I rang La Voix du Nord, the regional newspaper for northern France, whose death columns I had so fruitlessly perused months earlier, and explained that I wanted to place an advert. The lady in charge of small ads asked me which section I wished to advertise in and was utterly bemused when I explained the subject matter – she had no idea which section would be appropriate. Would I like to speak to editorial? I jumped at the chance. The editor was interested and asked for a photograph of me and the bottle on the beach. I ran to my neighbour and press-ganged her son to rush down to the banks of the Thames with me and his camera. His brief was simple: Make this muddy riverine beach at low tide look like the sea at Warden Bay on the Isle of Sheppey; make me look tall, blonde and irresistibly attractive, and make this bottle look mysteriously intriguing.

It was an impossible task, but the bottle looked fine in the photograph, so I posted it off with a short explanation to the editor at La Voix du Nord.

Encouraged by this reception I decided to cast my net wider. I placed a small ad in Libération, the left-of-centre French national daily. The lady in the sales department announced that the category was no problem – ‘Between ourselves: seeking’ – but the text I had written, she said, was useless. She spent twenty minutes reworking the information with me, only to inform me that the advert was now twelve lines long and would cost me a fortune. We spent another five minutes trimming it back to a more affordable size. It now read:

Found

A letter in a bottle . . .

Maurice died aged 13 years

Who is his mother?

[email protected]

As she took my credit card details she expressed the hope that the advert would be effective, and remarked sadly that she would never know the result. When I offered to ring her if it worked, she gratefully offered me an extra free insertion.

Libération – two insertions had been and gone, with no result. For some reason my advert was placed under the subsection ‘Practical Life’ in the ‘Between Ourselves’ section, and mine was the only one in it. I think I would have preferred the subsection ‘Personal Messages’. Then I could have been next to: ‘I am happy to be immortal, so that I could love you for eternity. Why have you abandoned me?’ and ‘Yes, that’s right. See you soon I hope.’

When there was only one Saturday small ad left between myself and despair I checked my Hotmail account and realized there was a message waiting. It was the first message that had not been from the staff at Hotmail. This could be an important lead, I said to myself. My heart became arrhythmic and my chest tightened.