I met the journalist and photographer off the shuttle in Ashford. We rented a car that I was to drive, as they feared the English wrong-hand drive. I had borrowed a sat-nav that failed to function and that kept interjecting with inappropriate directions. The screen remained stuck on the first image, and we had brought no paper map. The photographer snored on the back seat, exhausted it seemed by his previous night’s carousing. I drove around Kent under increasing stress, trying to find the Isle of Sheppey, while the journalist interviewed me in speedy colloquial French and the sat-nav firmly ordered me to turn at non-existent junctions. It was not a relaxing drive.

When we arrived at the beach the wind was blowing with a gale force. The tide was in and there was no beach. The waves were high, the air full of spray. Sioux was already there with a new dog, her old companions having passed away in the intervening years. The photographer asked me to take out the letter from the bottle and pose near the water. I could hardly hear his instructions over the wind. The journalist ran back to take refuge in the car, while my friend and I tried to follow the photographer’s curt orders. Between the spray and the wind the letter began to suffer. The wind was so strong I couldn’t even open my eyes, and my nose and eyes began to run with horizontal moisture. The dog decided she had had enough and ran away. In the pictures, published in the paper two days later, my hair is vertical in the wind. In the background Sioux and her dog look in opposite directions, my friend out to sea, her long blonde hair whipping madly around her head, the dog gazing longingly back inland, visibly shivering.

As soon as the article appeared, media interest exploded. Two national TV channels sent crews to film us, once more back on the same beach, but this time in calmer weather conditions, with the tide out and a grey beach visible. We repeated the same story each time.

The breakthrough came after the very first TV interview was screened. Olivier, the psychologist who ran the website www.bouteilleàlamer.com rang. He had never telephoned before. We had remained friendly, and he had left the search notice posted on his website throughout the intervening years. No one had ever got in touch with him. ‘I’ve been contacted by someone. I think it’s genuine.’

My heart stopped; how true a cliché can be. I struggled to take a breath, an active encouragement from brain to lungs to breathe once more.

‘She sent an email to my site,’ he explained. ‘She said “I am the person who threw this bottle in 2002” followed by a telephone number. I was stupefied!’