14 months

'When winter came, I missed my girl so much that it physically hurt. I wanted to hear her, see her, talk to her, and this need became so great and unbearable that I began to write in a blue notebook. A few lines, almost every day. When I read them again, it turned out that they revealed very clearly my state of mind at that moment. That is why I decided to copy them in full. These words are nothing more and nothing less than a particularly direct expression of my feelings, of my experience of that moment. We were torn between hope and despair, we lived only for the day of their return, we invented our own ways to cope with resignation and the indifference that we rejected with all our strength. Through our strong will not to let them be forgotten, Julie and Mélissa became, almost imperceptibly, over time the girls who, through our constant appeals through the media, were finally able to move an entire country. Who else but us could bear witness to life at that moment? Could we still speak of a life? In reality, it was more of a nightmare in which we struggled like poor devils, only hoping to wake up.' Julie and Mélissa were kidnapped on 24 June 1995. It was not until fourteen months later, on 17 August 1996, that the bodies of the little girls were found. Carine Russo, Mélissa's mother, chose to describe in detail the tragedy, which shook the basic structures of the Belgian justice system, 20 years later. A story that is as moving as it is merciless.