‘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.’

I asked her how old she thought the letter-writer might be. ‘It is not a juvenile handwriting. She is certainly not adolescent, but I would not have thought she was very old either. It is a conventional script. Her writing shows a certain vitality,’ she continued. ‘She is not disorientated by sickness or medication. There is a healthy tension in the writing.

‘She is intelligent, precise, rigorous. She seems to have a feeling for numbers, perhaps she is an accountant. There is a sense of accomplishment. There is no amateurism here. She is not a superficial person. She depends on her past experience. She is a woman of today, but she needs her points of reference. I see no sign of the nomad – this is not someone who would grab her rucksack and go off round the world. She needs her everyday security. She needs some kind of solid structure in her life.’