After an entire holiday racing around Switzerland in search of an outfit or a handbag, my mother would spend the evening before our departure cutting off the labels from all the new clothes she had accumulated and decanting the content of her perfume bottles into shampoo bottles in case the inquisitors at customs demanded where we had found the money for all these fancy new purchases.

So why was I called Patience?

Because you were born at ten months, of course. Your father always told us it was the snow that had stopped him getting the car out to come and see you after the birth, but the truth is that after such a long wait, he was devastated to have a girl. And you were enormous . . . 5 kilos . . . a real monster . . . and so ugly, with half your head crushed by the forceps . . . When you were finally dragged out of me, there was so much blood it looked like I’d stepped on a mine. It was carnage! And for what? A girl! The injustice!

I’m fifty-three years old. My hair is long and completely white. It went white very young, as did my father’s. For a long time I dyed it because I was embarrassed, then one day I was sick of having to keep an eye on my roots and I shaved my head to let it grow out. Today it seems to be all the rage . . . Whatever, it goes nicely with my Patience-blue eyes, and clashes less and less with my wrinkles.

My mouth is slightly lopsided when I speak, so that the right-hand side of my face is a bit less wrinkled than the left. It’s the result of a subtle hemiplegia caused by my initial crushing. It gives me a slightly working-class look, which, together with my strange hairstyle, is not uninteresting. I’m fairly solidly built, carrying 5 kilos extra — after putting on 30 during each of my two pregnancies when I gave free rein to my passion for large colourful cakes, fruit jellies and ice creams. At work I wear monochrome suits — grey, black or anthracite — that are unaffectedly elegant.

I take care always to be well-groomed so my white hair doesn’t make me look like some old beatnik. Not that I’m obsessed by how I look; at my age I find that sort of vanity a bit sad. I just want people to say to themselves when they look at me: Wow! That woman’s in good shape! Hairdressers, manicurists, beauticians, hyaluronic acid fillers, intense pulsed light treatments, well-cut clothes, good quality makeup, day and night creams, siestas . . . I’ve always had a Marxist view of beauty. For a long time, I couldn’t afford to be fresh and beautiful; now that I can, I’m catching up. If you could see me now, on the balcony of my lovely hotel, you’d think I was the spitting image of Heidi on her mountain.