Twenty-four hours later, the search had to be discontinued because the whole house was in danger of collapsing. The man was never found. The depth of the subsidence was estimated at around ten metres but could not be assessed with any certainty.

So if the sky and the sea are not reliable, then neither, always, is the ground! Lumps of ice fall, lightning strikes, waves surge, and sometimes the ground quite simply tears itself open.

I hope you are well and looking after yourself.

Regards,
Annu Heiskanen

My friend Mr MacKay,

I wish you a merry Christmas. I trust you have not changed address?

I forgot to tell you in my previous letter about a woman who was sitting next to me on the plane, a retiree. Mrs Judith said that sometimes, what’s most miraculous is when nothing happens. She told me about how, in 1999, she was almost the victim of a bomb attack.

She was standing at a supermarket checkout when there was a bang by the shop entrance. The security guard standing in the doorway was hit by a cluster of nails and lost both of his eyes. Many others were injured, too. But Mrs Judith was bagging her shopping, ten seconds away from the door.

I said it was lucky that nothing happened to her.

So everyone said, she replied. Nothing happened. That’s true. But for years she kept asking herself:

Why was I in that particular place?

Why wasn’t I in the other place?

If the bus hadn’t been late, I wouldn’t have been in that shop then.

If I had picked another checkout to queue at, I would have been quicker.

Why was the bus late?

Why am I where I am at any given moment?

Why did nothing happen? Why did something nearly happen?

And she told me she had got stuck. There were no answers. The questions just kept going round in her head, for ages, even after two more bombs had exploded and the right-wing extremist who had planted them had been imprisoned, and the premiere of a play that had been written about him had been performed.

Annu

Dear Mrs Heiskanen,

I’m writing to let you know that my husband Hamish MacKay died on 23 October. In the end it was fate that won this strange, stupid game.

That stubborn, headstrong man would never put on a life jacket, for all they campaigned here to make us do it. He knew full well how it would end. What he was trying to prove and to whom, God only knows.

I know Hamish liked getting your letters. He was a literary man. I don’t know where he got that spark, given his parents were what they were. I suppose that’s why he agreed to do the BBC programme – he got to know people who were a bit different. He liked associating with those grand types. I saw it all right.

I wish you luck in your life. Not too much luck, mind.