It was likely that the day matched the bleakness of the mother’s mood, with an unfriendly sea, where ‘restlesse mindes are tossed’. Perhaps it was grey and stormy, but with a hint of spring to come. A slight lightening of the sky, reflected in the ‘I’m doing better now, my love’ of the letter, and the comfort of friendship alluded to in the closing lines.

The woman at Evian then unwittingly supplied me with another concrete piece of information. We were getting on so well that I decided to read her the opening lines of the letter. She interrupted me and said, ‘You know, that sounds just like the Kevin Costner film Message in a Bottle.’ I humoured her – after all, her co-operation was important – pointing out that this story is true tragedy while that one is just Hollywood fantasy. She insisted that the film was very similar and started to tell me the plot; it sounded very convoluted, with as many deaths as Hamlet. Battered into reluctant submission, I agreed to watch the film, and she in return agreed that I could come and visit the factory if I wanted to, an offer she would later rescind. Meanwhile she made a note to send me a press pack that, she assured me, would contain absolutely nothing of any use.

I now knew that the bottle had been manufactured only a few months before it had been found, so it had not been floating towards us for years. I knew the numbers of boys drowned in the previous decades but was apparently unable to track down the individuals from the national statistical databases. I knew that the police, the coroners’ service and the Foreign Office were unable to advance the search. And I knew a little more about the history of the strange method of communication through letters in bottles. But I still had no idea who the mother was, who the son was, or why or how he had died.

My friend the dog-walker was surprised that I was still bothering. But I was hooked, as much by pure curiosity or out of sympathy as by irritation at my failure thus far. I felt I still had many more angles to pursue before I had to admit defeat.

7

I rented Message in a Bottle from the local video store. I knew it existed and had in fact thought of taking it out a few weeks earlier, but the cover portrayed an image so syrupy that I had decided I simply couldn’t face Kevin Costner’s heartbreak. However, I had assured the woman from Evian that I would watch the film and so, in the hope that it would yield some useful information, I steeled myself to do so.

Divorcee journalist Theresa, played by Robin Wright Penn, is jogging along the beach when she stumbles across a bottle with a message. She shows the letter around the newspaper office where she works and her editor, played by Robbie Coltrane, publishes it without her prior knowledge. The newspaper’s ‘research department’ tells the journalist that the typewriter used to write the letter is probably five years old; the cork has been in the water only two years. The letter is published and two more letters on identical stationery are received from readers. Theresa reads out the third letter: