‘Give me thirteen cards,’ she ordered. ‘I have a terrible headache, you have no idea how it feels.’

She laid out the cards on the desk. ‘Yes, there is something very difficult, something painful here, there is a death in connection with this. I sense violence. I see a woman with mid-length hair, quite long hair . . .’ She swept her hands down the side of her face to indicate hair falling straight down to just below the shoulders. ‘Loose, like this,’ the imaginary hair flowed past her own neat chignon.

‘There is something very troubling,’ she continued, fingering the battered cards. ‘I see a woman with longish hair, quite thin, slim, I see someone – it’s very strange, how can I explain it to you? I think the person who threw this in did it quite deliberately, but I feel that something is not quite right in that person’s mind. I think the woman is quite . . . “deranged” is not the right word . . . I’d say “perturbed” rather.’

So far, she seemed spot-on, but I was careful to give her no encouragement,

‘Does she speak of the death of a man?’ she went on. ‘I see a death of someone male.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A boy.’

‘Yes, there is a death of someone male.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked, peering at the pictures on her cards. There was nothing simple and obvious – like the tarot card for Death – to indicate this.

‘Because I see it,’ she replied simply. ‘The death is linked to the violence of a man,’ she hesitated, and moved the cards around. ‘Yes, that death of the child is linked to the violence of a man. The child is – what – ten to fifteen years old, twelve years old?’

‘Thirteen.’

She nodded. ‘I think this death is linked to the violence of a man, amongst other things . . .’ She tailed off, then repeated, ‘Violence by a man.’

There was a pause. I wondered fancifully whether the child had been conceived during a rape, since no man was mentioned in the letter, nor was there any reference to a man in connection with the lives of the mother or child, or the boy’s death.

‘Where did you find it, on an English coast?’

I nodded.

‘Does it come from a boat?’

This time I shrugged.

‘I think it comes from a boat,’ she answered herself. ‘I think it definitely comes from a boat. I see a woman clearly, I ask myself whether it comes from a woman who is on a boat . . . There is some violence. Does she speak of violence in the letter? Or of difficult things?’

‘Well, yes, the death, that’s difficult,’ I answered unhelpfully.

‘Is the letter written in French?’ she interrupted.

‘Yes.’ I was deliberately trying to provide bald uninformative statements.