Memory is a palimpsest. Layer upon layer of experience, each one partially erasing the last, each one altering what came before. She had spent her career studying this. Now, sitting in the clinic waiting room, she understood for the first time what it meant.

The archive room smelled of old paper and forgotten urgency. Filing cabinets stood in rows like silent witnesses, their labels faded to near-illegibility. He made his way to the third row, seventh cabinet. Inside: a manila folder, thin and brown at the edges. Inside the folder: a name.

He had not expected that. He had expected facts — dates, transactions, movements. Not a name he recognised.

She closed the laptop. Outside, the city was still going — indifferent, enormous, relentless. She had known, on some level, that this was how it would end. Not with a bang but with a realisation so quiet it barely registered. She would need time to understand what it meant.

But first she needed sleep.