The ‘momentous’ mention of Christine, with its suggested lesbian overtones also proved to be only the result of an over-active imagination, both from the psychotherapist and from my friend. She and Christine had had a good laugh over it – probably one of the few laughs they got from the book. Married with two children, Christine was, in the words of the mother, ‘my best friend, my soul mate, closer than my sister.’ Later I would meet Christine and see their friendship for myself. Together they had been through a lot, and they had travelled some kind of spiritual voyage together. But there was no physical element to their relationship.

The Professor of Literature had seen the mother as relatively uneducated in a formal sense, and this had turned out to be true. Though the psychotherapist had imagined her to be a ‘Catholic woman from a high-class French family’ and the graphologist had analysed her as being highly educated, in fact the unknown woman, daughter of a welder, had left school at fourteen and become a mother while still in her teens. She had been a shop assistant and a receptionist. According to her, the Professor of French Literature was one of the few experts to analyse her letter with any degree of accuracy or insight, a view possibly coloured by his appreciation for her use of language and his praise for the poetry of some of her phrasing. He had correctly identified nineteenth-century poetry as a source of inspiration for her, and she agreed with his analysis. ‘Victor Hugo in particular was a great influence. I have always been fascinated by him. He lost a daughter, Léopoldine, who drowned in the Seine, and his style was imprinted on mine.’