“As I look at the image, I find myself thinking ‘Sheila’ is the name he has written on the postcard.”
Our brains are hardwired to substitute the familiar for the unfamiliar. My brain “saw” the name as “Gaila” as first.
On the postcard Barry writes the word “mail” right above Saila and the “ail” in mail and the “ail” in Saila are spot-on identical to my eye.
There is no space for an “h” between the “S” and “a” of what appears to be Saila and the “a” would have to be a mis-written “e” for Sheila to work assuming a squished “h” is between the “S” and presumed “e”.
It’s Sheila.
Near the bottom, he writes “Siene” and the bottom of the ‘S’ swings over , right into the top of the ‘i’.
In “Sheila”, he brings the bottom of the ‘S’ straight up the the top of the ‘h’, which he then brings straight down. The it comes back up to the right at a 45 degree angle. It then comes down and curves back up and loops around completing a squished ‘e’. A number of his lower case ‘e’ are like that.
If the vertical line at the right of the ‘S’ is not the start of an ‘h’ the what it it. If it’s a ‘G’, it’s a VERY strange ‘G’. Or a figure ‘8’?
The ‘a’ in ‘mail’ is not the same as the character in the disputed name. Look at the ‘a’ in ‘maddening’ and ‘political.’ He makes them the same way he maid the ‘a’ in ‘mailbox.’ Some of his ‘a’ he writes the normal way. That is, he starts at the top and goes counter-clockwise around until he hits the starting point and then he curves back down to the right, as in ‘wander’ and ‘painter.’
But, since he is left-handed, that is probably awkward for him, so he makes other of his ‘a’ by coming in from the bottom and going counter-clockwise more than all the way around, but just a bit past there, he changes direction and moves the pen into the next letter. As in ‘mailbox’, ‘maddening’, and ‘political.’
Now look again at the first ‘a’ in your ‘Gaila’. It is not all all like the ‘a’ in ‘mailbox.’ I comes in low from the left and loops all the way around, but doesn’t make that little hitch as he does in ‘mailbox.’ As far as I can tell, only one of his ‘e’, the second one in ‘seen’ looks like an the ‘a’ in ‘mailbox.’ They are smooth, while the ‘a’ often have the hitch. The one in ‘mailbox’ needs it since it has to go over to the right to start the ‘i’.
The little loop to the left of the ‘i’ in the name is clearly different from his letter ‘a’. It is ‘e’, which follows ‘h’.
I can see an “h” in-between the S and e.
It’s Sheila. See the vertical line after the S for the beginning of the h. The hump on the h and the e is what you’re seeing as an a in Saila.