About this time last year, a French friend of ours suddenly died. Another friend, called Ros, was talking to her on the telephone when Elizabeth excused herself, emitted what sounded like a stomach rumble-and the line went silent. Ros rang the police, then remembered that we lived nearby in north London, and called to tell us what had happened. My wife, who happened to have a key, set off at once, arrived at the same time as the police, and let them in. Elizabeth lay slumped in a chair, clearly dead; the computer still on, a cigarette warm in the ashtray.

Ros and I turned up soon afterwards. The police were very kind (it was the young female officer’s first corpse and she was almost as upset as we were), but having made sure we were all right they asked if they could leave us to it. Fortunately, Elizabeth’s affairs were in good order. We telephoned her doctor, her landlord in Belgium and her family in France. We changed the message on the answerphone, sent out e-mails to all her main clients (she was a translator), and looked for bank and credit card statements. We were glad to keep busy, to escape the oppressive presence of death in a small living room, but we were also able to get a lot of things done. The point is: we were allowed to; nobody stopped us. It was only when B-a friend of Elizabeth’s who used to work at the French embassy in London-got involved that we became aware of the cultural gulf we had discovered.

B and Elizabeth’s family were astounded by how things are done in Britain. Their assumption, based on experience of a similar recent bereavement in France, was that the flat would be sealed off, everybody would be kept out and the police would maintain a presence by the corpse until the undertaker arrived. Above all, they were sure that no one would be left alone with Elizabeth and her property. In the abstract, this sounds like a rational and effective system. Family, friends and passing strangers can and do steal rings off the fingers of the dead, or walk off with valuables. But there is also a real disadvantage to this caution. Most people die with few assets, and most of us do not pinch things from the bedside table of a defunct relative or friend. In this case, we would have been most distressed to be shut out from the scene of death, and treated as potential thieves, when there were things to be done which we were well qualified to do.

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