As the trial of the January 2015 attacks opens on September 2, Chloé Verlhac, the widow of cartoonist Tignous, killed by an Islamist terrorist in the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, has chosen to confide in the podcast "The Sound of Life".

She recounts the "frightening" sound of sirens when she arrives close to the editorial office, Luz's silence and the words of her children, Sarah Lou and Solal, when she tells them the terrible news.

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It's a day she can never forget.

As the trial of the January 2015 attacks begins tomorrow, Chloé Verlhac, the widow of the cartoonist Tignous executed by an Islamist terrorist on the premises of the Charlie Hebdo editorial staff, remembers very precisely how she learned of the death of her husband.

"January 7, 2015, it's a Wednesday morning, it's the first day of sales and I go to pick up the children from school when my phone rings. It's Tignous's cousin who calls me to ask if I have news because there has just occurred a shooting in Charlie. I do not know, "she says in the second episode of" The Sound of Life ", the new podcast of Europe 1 Studio. 

 "My first instinct is to tell him that I am calling Tignous and that I will call him back afterwards. So I desperately try to call, to have someone on the phone but no one answers. And the anxiety mounts" , she explains again.

"I want to know if he's alive or injured. Not dead"

Then accompanied by a friend, the young woman rushes towards the premises of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

The perimeter is completely cordoned off.

It is the most total confusion.

"When I arrive on the boulevard, there are all the sirens ... It's hell! There are the firefighters, the SAMU, the police ... It's scary! It takes the guts. Outside of the anxiety itself, we are in a state of siege, ”she continues.

In a panic, she approaches a policeman.

The first one she sees.

And presents herself with a sentence that she repeats like a lifeline: "I ask her if Tignous is alive or injured. And thinking about it afterwards, I tell myself that at no time for me, at that moment, he was dead. I want to know if he's alive or if he's injured. "

Chloé Verlhac finally succeeds in entering the hall of the Comédie Bastille theater.

This is where the crisis unit was installed.

She asks for news but no one answers her.

"And there is a nurse who starts to scream. She screams and she says: 'I beg you, answer her, it is unbearable!'. And there everyone looks at me. And I ask the question to again: 'He's dead, is he dead, answer me?' In fact, nobody answers, nobody answers me, "she recalls.

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"After this cry, I hear nothing more"

This is where she meets Luz's gaze.

The cartoonist was not present in the premises of Charlie Hebdo at the time of the attack.

He was late.

He arrived shortly after the killing but knows that there is no more hope for those inside.

"Luz is in tears, collapsed ... He doesn't tell me anything, that's the most terrible thing. He nods his head."

Chloé Verlhac then understands that her companion is dead.

The shock is terrible: "I remember that I scream because after this cry, I hear nothing more. As in the films after the detonation when there is a kind of silence which is done and where we see people to be agitated. Me after having shouted, I do not hear anything any more.

Chloé Verlhac then goes to her home to announce Tignous's death to her children: "Sarah Lou was 9 and a half years old on January 7, 2015. When I see her, she comes towards the door while her little brother is not. Don't let her talk and she said to me: 'I know Mum. I know he's dead. I understood… and now you have to talk to Solal' ".

"What I want him to understand is the definitive side"

Solal is a little boy.

He is 5 years, 2 months and 7 days old.

"I want to tell him the truth, I want to explain it to him in childish words. So I tell him that his Dad's accident at work was very very serious and that Dad is not going to wake up from the accident and that 'so he won't be coming home,' she explains.

"And there Solal looks at me and says to me: 'So he is dead !?'. I don't want to say these words with him and I'm not convinced that at that time, at 5 years old, he knows what is that to be dead… What I want to make him understand, it is the final side of what that represents, namely that Papa will not come back, will never come back ”. 

But Solal asks him the question a second time.

"And so I say to him: 'yes, he is dead'. This is the 2nd time of the day that I say this sentence. It's difficult. And there Solal looks at me and says: 'Well and well now he you'll have to find a new husband, eh! But a nice one! "