The Envelope

The law gives the police four hours to work out who I am. They use up nearly all of them.

The local police station is a beige building with a car park at the back. They sit me on a bench fixed to the wall, between a broken coffee machine and a first-aid poster.

“It's an identity check, madam,” says the sergeant. “You're not in custody. You're not accused of anything.”

“So I can leave?”

“No.”

At one o'clock an officer phones the prosecutor's office. He hangs up and comes back with a tablet. The prosecutor's office has given the go-ahead for fingerprints.

I put my fingers on the glass one at a time, in the order he tells me. Thumb, index finger, middle finger. My hands are clean and dry. At the counter I used to wash my hands forty times a day.

At three o'clock the answer comes back. Unknown on file.

“That's normal,” says the officer. “The database is people who've already had dealings with us. You've never had dealings with us.”

“What about my ID card? My fingerprints are on it. They took them at the town hall, in 2021.”

He shakes his head.

“It doesn't work that way round. The ID card database doesn't use your fingers to find out who you are. It only checks whether you're the person it's been handed.”

“You've been handed Nadia Meziane.”

“We've been handed two Nadia Mezianes, madam.”

---

It's the wristband that gets things moving.

A lieutenant comes along the corridor with a file under his arm, stops, walks back. He reads my wrist without asking.

“Unknown F. That's the woman from the canal, that is. 17 October.”

He types something into the computer on the front desk. He reads. He looks at me differently.

“Found by a fisherman at twenty-five past seven. Wound to the back of the skull. Captain Wattez is the detective who has the case.”

“So you know who I am.”

“I know what happened to you,” he says. “That's not the same thing.”

At twenty past four they've only got ten minutes left to hold me. The sergeant tells me as he hitches up his belt. He adds that before they let me go, given my injury, given what happened outside the house, they'd rather I saw a doctor.

“I've just come out of hospital.”

“Exactly.”

---

At Salengro A&E you don't go in through the main entrance. There's a door at the back, out of sight, for the people the police bring in.

Three cubicles. A psychiatric nurse who takes my blood pressure and asks me if I know what day it is.

“Saturday 7 November. It's a quarter past five. You've got a coffee stain on your left sleeve.”

She looks at her sleeve. She smiles a little.

I wait an hour and a half. I count the ceiling tiles, then the holes in each tile. Ninety-six per tile.

The tiredness comes down on me all at once, the way it has every afternoon since I woke up, like a wet sheet over my shoulders. I keep my eyes open. I don't want anyone writing down that I'm asleep.

The on-call psychiatrist is young. He has the red eyes of someone whose shift started yesterday. He asks me questions for twenty minutes: my name, my job, the date, the name of the president, what I ate this morning, what I'll be doing tonight.

I answer everything. Exactly. He writes.

At the end he puts his pen down.

“You're perfectly coherent, madam.”

“So you believe me.”

“I didn't say that. I said you were coherent. I can't see any reason to keep you here.”

“And my son?”

He rubs his eyes.

“That isn't a medical problem.”

He's right. And it does me no good at all.

---

The A&E social worker is a small woman with short hair who talks while she types. At twenty to eight in the evening, after twenty minutes on hold, she gets through to the 115, the emergency housing line.

“A hotel, behind Lille-Flandres station. Three nights to start with. After that, we'll see.”

She opens a drawer and puts a flip phone on the desk, silver-grey, scratched, with a charity sticker on the back.

“There's five euros of credit on it. Don't waste it.”

She hesitates. She takes out her own purse and slips a ten-euro note under the phone.

“You didn't get that from me.”

I say thank you. I say it badly. I don't know how to say thank you when it costs me.

As I'm getting up, she snaps her fingers.

“Wait. Did you come in this way, on 17 October? Through A&E?”

“I suppose so. I don't remember.”

She runs a scanner over the barcode on my wristband. She disappears for ten minutes. She comes back with a brown envelope the size of a phone book, sealed with red tape.

“Your personal effects. They've been in the A&E safe since you were brought in. This morning, on the neurosurgery ward, nobody thought to come down for them.”

She hands it to me.

“It's the only piece of paper all day with your name on it,” she says. “Well. The name you've got here.”

---

The hotel is a tired two-star, five minutes from the station. Room 14, first floor, a single bed, a washbasin, a radiator that clanks every three minutes. The manager hands me the key without looking up from his screen.

I sit on the bed, the envelope on my knees.

It's half past nine. Sacha has been asleep for two hours. In his room the moon night light is on. Someone has put his bottle in the sink. Someone has left the door ajar. I don't know if she leaves it ajar.

On the envelope, in black felt tip, a nurse's handwriting, slanting, hurried.

UNKNOWN F. — 17/10/2026

And underneath, the inventory.

1 black watch (switched off), 1 earring yellow metal, 1 sports shoe

I read it twice. I reread the second item. A typing error, that's the first thing that comes to mind. A line that belongs on another envelope, another unknown woman, another bed.

I peel off the red tape. It resists, and tears away a strip of paper with it.

I tip the envelope out onto the bedspread and put what comes out in order. I can't help it: things have to be in a row.

The shoe, first. My running shoe, the right one, grey and yellow, stiff from drying out. The lace is still double-knotted, the way I do it. The left one isn't there. It must be at the bottom of the Deûle.

The watch. Black, round, silicone strap. I press the button on the side. The screen stays black. I press for longer. Nothing. Three weeks without its cable.

I put it down next to the shoe, perfectly straight.

The third object has slipped into a fold of the bedspread. I find it with my fingertips. It's cold, and it's small.

A hoop earring. Yellow gold, about three centimetres across. The hinged clasp is open, bent outwards, as if it had been ripped out. On the post there's still something dark, a dried mark.

I hold it in my palm, under the bare bulb.

Without thinking, I lift my hand to my ear. I touch my earlobe. It's smooth. It always has been.

My mother wanted to have my ears pierced for my tenth birthday. I cried so hard in the jeweller's that we left with nothing. She was still laughing about it the winter she knitted the cardigan.

The radiator clanks.

I look at the hoop, the watch, the shoe, lined up on the bedspread of a 115 hotel.

This earring was on the canal bank with me. On the flap, another hand has added in pencil: in right fist. I was clutching it when they found me.

It isn't mine.

I've never had pierced ears.