The mystery of the message in the bottle. Four years ago Karen Liebreich published a book about her fruitless search for the author of a heart-rending letter found washed up in a bottle off the Kent coast. Then, just when she'd given up hope, the author of the letter called...
The bottle washed up on a beach on the Isle of Sheppey one bleak spring day in 2002. My friend Sioux found it while walking her dogs. Inside lay a letter, tightly curled and held by a ribbon. It was in French, so she sent it to me.
As I deciphered it, I found myself weeping. The letter was from a mother to 'all ships at sea, all ports of call, to my family, to all friends and strangers', but most of all it was a love letter to her son Maurice – a son who had died aged 13. It was beautiful, poetic, tragic – and unsigned. Wrapped within the pages were two locks of hair, one darker brown, one lighter.
When Sioux received my translation she too was devastated at its message, so much so that she could not bear to read it more than once. Both of us were mothers; her son was the same age as Maurice, mine a few years younger.
Over the next weeks I found myself wondering about the author of the letter. Had she killed herself (as the letter seemed at one point to indicate), or had she achieved closure and acceptance (as the end hinted)? How had Maurice died? Could one ever recover from such a catastrophe? Was this letter in the bottle a cry for help?
I began to wonder whether it would be possible to find her. I had very few concrete clues. I knew the boy's first name, his age, that he had died 'at the dawn of summer' and that the letter was contained in an extraordinary Evian bottle, shaped like a tear drop.
I didn't consciously embark on a search – I just started to make some gentle enquiries. A query here, a telephone call there, and before I had really considered the matter I found I had embarked on a real quest. I was buoyed by a foolish confidence in my abilities as a researcher – I had experience of winkling out long-buried secrets. It never occurred to me that it would be so serious, or take so long.
I began by assuming Maurice had drowned, because the imagery in the letter was all of water and sea. The unknown mother wrote that he 'travelled between two waters, between two lights', that he had now 'reached harbour again, on a faraway shore'. After a few months ferreting my way through French government departments that compiled statistical analysis into juvenile drownings, I wondered whether my first deduction had been right.
I consulted a private detective who suggested other possibilities, including suicide, but we still felt that drowning was the most likely cause of death, perhaps caused by a row between mother and son – in the letter she asked for forgiveness for her anger. Perhaps they had had an argument and he had jumped into his small sailing boat, or on to his windsurfer, overestimating his ability to return to shore? In my imagination I saw the boy's outstretched hand sliding away into the stormy sea, the mother leaning out over the gunnels of another boat and failing to reach him.
Pestering Evian eventually produced the answer that the bottle had been in production since October 2001. Expert analysis of the sea currents, the letter paper and the handwriting produced few answers, only more questions.
My years of search were peppered by hopes raised and dashed. A follicologist, expert in analysing hair roots, promised great things for the two curls rolled within the letter. In case of a drug overdose, for instance – a possible hypothesis – any drug traces would, he claimed, be revealed; he would even be able to tell the boy's hometown from any mineral residues. But it turned out that he needed the roots of the hair before he could supply such answers, not just locks of cut hair.
Medical practitioners made new insights. A GP suggested meningoencephalitis, based on the vague mentions of floating between two worlds. A psychoanalytic psychotherapist gave me a version whereby the boy had had no alternative but to harm himself in order to escape the mother's suffocating love, the absence of a father having so damaged him.
I analysed the language of the letter to discover the influences, from Hollywood weepies to Victor Hugo. I even visited a ribbon specialist to discuss the blue silk thread that encircled the letter.
In short, looking back, I became a kind of stalker, although it crept up so gradually I didn't really notice. At times I forgot that the writer was a grieving mother, and I looked only for an answer to a niggling puzzle. But then a look at the letter would remind me what profound, heartfelt grief lay at the origin of my search.
There came a point when I had exhausted all the logical, scientific methods. Various friends suggested more alternative solutions: a tarot-card reader, an astrologer, a graphologist, a medium.
The graphologist offered insights into the mother's character, but no answers. The tarot told me 'facts' about the disease that had killed Maurice, the appearance of the mother, the way the bottle had entered the water … Almost none would prove to be accurate.
The astrologer gave such obscure messages as to be meaningless: 'A young black woman fights for her rights.' The medium saw the mother and child very precisely: he was drowning, with a fever, she was losing blood, a Breton grandmother accompanied her, her name began with J or G …
I wrote up the story of my failed quest, and sent it out into the world, much like a letter in a bottle. Finally, last year The Letter in the Bottle was published in France. To my astonishment, delight and fright it became a media sensation. I was interviewed on the national evening news, prime-time television shows filmed the beach where the bottle had landed, daytime reality shows joined the search, the book went on sale in supermarkets.
Suddenly, one day, I got a phone call. The author of the letter had been found. Although I had been contacted by a few claimants, I knew immediately that this was the real one. Later she would confirm it. She had kept the rough drafts of the letter, she had kept the Dictaphone on which she had recorded her message, she had even kept the tickets from the ferry she had taken to throw the bottle into the ocean.
And after a few months, when the initial shock of discovering that she had been the subject of such a quest had subsided a little, she finally agreed to meet me…
The mother's story
We took the 11.15 ferry from Calais to Dover on 29 March 2002. We stayed on it at Dover. Christine, my best friend, helped me, she accompanied me. Without her I wouldn't have been strong enough to do it.
On the way over I tried, but I just didn't have the strength. Then, on the way back, Christine said, 'You must do it now, throw the bottle now.' So we went up to the bridge, but there were too many people; I just couldn't do it in a crowd.
A few moments later the bridge emptied, and we were left alone. It was almost magical. The moment I had prepared for had finally arrived. The first thing I threw over was a bundle of his clothing, the clothes in which he had been killed. It was so hard – I was screaming, howling, as I did it. I felt I was ripping out my heart, tearing out an essential part of myself. Then came three white lilies, which I had brought. I threw them in next.
Finally, I threw the bottle into the sea. It disappeared in the wake very quickly. And I went home and tried to pick up my normal life once more. But for two or three months afterwards I felt as if I was completely empty, destabilised.
Maurice died in 1981 and it had taken me 21 years to give birth to this suffering; now I had nothing left. After a few months, however, I began to feel liberated. Although one is, of course, never truly free.
The bottle was my idea. I already knew that I needed to do something to let him go and I had thought of a letter in a bottle – why not. The whole thing was triggered by a dream, the dream that I mentioned in the letter. I had a beautiful dream about Maurice and I finally understood that it was time to let him go. 'For a long time he travelled between two waters, between two lights ...' That's because I couldn't let him go, I was holding him back.
So that's when I decided what to do. It took me about two months to write the letter. I've kept the drafts; I spoke it into a Dictaphone.
The locks of hair I included with the letter – one lock from me and one from my son. It's the last lock of hair that I cut from his head when he … when he left.
Maurice was killed in a car accident on 27 August 1981. We had gone on holiday to Spain, and had just come back. Two days after our return the television set had given up the ghost, so my husband and I had decided to buy a new one. Maurice didn't want to come with us, so he stayed at home. We went off to buy the set and it took longer than we expected. Maurice decided to go out on his bike, on the main road, and that's where it happened.
When we got back the accident had just occurred. I had my two younger children in the back of the car, aged five and three. When we came back he was lying there on the side of the road, his eyes were open, but he was already in a coma. He never woke up. We went to the hospital. The doctor came out and said, 'Well, it's all over.' Just like that. And from that point on I descended into hell.
It never occurred to me that anyone would find my letter in the bottle. It simply never crossed my mind. I thought it would smash in the waves and the fragments of glass and paper would gently disperse through the oceans. I gave it to the sea, to the universe, it was perhaps my way of talking to God. I didn't sign it, I put very few personal details in the letter, not thinking that anyone would ever reply.
That night when my son rang me to tell me that he thought he had just seen my letter, my story, on the television, he asked what colour bottle I had chosen. We rushed to the computer, to see the programme on the internet, and there it was: my letter on the screen. There was so much of myself in that letter that seeing it on the screen was an enormous shock, a very violent emotion. At the time it was so painful to see it again. I felt violated. I have had to come to terms with the fact that someone had been carrying out all these investigations into me, had been looking for me.
Now I've recovered equilibrium. I've regained my distance. I can think more calmly, which is why I agreed to meet Karen.
I was 19 when Maurice was born, and he was my great love. We were like accomplices, fused together, we guessed one another's thoughts without even speaking. It's true that I was not very happily married, so all my love was diverted towards my son. He was very gentle, very sweet, a truly lovely boy.
I underwent psychotherapy for 10 years. Without that I could not have reached this point. What helped save me was the spiritual journey I have been on throughout these years, a great deal of reading of Hindu and Buddhist texts.
I'm not Catholic, though my family was. And of course I was very angry with Him. There is some kind of superior energy, a cosmic force, and I was furious with Him. Today I am once again happy to be alive, I have my grandchildren and so on. Today I can say, 'I have won.' ( telegraph.co.uk )
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