‘You know, I can see this woman as clearly as I see you. If I were any good at drawing I could draw her. I see a woman with long hair.’

She pointed towards the bottle. ‘Hers is the darker of the two locks. Her hair hangs down like this, rather long,’ and again she drew her hands straight down the sides of her head.

‘Her face is not plump, she is rather thin, her face is a bit hollow.’ She sucked in her cheeks. ‘Her eyes are fairly pale. I see her drifting a bit, like those slightly mad women one sees, wandering around. I see her walking. I see a little house. A very lonely woman, in a skirt.’

She was in full flow now and needed no prompting. ‘She is a lonely woman, who has lived alone, a woman abandoned by men, who has suffered a great deal. Very lonely.

‘But she is no fool. She is a simple woman, not very sophisticated, but at the same time, a very intelligent woman, extraordinarily sensitive. A woman in search of love, alone and in despair, in search of love. And also I have the impression that she had only this son to cling to.’ Although she had not read the letter, the impression of solitude and of the relationship with the son seemed to be accurate.

‘The woman wrote the letter because she didn’t know with whom to talk. She did it because she was very alone. I see her walking, wandering around on the rocks, on the beaches, all alone, and she needed someone to know her story. This is someone who has confided her despair to the sea. Consigned her grief to the waves.

‘I see a coast, like Brittany. I see her wandering, And it is strange, I also see next to her a woman, a mother or a grandmother all in black, like a Breton, a kind of countrywoman . . .

‘This is a woman who is very marked by her mother. It is curious, I see in her origins women, many women. There are more women than men in her life.

‘Perhaps in her first name there is a J – Janine, Jacqueline, Genevieve. I see a J.

‘I see the child . . . I see . . . it’s bizarre . . . I have an impression of . . . She doesn’t speak at all of what he died?’ I shook my head.

‘I see a very violent fever, something infectious, something quite devastating, violent. A kind of infection, a virus that carried him off very quickly. I see a fever, I see a child trembling, but I see water at the same time. I can’t quite see who is swimming . . .