The last newspaper I wanted to consult was La Voix du Nord. To my relief, it was available in hard copy. It covered the two French regions closest to the English beach on which the bottle had been found, Pas de Calais and Nord. By now dusk was falling, so I ordered up all the editions for the month of June from 1995 to 2000 for the following day.

The August heat in Paris was blistering. I was staying in a flat near the Eiffel Tower. Each morning, after a sleepless night, I would walk through the empty streets, enter an airless metro, traverse the building site where the surrounding industrial wasteland was being transformed into gingko-fringed boulevards, cross the Brazilian ipê decking cooking like Saint Laurence on his gridiron, and enter the glass-and-steel bunker of the library to immerse myself in the sad banality of death in the French provinces.

I was allocated a large lectern on which to consult my newspapers. La Voix du Nord – le grand quotidien d’information, ‘the great news daily’ – is a broadsheet. As the hours passed, I became adept at turning the pages swiftly to the ‘Nécrologie’ and skimming through the names and ages, in search of Maurice, aged thirteen.

I read the names and professions quietly to myself to stay awake – Bernard, Emile, André, Clorinthe (retired), Cécile, Jean, Madeleine, Joseph (gardener and florist), Marthe (hairdresser), Léon, Solange, Antoinette, Paul, Jules, Patrick, Onéphyle (market gardener) . . . The poesy of the names lulled me into a rhythmic rocking, like an old Jew at prayer, and I wondered if, in my trance-like state, I would even remember that I was searching for a Maurice if ever I should stumble across one.

There were so many young deaths that caught at my heart. There were the mothers who ‘after a long illness’ left their partners with small children to cope alone. There was Karine who died in June 1997, but even by June 2001 her family were still not coming to terms with their loss. The notice read:

It has now been four years, it should be getting better.

Well, it’s not getting better. It’s getting worse and worse.

Daughter of nowhere, she could not find her place in this intolerant world.

She could not cope with the brutal death of her Daddy.

Through her Art she expressed her priorities: Love, Happiness, Freedom . . .

For four years, for those who really loved her in all her mystery, her absence remains unbearable, the wound still gapes, especially for her mother and for those closest to her.

A picture of a smiling girl in her late teens, head tilted to one side. The raw pain of the message.

But as I worked my way through the Junes of 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999 (Maurice Keirsgieter, erstwhile baker and prisoner of war, aged 83), 2000 and 2001, I became more and more convinced that ‘the dawn of summer’ when Maurice died was in fact May. I ordered up a new batch of La Voix du Nord.