC Newsnight to conduct her first and only UK television interview, they asked if I spoke French. It sounded rather pathetic when I confessed “only to order a beer and ask for the bill, to be honest” (I got a B in my O-level).

As well as reading Pelicot’s memoir, A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, four times in preparation, I’ve spent the past couple of months on the Language Transfer app and getting tuition from my sister’s best friend, who is half-French. This meant that I could greet Pelicot in her language, describe how her book had left me feeling – ultimately, with hope – and let her know what an honour it had been to spend a morning with her on a cold, bright Parisian day.

How the light gets in

In my 30 years of working in journalism, I haven’t met many icons who have come to mean so much to women around the world. Gisèle Pelicot is one. I was explaining to my mum how this mother and grandmother seemed to have an aura around her: a diminutive woman with an impressive presence. There are many things to admire about Pelicot, including her courage in waiving her legal right to anonymity and her powerful plea that “shame must change sides” from the victim to the perpetrators, which resonated around the world. Yet what I admire most is the way she has chosen not to be consumed by anger and hatred over what she was subjected to by her husband and 50 other men. She has made a decision to keep her heart open and “walk towards the light”.

A powerful conversation

I never quite know how an interview will conclude. The conversation between Pelicot and me lasted for around 90 minutes. At the end, I thanked her warmly and profusely. Slowly, we both exhaled, but we stayed seated opposite each other on gilded chairs in the Salon des Arcades in the Hôtel de Ville. There was silence – from everyone in the room. Pelicot had just described the vile betrayal by her former husband and the grotesque assaults perpetrated upon her. She became emotional only towards the end, when I showed her on an iPad a number of French women we’d interviewed who thanked her for her bravery and her strength.

After several moments I asked Pelicot if she was OK; she said she was. Then I got up, hesitated and took a couple of steps towards her. She stood up. The next thing I knew we were hugging, and she kissed me on the cheek. This has never happened to me after an interview before.

Heat in the Caribbean

Since the end of January, my 22-year-old son has been volunteering on a volcanic island in the Caribbean: Montserrat, a UK dependency run by the Montserratian premier Reuben Meade and the British governor, Harriet Cross. In his first three weeks my son has been scammed at Antigua airport en route to Montserrat, had an inconsequential brush with the police, and made new friends from Colombia and Cuba, so is mastering Spanish enthusiastically (he’s much better at languages than me).

My emotions range from joy at the experiences he’s having, anxiety when he rang to say he didn’t have his insurance documents in the car when stopped during a random police vehicle check, and happiness that one of the few things he has to consider is whether he has enough bottles of cold Carib lager in the fridge.

Great cinematic heights

I took my husband to see Wuthering Heights at our local Everyman cinema on Valentine’s Day, despite the terrible one-star reviews it’s received. Guess what? The critics are wrong. It’s romantic, brutal, camp, beautifully filmed (Emerald Fennell is a genius in my humble opinion) and I sobbed at the end. In the queue for the loos after, one woman said to me in slightly disappointed tones: “I thought it was going to be more explicit than that!” I loved it. Eight out of ten from me, although it’s half an hour too long – but aren’t all films these days?

“Gisèle Pelicot: The Newsnight Interview” is available now on BBC iPlayer. “A Hymn to Life” (Bodley Head) by Gisèle Pelicot is out now

[Further reading: Starmer humiliated Wormald – but his problems with the Blob remain]