The doctor could rule nothing in or out, and I was no further forward.

The other pseudo-medical angle that I felt might shed some light on the state of mind of the missing mother was the viewpoint of a counsellor, someone who dealt with bereavement as an everyday occurrence and who certainly had more experience of it than I did. Perhaps the counsellor, with her trained perceptions, would be able to tell me how long ago the child had died, or to pick up on any other clues.

The counsellor was a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and had three children herself, two boys nearing Maurice’s age. We had initially met through our sons, and while her professional view was clearly of most relevance, I thought the fact that she was also the mother of at least one son might provide her with some further insights.

‘The first thing to emphasize,’ she began, ‘is that there are no certainties.’

Then, in a cliché of counselling, she asked me in a gentle tone of sympathy what I felt about the letter, about the letter-writer. I laughed. She smiled and continued her analysis.

‘In a theoretical paradigm,’ she began, ‘of Freud through Lacan, it is a classic hysteric’s letter – her first-born son is a substitute for her missing phallus (the phallus standing for differentiation – what is or isn’t there). It seems there are no other children nor is there any mention of a father or reference to his absence. We can say that the paternal metaphor – le nom/non du père – which acts to protect the son from incest with the mother is not operative. You can feel how the son becomes a substitute for all her emotional and erotic needs – theoretically he becomes the phallus that the woman perceives herself as missing in the absence of her – the mother’s – penis.’

I was already out of my depth with the terminology and very relieved when she veered away from Lacanian psychoanalysis to psychology on a more comprehensible level. ‘In this way – and he is far from being alone – he will have felt smothered, buried alive by his mother’s desire, expressed as devotion or aspiration. It is not perhaps surprising that around the time of puberty, when his own sexual life and desire might be stirring, there is some kind of rupture between them. It seems that an argument may have occurred which put pressure on mother and son. The closeness of the relationship may well have forced him into active rebellion in order to achieve some kind of separation from her.

‘Unconsciously his choice was between remaining for ever in an alienated position, trying to fulfil what it was she wanted him to be, or to make an immense effort to escape – she was so symbiotically attached to him. It is not clear whether he really intended to hurt her in the only way he could, in other words by his escape. Given the nature of her attachment to her son, there is one sure way in which he could pay her out – and that is by harming himself.