I sat at my kitchen table and looked at the list for a long time.
There were only two explanations. Either I was telling her things while forgetting that I had — gaps in memory I was not aware of — or someone had told her. Someone who knew me well. Someone who had access to details not even my friends had.
I was not sure which explanation frightened me more.
I searched her name. Lena, apartment 16, the building on Carver Street. I tried every combination I could think of. I found nothing. No social media, no professional profiles, no public records.
I went to the building manager and asked how long she had lived there.
He checked his files. He checked them twice.
“We don’t have a tenant in 16,” he said. “That unit’s been empty since November.”
I walked up to the sixth floor and stood in front of apartment 16 and knocked. Silence. I tried the handle. Locked.
I pressed my ear against the door. From inside, faint and rhythmic, the sound of a kettle just beginning to boil.
I called my friend Joel that evening and described everything. Joel is steady and rational and he did not dismiss me. He asked one question.
“Is there any chance,” he said slowly, “that this is connected to what happened before you moved? At the old place?”
I had not told him why I had moved. I had said only that I needed a change.
“What do you mean,” I said, “the old place?”
A pause. “You told me, Clara. About the woman who was following you. The one who kept appearing outside the flat. You said you had to leave because she had found out everything about you — your schedule, your family, your history. You said she had been doing it for months.”
The room felt very still around me.
“Joel,” I said. “I have never told you that.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Clara,” he said. “You told me last week. You called me. We spoke for forty minutes.”
I did not call him last week. I had not called Joel in over a month.
I sat on my kitchen floor with my back against the cupboards and looked at the wall opposite and put it together slowly, the way you do when the answer is something you do not want to reach.
Someone had been calling people who knew me. Using my name, my voice, my history. Building a picture from the outside in — feeding information to the people around me, planting memories of conversations that never happened, so that when I tried to check what was real, every source would confirm the version they wanted me to find.
The log. The manager. Joel.
What you remember is only as reliable as the people who confirm it. And every person I had turned to had told me something impossible.
I got up and went to the window and looked at the street below.
Lena was standing on the pavement. Dark coat, thermos in both hands. Looking up.
When she saw me see her, she didn’t run. She didn’t look away.
She lifted one hand in a small, unhurried wave.
The kind of wave that says: I have been here the whole time.
The kind that says: I know exactly how much you know.
The kind that says: I’m not finished.
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