She thought for a while. ‘There is something obsessive, depressive, monotonous in the writing. It is almost suffocating in its own space.’ She indicated the blue inked spaces and the contrasting white empty ones. ‘The white is what is not spoken,’ she explained. ‘It is linked to listening, to the subconscious. The subconscious is very – perhaps too – controlled.’

She pointed out that the letter had been written with a line guide, a page with thick black lines placed behind the writing paper, to steer the pen into parallel correctness. The French expression was ‘un guide âne’, a donkey guide. The writer had used either an ink pen or a high-quality rollerball, though the graphologist thought it was more likely to be the former. She had whited out a mistake. This was not a letter written on a cliff-top in a howling gale of emotion. This was a letter probably drafted beforehand and certainly written on the correct stationery at a table.

‘The writer has a relatively high level of education,’ continued the graphologist, ‘although she does make some elementary spelling mistakes, some grammatical errors. The occasional verb did not agree, perhaps because she was writing with such emotion, perhaps simply because she was an erratic speller.

‘She is quite introverted, a woman who keeps things back. The graphologist pointed to the tiny upward-shooting ends of many of the words. These, she said, are among the least modifiable elements of handwriting. ‘She seems very controlled, it appears to be all very disciplined, but then there is a reactive, almost a violent dimension. She presents a very calm façade but underneath it all she is bubbling with emotion. It is almost as though she is not authorized to be spontaneous but even so there are these little explosive episodes. It is as though she is trying very hard to master her emotions. Her pleasure principle is very restrained, very bridled. I’m not convinced that she achieved an inner freedom.

‘There is a touch of guilt here, maybe an element of masochism. An obsessional neurosis perhaps. She has had a very organized life, without much scope for imagination. She gives the impression of calm, but within her there is a tempest. Either life or her education has flattened her spirit, but deep down she is animated, vibrant, alive.’

At the top left-hand corner of each page sat the sideways sloping eight, the sign of infinity. At the beginning and end of the letter were two V shapes, like a symbol for a tick or a symbolic seagull. The graphologist thought these were birds, and I vaguely recalled that in the Kevin Costner film his notepaper had some kind of seagull image at the head. Maybe the writer was trying to emulate the film, just as she had lifted some phrases from it. Or perhaps that reflected the desire for freedom, the metaphorical rise from water through to the air of the letter’s imagery.

‘The density of the text implies that she may be unable to distance herself from her emotions. Her judgement may be affected by this excess of emotions, by her inability to withdraw.’ The graphologist pointed to the way the loops of the lines overlapped, which had led her to draw this conclusion. The ‘g’ of ‘infatigablement’ in line 17 was mingled with the ‘f’ of ‘froid’ in the following line, and this was frequently repeated throughout the letter. ‘Certainly she has an important need to express herself, a need to talk, to unburden herself, even before her son.’