The tarot reader also received short shrift: ‘She says that in the second stage of my life I was blocked, not knowing how to go on. Well, I was thirty-two when Maurice died, I’m sixty now, so perhaps that refers to the accident? Then came a change and a third stage – what does that mean? She has enormous reserves of energy and vitality – that’s all false. She also thinks I’m androgynous – no, I disagree.’

‘You’re certainly not to me,’ interjected her compagnon, and she smiled gratefully at him.

‘“I do a job involving physical movement” – no. Dynamic, energetic – no. I’ve “known paradise” – false. This is all complete rubbish. All this stuff about the bottle “overflowing with gaiety, bubbling with happiness” – rubbish. “Problems springing from his father, or his lack of a father” – all false. The father was present, he was quite strict with them, but he was certainly present. “Maurice and his mother had lived together almost as a couple” – that’s a shocking thing to say. “He felt protective towards me” – all my children feel protective towards me. “All fire and flames, ready to try anything” – absolutely not. “He was born under Aries” – no, he was not, he was born on 18th June.’

She turned to me with an expression of disdain on her face. ‘The graphologist and the tarot reader; there’s really not much worth hearing from either of them.’

Then we turned our attention to the medium. ‘She seemed very exuberant, very dramatic, very theatrical,’ said the compagnon. The medium had described someone with longish hair, slim, which was accurate. The pale eyes were wrong. So were many other things: ‘“Swimming underwater” – I hate swimming, I never put my face in the water. “Death linked to violence of a man” – no. “Bottle thrown from a sailing boat . . . violence on the boat . . . the child committed suicide, a woman losing lots of blood from her stomach . . . a woman drifting all alone . . . a woman abandoned by men . . . a Breton mother or grandmother . . . a name beginning with ‘J’, ‘G’ – all this is completely false. “I don’t think you will ever find her . . . she is no longer alive.” Well, I am alive and you have found me, so all this is false.’