A week on from Paris' worst terrorist attrocity since 1961, former Bolton News writer Shanna McGoldrick reports from a city in shock

ONE week on from the terrorist attacks that killed 129 people and wounded more than 350, Paris is still reeling.

As morning breaks on the seventh day since the violence erupted, the rain splashes heavily on the battered flowers and extinguished candles piled high at Place de le République.

Over the course of this gruelling week, Parisians have steeled themselves to once again crowd onto public transport, go to work and even brave the odd terrace drink. But the mood is fragile.

“Everybody is worried,” says student Charlotte Simon, 22. “People are more cautious on the metro, they’re checking everyone over, everyone’s reading the news. It follows us all day.”

The climate is markedly different from that of unanimous resistance that sprung up in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders this January, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest.

“There hasn’t been the same rush of solidarity as there was after Charlie Hebdo,” says Aude Salices, 23. “That left its mark because there was the whole notion of freedom of speech, but this time around something less precise was attacked - just the freedom to sit down and have a coffee. I think that Charlie Hebdo was a kind of preparation, so to speak. People are broken now. Everybody has been touched by this.”

It is true that the shockwaves of last Friday have been wider-reaching than in January. This time it felt personal for all of us living here, because it was.

By some miraculous twist of fate, one of my best friends left the bar 'Le Carillon' 30 minutes before the bullets rained down on its zinc counter.

Over the course of that nightmarish weekend, it transpired that two of my colleagues had been wounded by gunshot at the Bataclan.

On the Sunday morning the police found the terrorists' car abandoned just doors away from my house in the suburb of Montreuil.

Paris is a relatively small, dense, capital city, and these attacks touched the lives of anyone who lives here. As Salices says: "It could so easily have been us."

Yet the degree of tolerance on show is remarkable. “People are nervous,” says Solène Michel, 18. "But the attacks were obviously designed to stir up hatred and we can’t fall into that trap.”

Nonetheless, the multi-racial, multi-cultural dimension of the attacks makes for complicated emotions. Nadia Basma, 34, is a Moroccan expat who has called Paris home for the past 12 years.

She tells me about her "shame" that the suspected mastermind behind the attacks Abdelhamid Abaaoud was of Moroccan origin. "I just want God to deal with him," she says angrily.

Despite the frayed nerves, an unspoken sensitivity has enveloped the city. “Everyone is supporting one another,” says Basma.

The outside encouragement hasn't gone unnoticed by people here either. Michel agrees sadly, saying: “It is very touching, how the world has reacted.”