Vas mon amour, vas vers la lumière, mon doux goêland. Que la source de ton âme jaillisse et court en murmurant vers la mer, et se déplie comme un lotus aux petales inombrables.

L’histoire de la plupart d’entre-nous, s’écrit probablement à l’improviste, au fur et à mesure que nous parcourons le chemin de la vie, mais il ait des existences qui semblent tracées d’avance, ineluctable et qui forment un cercle parfait. Il en ait d’autres dont le trace est imprévisible, parfois incomprehensible. Ce que j’ai eu le chagrin de perdre au cours de ma vie m’a enseigné ce qu’il y a de plus précieux comme me l’a enseigné un amour qui m’emplit de gratitude.

Cette lettre mon fils, je tiens à le partager avec une seule personne, la seule amie que je garderais toute ma vie et bien au delà, elle s’appelle Christine, elle est la douceur infinie.

This is a transcript of the original letter and grammatical oddities have not been amended.

The Search Concludes

The Letter in the Bottle

The Search Concludes

Three Years Later

Three Years Later

The first edition of The Letter in the Bottle was published in English in 2006. There were a couple of good reviews and a small flurry of emails, mainly from South Africa, all asking whether I had anything new to add since publication. But none provided any further information.

The years passed and the mystery remained. I did not forget my quest, and I retained a ‘Google alert’ on key phrases –‘lettre dans une bouteille’, ‘bouteille à la mer’, ‘Maurice, 13 ans’. Daily updates about the Île Maurice, Maurice Pialat, Maurice Jarre and so forth dropped into my inbox. But I made no other efforts and I moved on with my life.

The French edition was published in May 2009. By then my children were in their mid and late-teens and I was in the midst of something else. I re-read my book, now in a mellifluous translation that made it sound – at least to my Anglo-Saxon ears – far more lyrical and poignant. Or perhaps it was just that I was further removed from events now, three years later. The publisher assured me that there would be press coverage but the weeks passed and no one was interested. Suddenly I got a call: a national French newspaper wanted to interview me and my friend Sioux where she had found the bottle, on the beach on the Isle of Sheppey.

I hadn’t talked to Sioux for a couple of years. There had been a misunderstanding, nothing to do with the letter in the bottle, more to do with our differences in personality and aspirations. Now I sent her a tentative email, expecting her to delete it immediately, but she replied as though nothing had ever happened to our relationship. Yes, she would meet us on the beach; all was fine.