Sunk into the centre of the decking, with the towers sticking up like a dead dog’s legs at each corner, is a pit containing a small forest. Twenty mature silver pines weighing twelve tons each were dug up from an ancient Norman forest to create this ‘sacred garden’, which readers can see from the surrounding subterranean reading room but may not touch. The trees with their inadequate root-runs are restrained by metal guy ropes.

The library seems to represent an attempt at absolute domination of nature by man with its use of wood as decking, the caged saplings outside, and the transplanted and chained tree trunks in this tiny forest. And the treacherous slickness of the wet decking and the biting winds in winter, or the shadeless heat and the damaging rays of sun through the glass towers in summer, seem to be nature’s way of fighting back.

Over-size steel doors guard a long escalator that descends into a bunker clad in steel webbing, resembling the final destination in a Terminator film. The experience of researching at this library seemed designed to create the impression of a complete break with any external reality. It seemed appropriate to my mission. After all, I was leaving my own family to hunt for traces of a dead child in this strange mausoleum of a library.

I decided to begin my search at the bibliographic enquiry desk. The introductory leaflet encouragingly noted that this was ‘the best room to start your research – or to decide not to continue with it’. I explained in French to the assistant who resembled a squatting toad, bristling with a sullen lack of expression, that I was looking for local newspaper reports of a boy who had drowned. She looked doubtful so I explained about the letter. When she was still unimpressed, I pulled out a copy and watched her read it. She scanned through the letter, clicking her tongue disapprovingly and shaking her head, and told me I was wasting my time without checking the tidal patterns and carrying out psychiatric reports on the subject. After a forty-five-minute discussion she suddenly asked me, ‘Do you speak French?’ I stared at her in outrage. How had we just been communicating?

‘Well, to a Francophone this letter means so much more,’ she explained. ‘This phrase, for instance,’ and she gestured contemptuously at the lines, Today the journey is ending, my son has reached harbour again . . . ‘This is just so banal. It’s completely useless. You really are wasting your time. You have to have a plan of research – and even then, what a waste of time.’ Her words ground away at my optimism and self-confidence. Concealing my exasperation, I asked if she could simply let me know the names of the regional newspapers for each of the areas along the north coast of France. She continued to pore over the letter, and in an effort to prove that I had already discovered something of great relevance, I foolishly told her about the link with the film.