Chapter 8

The decision came on its own while I was walking away from the station.

Not through intuition, not through logic — at some point my feet simply turned on their own, and I realized I already knew where I was going. The file had said "check what you remember" — but memory was exactly the thing I trusted least right now. I didn't need it. I needed documents. Real ones, paper, stamped — the kind that exist regardless of whatever was happening inside my head.

Companies House was in the City, twenty minutes by tube.

On the train I held the handrail and stared at my own reflection in the dark glass opposite. A man in a rumpled coat, bruised shadows of exhaustion under his eyes, three days' stubble. I wasn't sure I'd recognize him if I passed him on the street.

We'd worked with Harris & Croft for the last four years. My company ran the digital logistics for their agency through livecity.cam, and that contract alone brought in half my annual income. Solid, conservative, renewed every autumn. I trusted documents more than people. People can lie, forget, or lose their nerve. Paper never does.

The registry office met me with the smell of old paper and the quiet hum of printers. An elderly clerk behind the counter listened without interrupting, tapped away at the keyboard, printed a few pages, and laid them silently in front of me.

I looked at them for a long time.

Harris & Croft existed. The company was registered, active, with a City address and up-to-date filings. But the registered director was one R. Alton — a name I'd never heard in my life. Thomas Harris wasn't in the paperwork at all. Not as director, not as shareholder, not as consultant. As if he'd never had anything to do with the company.

The service contract for the logistics core existed too — I found it among the linked filings. Contractor: Mercer Digital. Signature: Daniel Mercer.

I asked the clerk to print the full contract.

The text was the same — I recognized every clause, every phrasing, every subsection on force majeure and shipment delay windows. Four years of negotiations, four years of edits, four years of late-night calls. All of it was here. Only my name was nowhere in it.

I flipped through the pages slowly, barely breathing. Clause twelve. "Force Majeure Provisions." And at the very bottom of the page, in the margin — a tiny handwritten correction. The number "48" crossed out in blue ballpoint, "72" written above it. Beside it, small, untidy initials: M.L.

The stroke had been made with such pressure that the paper had warped slightly at that spot. The blue ink had soaked into the pulp two years ago. I remembered that moment — we'd been arguing about storms in the Channel, and I'd grabbed a pen mid-conversation and fixed the number myself, without waiting for the lawyer.

The clerk watched me with polite, professional indifference.

"Who signed this contract on behalf of Harris & Croft?" I asked. "Originally, four years ago."

"According to the archive," he tapped the keyboard again, "the original signature was placed by Director Mercer. Harris & Croft was already operating under his management by then."

I thanked him and walked out.

It was colder outside than in the morning. I walked along the embankment, choosing no particular direction, hands buried deep in my coat pockets. In the right pocket my fingers found a chewed-up pencil — the one I'd been carrying around for about two years. She'd once said that a person who chews pencils either thinks too much or worries too much. I'd told her that was the same thing. She'd disagreed.

I stopped at the parapet and looked out at the Thames. The water was dark, almost black, with occasional glints off the overcast sky. Somewhere over there, on the far bank, stood the building where I'd spent hundreds of hours. Now I wasn't sure they'd let me in.

Whose initials are on that contract, if I never existed?

That question was the most terrifying one I'd asked myself in these two days. Because it had only two answers. The first: the system is lying, I was erased, but a trace remains — and then I still have a chance. The second: I made all of this up myself, I never wrote those initials, I never sat in those negotiations — and then I have nothing at all.

I chose the first answer. Not because I was certain of it. Just because I couldn't live with the second one.

I ended up at the square by accident — just walking, not looking, and suddenly there I was, by the familiar iron railing.

The old man was there. The same worn coat, the same flat cap. He stood by a bench, watching the pigeons finish the last crumbs at his feet — calm, unhurried, like a man who hasn't had anywhere urgent to be in a very long time.

I walked over and sat on the bench. He didn't turn, but something in him shifted, barely perceptibly — the way the air in a room changes when someone walks in.

"You keep trying to prove to the world who you were," he said quietly, still watching the birds. "Hunting for scraps of paper, stamps, signatures. Wasting your breath."

I said nothing. Something in his voice — not the words, but the tone, the rhythm, the way he paused — was achingly familiar. Like a tune you can't quite remember to the end, but know for certain you've heard many times before.

"Paper lies as easily as a person does," he finally turned his head toward me. "It just lies slower."

His face was worn, deeply cut with wrinkles — not from age, but from something else, some kind of erosion from within. His pale eyes looked at me with the tiredness of a man who's watched the same ending to the same story too many times. And that feeling again — that I ought to know this face, that somewhere in the part of my memory I'd lost there was an answer — but I couldn't grasp it, any more than you can catch a word sitting right on the tip of your tongue.

"Who are you?" I asked.

He didn't answer. He rose heavily, leaning on his umbrella-cane, brushed the crumbs from his knees. Then simply turned and shuffled off along the railing, dissolving into the grey fog. I didn't try to stop him. I knew I wouldn't catch him.

I got home close to two in the afternoon.

A white corner of a heavy envelope stuck out from under the door. No stamp. No return address. No name of mine.

I picked it up, went inside, and locked every bolt on the door.

Inside the envelope lay a single glossy photograph. A corporate reception, around five years ago — judging by the interior, some hotel in the City. In the shot, two men are shaking hands in front of a Harris & Croft banner. One of them is me. A little younger, smiling, a glass of champagne in my free hand.

I didn't know the other one.

A man in his early fifties, tall, in a good suit. Dark hair greying at the temples. Straight posture. The face of a man used to being listened to. We both looked happy — the way people look who've just signed something important.

I looked at the photograph for a long time. Then again. Tried to latch onto anything at all — the shape of the face, a gesture, something in how he held himself. Nothing. A completely unfamiliar man.

Someone had circled his face in red marker — thick, careful, almost ceremonial.

I turned the photo over. On the matte side, written slantwise in plain pencil:

He remembers. He just doesn't know it yet.

I sank into a chair.

Rain drizzled outside the window. The photograph lay in my hand. I stared at the unfamiliar face inside the red circle and tried to understand why I was so afraid.

Not because I didn't know who it was.

But because, judging by the photo, I once knew him very well.