October 1983, Saint-Flour in France. It is 6 a.m. when a detonation shatters the door to a small house in the upper town. The GIGN’s men rush inside and, in horror, among the piles of rubbish, discover Esther Albouy (age 60) and her brother Hubert (age 41). In the next room lies the body of their brother Rémi, who died two years earlier. The newspapers immediately pick up the story: Esther’s head was publicly shaven in 1944, accused of ‘’horizontal collaboration” when the town was liberated. Her parents were so ashamed that, from then on, they kept her permanently locked indoors without anyone around them so much as raising an eyebrow.

This is where our historical investigation starts.