She recognised herself in the photograph before she recognised the day.

There she was, twenty-two, laughing into the wind, hair across her face, one hand lifted to shield her eyes. The man holding the wallet was a stranger she had bumped into outside a bookshop. He looked at the picture, then at her, with the stunned expression of someone watching a ghost sit down.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

“You gave it to me.”

She had never seen him before. She was certain. And yet his voice stirred something quiet beneath her ribs, like a room she had locked and forgotten.

His name was Rowan. He told her they had met during a summer she barely remembered, after an accident left a blank space in her memory. They had spent three weeks together in a seaside town. She had made him promise not to follow her home.

“Why would I ask that?”

“Because you said you were afraid you’d fall in love with me and forget who you were before.”

Her throat tightened. The photograph showed a version of herself who looked unafraid.

Rowan reached into the wallet again and took out a second picture. This one showed them standing outside a hospital room. Her hand was on his chest. His eyes were red.

On the back, she had written: If I ask you to find me, don’t. If I ask you to remember me, tell me what I chose.

Rowan swallowed. “You didn’t ask me to find you.”

He turned the photograph over. “You asked me to wait until you were ready to know why.”