Michel-Edouard Leclerc has no memory of dates. There's an explanation for this curious amnesia: He hates looking back on the past, doesn't dwell on the present and thinks only of things to come. So, he haf trouble precisely pinpointing that particular day when his family froze, out of fear. He hesitated between 2002 or 2003, unless it was much further back. "MEL," as he is known in the French world of retailing of which he is a figurehead, lived in Paris at the time, working tirelessly for the brand created by his father, Edouard Leclerc (754 stores in France, 165,000 employees).

On weekends, he tried as often as possible to go to Landerneau in Brittany, to visit his parents, Hélène and Edouard. Edouard was an odd character: a genius entrepreneur, fighter and preacher, with an unusual temperament. His son retained an image of him as a shifting character, "sometimes solitary, sometimes hyperactive, moving from a dreamy, inspired air to excessive generosity in conversations and social situations." Edouard Leclerc also represented an image, reminiscent of the actor Lino Ventura, grumpy and boastful, affable and attentive, never showing a sign of fatigue. However, since he suffered "a major burn-out" in the early 2000s, in the words of his son, he had shown signs of weakness, bouts of melancholy and difficulty concentrating.

That day, in their family stronghold in Brittany, Edouard, Hélène and their son were having their customary lunch watching the popular lunchtime TV newscast. In the middle of a report on Alzheimer's disease, the patriarch leaped from his armchair pointing at the TV: "That's it, that's what I've got, why am I not being told?" he shouted. His wife and son were petrified. Long years of suffering followed, with the former boss throwing appalling tantrums and raging at his powerlessness in the face of the disease that was seizing him. Mother and son tried to protect him from himself, hiding his cell phone and car keys, but he sometimes escaped, running away, responding to strangers, getting tricked. His son remembered: "He no longer was able to have a lucid conversation. He'd go off into the forest and we'd find him in the morning, crying out for help." Edouard Leclerc died of heart failure in 2012.

From this long period during which he watched his father decline, MEL developed a profound death anxiety and a curious Peter Pan syndrome, a phobia of aging. "I'm terrified of having the same illness as my father, of ending up like him," he confided unabashedly.

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