I had a stronger word for the medium’s analysis. In fact all the ‘alternative’ analyses – from the Lacanian therapist to the tarot reader, the graphologist, the astrologer and the medium seemed to me to fall into the same bag. I had always felt their interpretations were dubious but I had given them the benefit of the doubt and now it seemed to me that they had been conclusively proven to be rubbish. It wasn’t that they themselves didn’t believe in their chosen methods. They saw images in their minds, just like I see images in my mind. The difference is that I know my image is an image, something drawn from my imagination, that may or may not have a bearing on reality, depending on fluke and evidential circumstances. But they see an image and they believe it is reality. They charge their clients – the only people I had paid had been the graphologist, the tarot-reader and astrologer, and the medium – the others had helped out of intellectual curiosity or friendship. But other clients would surely be more vulnerable and open to persuasion than I was. How many of my friends had assured me that I must visit these people, that I would certainly find the answer to my quest? Instead these ‘experts’ had come up with something closely resembling drivel. As we reached that conclusion, perfectly on cue, the phone rang and it was Olivier saying he had arrived for lunch.

Olivier had been very touched to be invited to join us. Later he wrote to me: ‘A s soon as I saw her that day I recognized her. She was just what I had imagined from the sound of her voice. Seeing you both together, I truly had the feeling that I was a privileged witness to a meeting that only the tides of the ocean could have brought about. When we all set off for a restaurant to have lunch. I walked between you and HER, feeling like an atom of oxygen between two hydrogen atoms. After a long voyage of seven years, the ink in the bottle was somehow transformed into a water molecule. And in spite of the sun, which shone brightly that day, our drop of water did not evaporate. All the suffering contained in that letter in the bottle, all the pain of losing a child, all the force of despair, transformed itself on that day into a magnificent moment of life.

‘Throwing a bottle into the sea is simultaneously wanting to be heard without wanting to be read, or maybe revealed naked. It is an act of relief, sometimes the ultimate relief when faced with the unbearable. I hope that this meeting of you two women will push this letter in the bottle a little further, may it be just the beginning of a long voyage, a beautiful and uncommon story.