The mouleur took a comb to my hair and styled it in the conventional way, parted in the middle across my forehead like drapes tied back from a window. He was careful not to touch my face, careful not to distort the features. Any rearrangement would be irrevocable, and I. Would be lost. He believed that he could capture something of who I had been, but frankly, how could he? Regardless, he had to work quickly, to complete the job before rigor mortis set in, as a mould taken from hardened flesh would not be as good as one taken from soft. He had been taught that upon death, the smile of the soul was released, but that it would only remain until the mortis. After that, nothing of the living remained in the face of the dead.

He painted my hair with a lubricant so that the plaster wouldn’t adhere to it, but left my skin as it was; coated already with enough of its own natural oil. He then placed thin, damp paper at my neck and up behind my ears, as a barrier to form the outer limit of the mask. While he was doing this, Laurent Tardieu assisted him by preparing the plaster in a large bowl, a lime powder solution the consistency of soup. This the mouleur ladled over my face, the thickness of a few millimetres. This was the moment I. Became separate from the story.

Deep in concentration, the mouleur laid down a thick linen thread, starting from the top of the mould, above my forehead, drawing a path along the middle of my face: the bridge of my nose, the divot under my nose, my mouth, chin, neck. Another layer of a more solid plaster, much like pulp, was then laid over the first, providing a firm outer shell. Before both layers of the plaster set, the thread was drawn away, dividing the whole into two halves.

Once the outer layer hardened, the halved mould was eased apart slowly, and carefully lifted away from my head. If the whole thing were to fall apart, it would have happened at this point, as the seal between my face and the plaster was airtight and difficult to break. My face would have no longer been viable and I would have been rolled out to the viewing salon, rotting with the others and then forgotten. But he managed this delicate step without so much as a crack.

The young mouleur was finished with the skin and bones of me. He concentrated now on the cast, clamping the two halves of the mould together, creating the negative aspect of the mask. An empty cavern carved in the precise contours of my dead face. My nose, cheeks, lips and eyes, eyelashes resting, all concave, yet like an optical illusion, appeared in relief. The mouleur, with Laurent Tardieu standing at his shoulder, admired his own work. With the two halves connected, he could see that the seam between them was undetectable. There were no air bubbles, the finish smooth. The eyelashes were slightly clumped but that sort of thing was expected and, otherwise, he deemed this to be a perfect impression of me. In fact, these were the very words he said to Laurent Tardieu when he kissed both the pathologist’s cheeks in gratitude: ‘This is a perfect impression.’ And Laurent Tardieu enthusiastically agreed. But. To impress is to imitate, and so it was never perfect. It was never me.