Hannah shook her head.

“You’re wrong,” she said simply. “She might forget your name or exactly how she knows you, but she loves you. You being there made her feel safer.”

“You can’t love someone if you don’t even remember their name,” I said. In my head, it had sounded like a simple statement of fact. Out loud, I was embarrassed when my voice wavered over the words.

“I really don’t think that’s true at all. If you truly love someone, if they were ever important to you, it doesn’t disappear. What it looks like might change, but that’s only the surface.”

I looked at her. Her face was so familiar, but it didn’t sound like her at all. When had she changed? I felt the twinge of something, like a nudge against a tender bruise, at the reminder that Hannah would continue to change in little ways and I wouldn’t be there to see it. It still hurt somehow, even after all this time.

“I see it all the time working here. Your mum, she looks at your pictures. She points to your photograph. She asks me about you. She knows somewhere in the core of her that you’re important.”

I ignored the ache in my chest and focused on the hum of the fluorescent lighting.

“Why are you here?” I asked after a few moments. I had to squeeze the words out of my throat and they sounded thick and tight.

“I work here,” she said blankly, as if it was a stupid question. That was the Hannah I knew. Literal to a fault.

“No, I mean, how come you work here and how have I not seen you here before?”

“I do the night shift. I’m going to take a gap year. I needed a job and Mum knows one of the managers. The money is terrible, but I like the work.”

“You’re taking a gap year?”

Hannah was always so sure she wanted to be a lawyer that I was surprised she would put that on hold.

“I wanted to figure some things out. Dad let me shadow him at work for a bit so I could see what it was like.”

I nodded. I remembered her pestering her dad to let her do that for ages. He always said no.

“Saoirse.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “It was the most boring week of my life. Being a solicitor is so dull.”

I laughed and remembered how Ruby said people who were certain they knew what they wanted to do were probably wrong.

“I thought about it and decided I’d like to work with dementia, but I wasn’t sure in what capacity. I got a job here to see if the people side would interest me or if I should pursue research.”

“You want to work with people with dementia?”

“Yes.”