Accidentally Deceased

I learned of my death on a Tuesday morning, in a black-edged envelope, between the water bill and a furniture-shop flyer.

It was 7.42. I collect the post in the morning, on my way down, because by evening I've forgotten about it. I had my coffee in a takeaway cup, the keys to the Clio in my pocket and three envelopes in my left hand. The bill I recognised by its logo. The flyer by its glossy paper. The third was square, thick, cream-coloured, with that black border you never mistake for anything else.

I opened it in the hall, standing up, next to the letterboxes.

Inside, a card folded in two. A thin cross, embossed. And my name.

Claire Mathy

born in Verviers on 14 March 1982

died accidentally on the Fagne de Malchamps on 18 October 2026.

Her partner Vincent, her daughter Emma, Jeanine Lambotte, and all those who knew her at Chez Claire tea room invite you to the farewell service to be held on Saturday 7 November at 11 a.m. in the church of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Remacle, Spa.

No flowers or wreaths, by request.

At the bottom, in very small print, the name and number of a funeral director's in Spa.

I read it again. Then I did what I do with an entry that won't reconcile: I went back over every line, one by one, and ticked it off.

The name: Claire Mathy. Mine. The first name too.

The date: 14 March 1982. Mine.

The town: Verviers. Where I was born, in the same hospital as every other child born in Verviers that year.

Three out of three.

There was a fourth detail, a smaller one, and I noticed it before I had decided to notice it. “Her partner.” Not her husband. Not her spouse. Someone had chosen that word, or had let it through. I took the black spiral notebook out of my bag and wrote it under the day's date, with the rest: name, date, town. Partner.

I looked at the envelope.

The address was handwritten. Madame Claire Mathy, the number, the quay, 5100 Jambes. In purple ink, a round, careful hand, each letter set down on its own, unjoined, with closed loops on the l's. No sender on the back. The stamp was an ordinary stamp, with the King on it. The postmark was nothing but a grey, smudged half-moon, with neither town nor day legible.

Above me, on the fourth floor, Tom was still asleep. On Tuesdays he starts at 8.25.

I put the card back in the envelope, the envelope in the notebook, the notebook in my bag. I drank my coffee. It was cold. I went to work.

---

In the Clio, at the first lights on the Jambes bridge, I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror.

I am forty-four. Brown hair cut in a bob, grey eyes and, at my left temple, a white streak two fingers wide. It arrived the year I turned thirty. I dyed it for four years, then stopped paying to hide it. My father has the same one, in the same place. On him you can't see it any more: everything else has gone white around it.

It occurred to me that the dead woman might not have had time to go white.

The light turned green. Someone hooted behind me.

---

Fiduciaire Collart & Thiry occupies a townhouse in Salzinnes: three floors, a parquet floor that creaks outside the boss's office and a coffee machine that makes a great deal of noise for nothing. I have worked there for twelve years. I look after the files of fifty-three clients, self-employed people mostly, a mechanic, two physios, a bakery, a travel agency that doesn't travel much any more.

Nathalie Dewez has shared my office for nine years. She is fifty, with two grown-up sons, a husband called Jacques and a box of liquorice sweets in her left-hand drawer, always open, never finished.

I handed her the card without a word. She read it, chewing.

“Oh,” she said. “My condolences.”

“Nathalie.”

“What? You look well, for a dead woman. A bit pale.”

She turned the card over, looked at the back, looked at the envelope, the stamp, the handwriting. She took out a second sweet.

“Listen. Someone with your name who's your age, that's a one-in-365 chance, not a miracle. Mathys in Verviers, there must be a whole page of them in the phone book. Somebody mixed up the addresses, that's all.”

“Somebody wrote my address by hand.”

“Somebody googled 'Claire Mathy' and found you. You're on the website, with your photo. The one where you look like you want to audit the photographer's VAT.”

She was right about the website. Our “team” page gives our names, our photos and our specialities. Mine says: “Claire Mathy, accounts for the self-employed and the liberal professions.” It doesn't say where I live.

She was wrong about the maths. One in 365 is for the date alone. You still needed the same surname, the same first name, the same year and the same town. I didn't work the sum through in front of her. I did it later, opening the mechanic's file, and I didn't like the answer.

“Are you going to go?” Nathalie asked.

“Where?”

“To your funeral. I would. You don't often get the chance to hear what people really think of you.”

She put the card back on my desk, perfectly straight, against the pencil pot, and went back to her invoices.

---

At 12.35 I rang my father.

He lives alone in Heusy, in the hills above Verviers, in the house where I grew up. He is seventy-six. He worked for forty years in the Population and Civil Registry department in Verviers, retired in 2014 and lost my mother the following year. Since then he has lived with an old black Labrador called Pilote, a walking stick he hates and an electric coffee maker that dates from my wedding. He eats at twelve on the dot. At 12.35 he has finished his soup and hasn't yet started the washing-up. It's the best moment.

He picked up on the third ring, on the landline.

“Mathy.”

He always answers with his surname, as if he were still at the counter.

“It's me, Dad.”

“Ah. Is Tom all right?”

“Tom's fine. Listen, I got something this morning. A death notice. A woman died in Spa last month. Her name is Claire Mathy. Born in Verviers, on 14 March 1982.”

He said nothing.

I was watching the clock at the bottom of my screen. It shows the seconds; I set it up that way. When he answered, it had gone from 12:35:51 to 12:35:55.

Four seconds.

“It happens, people with the same name,” he said.

“On the same day? In the same town?”

“I've seen plenty of things in forty years. Twins registered two days apart. A gentleman who'd married twice without divorcing. People imagine it's rare. It isn't.”

His voice was normal. A little slower than usual, perhaps, but he had just eaten.

“Don't you want to see it? I can send you a photo.”

“No need. The dog's waiting for his walk. See you Sunday?”

“See you Sunday.”

He hung up first.

I kept the phone to my ear for a moment, listening to the dial tone. My father always asks to see the paperwork. A school report of Tom's, an insurance policy, a letter from the council: he wants it in front of him, he reads it to the end, he checks the signature. He hadn't wanted to see this one.

I wrote in the notebook: Dad, 12.35, four seconds. I didn't yet know why I was writing it down.

---

I held out until 4.50.

In the meantime I finished the mechanic's VAT, answered two emails from the bakery and turned down a meeting. At 4.30 Nathalie put her coat on, said “Rest in peace” as she passed behind my chair, and left to fetch her youngest from the station. The building emptied floor by floor. The parquet creaked one last time outside Mr Thiry's door.

I picked up the card again. At the bottom, the funeral director's number began with 087. The Verviers and Spa area code. The area code of my childhood.

I dialled.

A man's voice, calm, answered on the second ring and gave the name of the firm. A voice used to people who don't know where to begin.

“Good afternoon. I received a death notice in the post for Mrs Claire Mathy. The service on Saturday, in Spa.”

“Yes, madam. Saturday, 11 a.m., at Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Remacle. It's going ahead.”

“I'd like to know who sent it.”

A pause.

“We print the notices, madam. It's the families who send them. We printed a hundred and fifty for Mrs Mathy. I don't know who posted them, or to whom.”

“I understand. Could I speak to someone in the family?”

I heard a drawer open, a page being turned.

“Are you family?”

“I…”

I couldn't finish. I have the same name as her. I was born on the same day as her, in the same town. That isn't a family. It's a coincidence, or somebody's mistake, or a trick someone is playing on me.

“The reason I ask,” the man went on, more gently, “is that Mrs Mathy had no family left. She used to say all her people were dead.”