An intimate portrait of Maryse Wolinski, widow of the French cartoonist, Georges Wolinski, and of the post-its that he left behind for her.

by Ed Alcock / Agence Myop

for The Guardian Weekend Magazine 

19 March 2016

On 7 January 2015, Georges Wolinski, one of France’s best-known political cartoonists, woke up early and sat at his drawing board, finishing a sketch. He shuffled around their flat on Paris’s chic Boulevard Saint-Germain, seeming unusually gloomy as he dunked his buttered toast into milky coffee. He didn’t always go to the weekly editorial meeting of the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo, but he was going that morning because the editor, Charb, wanted everyone there – to mark the new year with a slice of cake, but mostly to discuss the dire finances of a paper that was rapidly losing readers and funds. 

“Darling, I’m going to Charlie,” he shouted to his wife, Maryse, as he went out the door. Two hours later, he was shot dead through the heart. Two French brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who were brought up in a rural children’s home and radicalised in Paris, had burst into the Charlie Hebdo editorial meeting with Kalashnikovs and killed 10 people in two minutes.

A year later, on Maryse Wolinski’s bathroom wall, beside the shelves of hairbrushes and perfume bottles, an orange Post-it note is starting to curl. Written in artful capital letters, the message on it reads, “Darling, after a very small couscous at Nasser’s, I’m going to bed, thinking about your adorable smile. Good night, G.”

In her bedroom, another reads: “Bon voyage, mon amour.” 

Of the messages, Maryse says, “If he didn’t leave a note out for me, I’d feel sad and say he had to write me one. Now they have taken on this huge symbolism, because they’re all that’s left of him.”