The Death Notice

Name: The Death Notice
Author: Hélène Vandermeer

by Hélène Vandermeer

One Tuesday morning, Claire Mathy receives her own death notice. Same name, same date of birth, same town. In Spa, for twenty years, another woman had been living her life — and someone wanted her to come and find out.

32 chapters 8 free Completed story

Family secrets Suspense Double life

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Claire Mathy is forty-four. She is an accountant in Namur, divorced, the mother of a seventeen-year-old son, and she collects her post every morning at 7.42.

One Tuesday in November, between the water bill and a flyer, she finds a black-edged envelope. Inside is her own death notice: Claire Mathy, born in Verviers on 14 March 1982, died accidentally on the Fagne de Malchamps. Same name, same date, same town. The address is handwritten in purple ink. No sender.

She goes to the funeral. In the church in Spa, in the photo on the easel, the dead woman has a white streak at her left temple. Her father's. Her own.

Who was the woman who had been living under her name for twenty years? Why has her father stopped coming to Sunday lunch? And who wanted Claire to find out?

Contains references to domestic violence.

The Death Notice

Chapters

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