I told him that although I thought the mother started by addressing us all, it gradually became clear that the letter was really only addressed to her son. The Professor agreed that naming the son, Maurice, was a dramatic moment. ‘But then she comes round to talking about her friend, so the friend becomes the co-addressee, and in the very last flourish of the letter the friend is named. So between Maurice, the son, and Christine, the fellow addressee, a little triangular drama begins to emerge. There are certain things one can only say to one’s son when mediated through the presence of a third party.’

The Professor suggested that perhaps the friend had emboldened the letter-writer to put her feelings into words, and possibly had even suggested putting the letter in a bottle and throwing it into the sea as an act of exorcism, or catharsis. On the one hand, he thought that bringing in a third person at the end of the letter added an unmistakably personal touch. On the other hand, he wondered ‘whether that very act of triangulation of the three persons is not the superim-position of a certain sort of literary form – a really rather elaborate literary construction – upon what might otherwise be a rather shapeless mass of personal impressions.’

I said I thought it strange that, if it was a literary artifice, it should be confined to the very last lines of the letter and the Professor agreed, though with some complex phrasing: ‘The placing of it at the end would incline me to think of the thing as backing up the authenticity theory rather than the put-up theory.’

At this point I tentatively brought up the subject of psychoanalysis, although dreading that I might be opening another floodgate of incomprehensible Lacanian jargon. The Professor eagerly seized on the suggestion, seeing the introduction of Christine as a way of facilitating the dialogue and unblocking the relationship between the other two characters in the story. ‘So that Christine, whether or not the author has a personal relationship with her, is acting as a gatekeeper or as an empowerer, moving the whole of the narrative into a new phase.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. That had all been fairly clear and comprehensible. He had not even mentioned Lacan.