Claire Zammit Xuereb was enjoying an afternoon on the boat with her family when she saw a bottle bobbing in the sea with what looked like a piece of paper inside.

“It was upright, just like in the movies. I said: ‘someone, please jump in for it’... It was such a beautiful bottle. Inside there were two letters and, on the outside, there were sort of koċċli [a type of mollusc] that looked like little stars. So beautiful,” Ms Zammit Xuereb said.

The boat was berthed in Ramla l-Ħamra in Gozo on June 29, a public holiday, at about 5pm. All onboard – who included her parents and her two children – gathered around the mysterious bottle.

They could see that there was no water inside but there was what looked like a little bit of oil.

“We were all really excited about it. It was a lovely bottle. First we removed the cork and then I tried to pull out the paper with my little finger but it was starting to tear...

“It was a big decision. It took us an hour to decide whether or not to break it but we finally decided it was the only way,” recalled Ms Zammit Xuereb, daughter of entrepreneur Anġlu Xuereb.

They placed the bottle in a bucket and hit it with a piece of metal. The two letters were dated June 8 this year. “They were love letters. Very passionate and written in Italian,” she said.

The two letters found in the bottle.

The letters – one signed by Rossella and the other by Luca – were handwritten on delicate paper, small in size, which had turned yellowish. Most words were legible although some were slightly smudged.

Water is life, just as you are life to me

Both spoke about having been together for five years. Rossella told Luca she hoped to be his wife one day: “Water is life, just as you are life to me,” she wrote.

Luca wrote that nothing could divide them and that “you are the woman of my life”.

Ms Zammit Xuereb now hopes she will be able to return the letters to their authors.

“I’m very infatuated with love stories... I’ve written messages in bottles many times in my life. After the tragedy, I wrote a letter to the universe, hoping that one day I’d get it back,” she said, referring to the New Years’ Day 2012 incident when her husband, Duncan Zammit, was killed in their Sliema penthouse in an unsolved case that also ended with the death of the alleged intruder.

“I’m sure that, somehow, these letters will go somewhere. I really wish that the couple can read this story... imagine that,” she said.