In our old house, we used to get a lot of letters addressed to J Whelan (dcsd). We managed to deduce (by sifting through a box of her posessions left in the cupboard of our old house) that she had been a former tenant who had had an affair with a married professor, travelled to south-east asia, worked as a teacher, possibly came from Ireland, set up a company (the company chequebook was in the box, with only one cheque removed) and then emigrated to Australia. Where she presumably died.

We don’t know what she left in her will, or to whom, but to us she bequeathed a box of angry love letters, bank statements and personal papers, a handful of blurry photos of ex-boyfriends, a handbag, a brown belt and a single gold shoe.

We didn’t know her at all. We pieced together her life from fragments of evidence, over the course of a long rainy afternoon in August 1999, with papers spread out across the floor of the living room. One day I’ll write about it properly - you just couldn’t make this stuff up, could you?

Anyway, today, Davo and I were shifting the last of the mess left behind by the decorators in our new house, putting it into black binbags to be taken away with the rest of the rubbish tomorrow.

Lifting up a box of screwed up newspaper and oily painting rags, a letter floated out to the ground. It was open, dated January 1998, and addressed to Suzette at our flat address from Rebecca and Chook in New Zealand.

Of course, I read it - who wouldn’t? The first paragraph reads thus:

“Hey guys, just got your card in the last month. My old employers in the US forwarded it on, but I was down south for a couple of months sorting stuff out cos mum and her 2nd husband went missing on the yacht, now presumed drowned. (Reason why we came home early). I’ve been back up in Hawkes Bay for about a month, and have already started a job at Hastings Hospital…”

Speechless. The letter goes on to chattily talk about kids and work and surfing and fishing and the normalness of everyday life. There’s nothing extraordinary about the language or the handwriting - even the paper is normal cream airmail stock. But that first paragraph hangs like a silent exclamation mark over the whole letter, at least to me.

I can’t imagine Suzette reading it without having to return to that opening line again and again, as I did. Notification of a death. And then we went diving for crayfish. Weather fine, hope kids are well.

I seem to make a habit of finding things.