‘So do you not think it is real?’ I asked bluntly. The thought that it was a hoax had of course crossed my mind. The possibility that it might be a literary joke had not.

‘It has a feeling of reality about it,’ he conceded. ‘It seems to me to read like a report on experience and on personal feelings, yet at the same time one has to remind oneself that literary texts themselves often have that quality – of personal disclosure, reportage sharing intimate thoughts, secrets, with the reader. I would question whether this might be a solitary, strange, rather desolate act of publication, throwing the text into the sea in a bottle . . . hoping for one reader. It could be the first step towards publication of a very elaborate piece of literary artifice, although I’d much rather think of it as a statement from a bereaved mother about her own pain and her own loss. I’d like to think there was a real family and a real human situation in the background, rather than yet another work of literature.’

I was doubtful and questioned whether such an inefficient method of publication would be considered by someone merely writing the letter as a literary artifice or a hoax.

‘There’s an element in the whole thing which is not straightforward confessional, not a simple cry for help, but is mediated through a mass of received literary images, texts. That’s the element that seems to suggest that something else is going on, something more than a mere expression of personal feeling and loss.’ The Professor fumbled for his copy of the letter. ‘I want to read you a fragment or two that struck me as ingenious beyond the needs of the occasion, passages that suggest that a spontaneous striving for literary effect is overriding simple questions of self-expression.’ He found the phrase in the letter and read it out: ‘“Sans prévenir il s’est derobé à la vie dans un trop plein de désirs, un trop vif de vivance, à l’aurore de l’été.”’ (‘Without warning, he slipped away from life in an excess of desires, too full of vivid life, at the dawn of summer.’)

‘The “trop plein de désir” is itself a rather elaborate phrase, trying to convey this thirteen-year-old’s appetite for life, his vitality, his energy, the multiplicity of his wishes, plans, projects and so forth. It’s already “un trop plein” – an overflow system, within the world of plumbing, hydraulics and so forth – it is quite a refined phrase with a lot going on in it. The next phrase, however, “un trop vif de vivance”, plays on the writer’s own rather unusual use of the word “vivance” earlier in the letter; it’s not an overflow, it’s an over-life of vitality that’s being spoken about, and “vivance” has a semi-technical sense to it. This suggests to me that the writer is half in love with her own literary language, and with her own ingenuity, as well as keeping a motherly eye on the lost child at the beginning, at the dawn, of his summer flowering, “à l’aurore de l’été”. And this is a haunting phrase. Since first reading this letter, I have thought to myself how extraordinary that the French language, handled by an ordinary person – and she sounds ordinary in other respects – should be able to achieve this degree of intensity as the letter unfolds.’ He hesitated for a moment, and I suspect we were both thinking of the unknown ordinary person who had touched our emotions.