Her brows lifted in interest. I had not mentioned the letter in a bottle on the phone, and it was unlikely that she would have known anything about it. If she had looked me up on the internet she would not have found any link to letters in bottles. It was not that I wanted to test her, it was more that I wanted her to come to the subject free of preconceptions and uninfluenced by my previous investigations.

‘Can I open it and read the letter?’ she asked.

‘I’d prefer you to tell me what you can before reading the letter,’ I answered firmly.

She nodded, unperturbed. ‘First I’ll see if I can pick up your signal or not. I’ll tell you whether I can feel anything.’ She handed me a pack of picture cards. ‘Shuffle these well,’ she instructed me.

They were not tarot cards, but various crudely drawn pictures, well thumbed and patched up with Sellotape around the edges. When I queried what they were, she explained, ‘They are my own special cards. They are just an aid to clairvoyance, my way of working. The cards help me. I don’t believe in them as such, it simply helps one to get in the mood, to make a connection with you, then afterwards it’s clairvoyance. If you don’t have the sight, these cards are completely useless.’

I was a bit disappointed, having promised myself crystal balls and dark muslin. I tried to concentrate as instructed, cut the pack and passed it to her.

‘Is there a death in connection with this person?’ she asked immediately. ‘I see death. I see death, something very hard, something like a cry for help . . . Perhaps it is a cry for help. There is something terribly unpleasant here, which is giving me a headache, something very painful.’

Her brow creased in concentration and – perhaps – pain.

‘There is something very upsetting in your story, something painful, difficult. This bottle is giving me a real feeling of physical discomfort. It is linked to a death. I feel very unwell . . . I feel very uneasy.’

I tried to keep my expression inscrutable, not to give her any unnecessary leads, but I was impressed. A letter in a bottle is not usually linked to death. After all, 75 per cent of the 435 messages in the bottles which Wim Kruiswijk collected over his two-decade sample analysis were simply looking for a penfriend – and of the rest not one was classified as containing subject matter relating to death.

‘Is it a woman who wrote? Because I can see a woman.’ I nodded. ‘I see a woman suffering. I feel dreadful. I have a terrible headache beginning, a very violent headache.’

I must say she didn’t look particularly ill. But her manner was not melodramatic, she seemed to be simply telling me how she felt. She shuffled her cards again.