The boat came in at six in the morning. Anna stepped off the gangway with the station’s waterproof pack in one hand. Her legs were still waiting for the next swell. On land there was none, and she took one step too many. Nina caught her by the arm.

“Stand still a second.” Nina held on until both of Anna’s feet had accepted the ground.

A man on the quay glanced at them, looked back, and said to no one in particular, “That alike? Twins?”

“Come on. It’s freezing.” Nina rubbed her hands together.

“Not really. It’s warmer than the station.” Anna pulled off her cap and shook it.

At the apartment, she lowered the pack beside the door. The air inside did not move. It took her a moment to notice. Salt was still lodged in the tread of her shoes, and Nina spread old newspaper for her to stand on while she took them off.

They both reached for the slippers behind the door. Anna got there first. Nina went into the bedroom and pulled another pair from beneath the bed. Dust filmed the uppers; she wiped it away with her palm.

Six months ago they had been one person, and her name had been Anna. The contract for an offshore observation station arrived while their mother was still in hospital. One side held a childhood ambition and a six-month absence. On the other, their mother had just been admitted and could not manage alone. Anna would surrender neither, so she went to the Division Center. One person entered. Two came out, each carrying the same first thirty-three years. A lottery decided who kept the name Anna. They signed separately. One left for the sea, one stayed in the city, and they agreed to return and merge after six months.

Memories made after division could not be copied from one to the other. Only after a merger would one person remember both lives. Before they signed, the Center had warned them that people who remained divided sometimes lost parts of the life that came before. It did not happen to everyone, or to the same degree. Talking regularly, rehearsing old memories together, and asking family to tell the old stories could slow the loss, perhaps prevent it.

The Center’s reminder had arrived while Anna was still aboard: report at three; both parties to confirm independently; one person to be discharged the following day; bring one set of clothes.

Anna opened a small overnight bag on the bed and began transferring clothes from the waterproof pack. They smelled faintly of diesel. Nina folded a pair of trousers beside her, then opened the window a crack.

“Mom says she’s coming to collect us tomorrow.”

“She can get to the station by herself now? Both ways?”

“I offered to book a car. She refused. We went shopping a few days ago and I asked twice if she was tired. She told me I should find somewhere to sit down if I needed it.” Nina smiled. “When she says she isn’t tired, stop asking. Every time you ask, she walks faster.”

“So you’re the one slowing her down.” Anna laughed too. “When I left, she couldn’t sit up without help. What else did she say? Never mind. Tomorrow I’ll remember all of it.”

Nina put the trousers in the bag and did not answer.

Anna added two tops, checked the Center’s list, then removed one.

“One set is enough.”

Nina took it and laid it on the chair. Her own coat was already there, with the swimming pool’s staff badge pinned to the chest. The badge bore Nina’s name.

In the kitchen, Nina set the kettle on. Anna’s phone was dead. She carried it to the socket by the table and found the space empty. She had always charged it there before. Now nothing sat beside the outlet.

A schedule was taped to the refrigerator. Its last rows ran into the following month.

“You signed a new contract?” Anna asked.

“Until June.” Nina did not turn around.

Anna followed the dates with one finger. “Sundays too?”

“Early class Sunday. Mondays and Tuesdays off.” Nina passed her a charging cable.

“Then Mom’s follow-up has to move.”

“Already moved. Tuesday. I’ll go with her.”

“Tuesday is better. Half the places are shut on Mondays.”

“That’s why it’s Tuesday.” Nina poured two glasses of water and set one in front of her. “It’s hot. Leave it a minute.”

Anna touched the glass. “Is there cold water?”

Nina looked at her, took a bottle from the refrigerator, and handed it over. Anna filled half the glass and drank.

“Is that how you drink it at sea?”

“Who has time to wait? Leave it while you go outside and it’s cold by the time you come back.”

Nina returned the kettle. She stayed beside the table, one hand on the back of the chair.

“Anna, I don’t want to go to the Center.”

The kitchen window was open. Down in the street, someone was moving furniture. An empty bucket hit the pavement and rolled. Anna waited until it stopped.

“Did you call them?”

“I asked. We can cancel until we arrive.”

“I know we can cancel.”

“I don’t mean just today.” Nina pulled out the chair and sat opposite her. “I want us to stay separate.”

Anna drank again and set the glass precisely inside the damp ring it had left on the table. The charging cable did not reach her chair. She unplugged the charger with it.

“When did you start thinking that?”

“Last month. I wasn’t certain then.”

“Twelve days ago, the station asked if I would stay another three months. I sent you the message. You said there were two boats home and told me not to take the night one.”

“The night boat was cheaper. I thought you’d try to save the money.”

“I wasn’t asking about the boat.”

Nina said nothing.

“I told them to find someone else. My replacement came. I trained him for eleven days. Yesterday he moved into my room.”

“I know.”

“Right. I told you all of that.”

Anna found the exchange on her phone and placed it between them. There were only a few lines. Beneath them was a photograph Nina had sent of their mother sitting in a courtyard. Anna did not recognize the chair.

Nina carried the bottle to the sink, refilled it, and put it back in the same place.

“Why did you let me come home?” Anna asked.

“You were already packing. Every time we spoke, you showed me something else you had put away.” Nina’s voice grew quieter.

“So you waited until I finished. Until I was here.”

“I was afraid to tell you. I couldn’t tell you at the quay either.”

Anna looked at her. “I showed you every piece as I packed it. I was happy. I thought you were too.”

“I did want you home.”

“Then you should have told me sooner.”

The sentence came out louder than Anna had prepared for. Nina’s hand left the water bottle. Neither spoke.

After a while, Nina went to the bedroom and returned with the register she carried to work. Water had lifted the edges of its cover. She opened it to one page and slid it across.

“Look at this. My Friday class.”

Anna bent over it. The handwriting was hers. Page after page, her handwriting recorded things she had never written. Beneath each name were different marks: dates under some, a short line under others.

“There’s a man who sits in the car park for half an hour before he comes inside. I went out to talk to him once. After that I didn’t have to go out; he came in on his own.”

“You told me about him. He got into the water last week?” Anna pointed to a new line.

“He put his face in. The moment the water touched him, he lifted it again and asked if that counted.” Nina smiled and smoothed the page. “I said it counted. Next time we start there. We don’t rush ahead. He says if he gets a different instructor, he won’t come back.”

“You think if I teach him after the merger, he’ll see a different instructor?”

Nina did not look up. “After the merger, that person will be called Anna.”

“The name was drawn by lot.”

“You drew it. It’s yours.”

Anna held the page down with her fingertip.

“Then the person afterward can be Nina. I don’t care. I’ll remember this. I’ll know exactly how you taught him. You wouldn’t be handing him to a stranger.”

“I’m not saying you couldn’t teach him. And I’m not asking you to give me the name.”

“Then I’ll stay. I won’t go back to sea. I’ll finish your contract here. On Friday I’ll do it your way. Why isn’t that enough?”

Nina watched Anna’s hand on the book. “Last month you were looking at winter positions.”

“I looked. I didn’t sign anything.”

“You wanted to go. The invitation came before we divided. I said we should finish the classes we had, and then I got up in the middle of the night and searched boat schedules.”

“Until three in the morning, and still couldn’t make a single route work,” Anna said. “That was before I left. I have lived there for six months. You don’t know what I would choose now.”

Nina pulled the register from beneath her finger.

“I don’t,” she said. “But I want to teach that class myself.”

Anna stared at her.

“Not someone who remembers teaching it. Next Friday, I want to be the one who goes.”

Anna walked to the window and held the frame. The bucket had been taken away. A truck still blocked half the road, and one of the movers was holding up a form, searching the buildings for a number.

Nina did not follow.

“You said neither of us would miss anything,” Anna said.

“I believed that.”

“The day Mom left hospital, you said I’d know it when I came back. The first time she went shopping alone, you said the same thing.”

Anna turned from the window.

“Sometimes we finished a call and the next morning I couldn’t remember what we had said. I told myself it didn’t matter. Once I came home, it would all be there.”

Nina opened a video on her phone and brought it over. Their mother emerged through a glass door into sunlight. She turned to say something to the person filming. The recording had caught only wind. Their mother laughed; the picture tipped toward the ground as a hand reached out to steady her.

Eighteen seconds.

Anna’s thumb touched the replay symbol, then moved away.

“Do you know how many times I’ve watched this?”

“I can tell you the whole day. From the discharge papers onward. Ask me anything.”

“I don’t want you to tell me.”

Anna placed the phone facedown on the sill. The glass reflected her, and Nina half a kitchen away: the same height, the same face.

After a while, Nina came and took back her phone.

Near noon Anna’s phone rang. Someone from the station was returning the question she had left from the boat. One set of readings did not match the final inventory. Anna sat beside her luggage, gave the folder location, and opened her field notebook.

“Don’t change the date yet.”

The caller asked if she had made it home.

“I’m home. Read me those two lines.”

She pulled a folded sheet from the notebook, listened, and read the following line back. It matched.

“Use that. Don’t delete the earlier file. Keep it for comparison.”

Had she gone to the Center yet?

“Not yet.”

She closed the notebook, then stopped him before he could hang up.

“Send me last night’s current maps.”

The first image arrived. Anna turned the phone sideways. The buoy had not followed the arrow she had drawn toward open water. In the night it had circled and curved back.

“So that’s where it went. Send the next one.”

She moved between the two images and laughed.

“You said I had drawn it too straight. I didn’t believe you.” She opened the notebook again and drew a bent line beside the old arrow. “Send me tomorrow morning’s too.”

She saved the images. The pen remained between her fingers.

“Are you still short of people?”

Her old position had been filled. Anything else would have to go through the team leader.

“Not the equipment group. Anything. Sound him out for me, but don’t say I’m asking yet.”

When she ended the call, Nina was standing in the kitchen doorway holding an empty bowl.

“You don’t have to go back,” Nina said.

“I didn’t say I did. Were you there the whole time?”

Nina looked at the bowl. “I came to ask if you wanted bread in the soup. You always eat it that way at sea, don’t you?”

Anna did not answer. Nina returned to the stove, reheated the soup, broke bread into it.

Her phone sounded. A woman from the pool asked whether Friday’s early class could start half an hour sooner.

“Don’t move that half hour. I’m swimming,” Nina said into a voice message.

The reply came at once. “Then arrive early. If you lose, don’t blame the warm-up again.”

Nina laughed and held down the button. “Half a body length. That was all. Friday we race again.”

Anna knew the laugh, knew the small lift of the chin halfway through it. She did not know the half a body length.

The soup was bland. Anna reached out. Nina slid the salt toward her. Anna shook some in, tasted, then added more. Nina took the shaker back and tightened the lid.

Anna stirred once and stopped eating.

“Did Mom return the nursing bed?”

“She said this week. It was still there last time I went.”

“I promised I’d help return it and move the table back. We’ll go this afternoon and eat there tonight. Come with me.”

Nina looked up. “Now? I can be ready in a minute.”

“Finish eating. We should tell her about the merger early. She still thinks she’s collecting someone from the Center tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell her.” Nina opened their mother’s conversation and closed it again. “Wouldn’t it be better face to face?”

“Video is face to face.” Anna emptied the rest of the soup.

At half past one, their mother called first. Was the Center still on the same street? The location they had sent opened to a car park.

On screen, her phone was propped against a stack of books. Behind her stood the old dining table, not the rented nursing bed. Half-open boxes covered it.

“Where’s the bed?” Anna asked.

“Gone back.”

“I said I’d help.”

“One more day and they would have charged another month. The delivery men could take it.”

“And the table? You didn’t move that yourself?” Nina asked.

“They did. I paid them.”

Their mother pulled a chair into view. New pads had been stuck under its feet. She crouched to press one corner, then stood with a hand on the table. Anna watched the smooth bend of her knees. There was no pause.

“Mom, sit down.” Nina steadied the phone on their side. “There’s something we need to tell you. We’re not merging.”

Their mother stopped beside the table.

Anna took the spoon from her bowl and set it down. “Nina doesn’t want to.”

Their mother looked from one half of the screen to the other. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened,” Nina said.

Anna glanced at her.

Nina turned back to the screen. “I changed my mind. I only told Anna today.”

“What about the memory damage? Did you ask?”

“We did. The Center says it helps if we talk about the old days. We thought we could ask you for more stories from when we were little.”

“Good. Every time I used to start one, you said you’d heard it already. No telling me to hurry this time.” Their mother drew the chair closer and sat. “So I’m going to have two daughters from now on?”

“Yes.”

They answered together. Their mother looked at them and smiled.

“I used to envy people with twin girls.”

Nina laughed first. Anna looked at her mother, then smiled too.

“Are you both coming tomorrow?”

“Today,” Nina said.

Anna looked at the boxes behind the image. “I may stay the night.”

“Stay. I’ll put the quilt in the sun. Is Nina staying too? I’ll clear another place.”

“I’ll come home tonight,” Nina said. “The pool is sending some things here later.”

Their mother said all right and asked Anna whether the journey had been cold. The cabin, Anna said, had been hot.

After the call, Nina collected the bowls. Anna gathered the crumbs with her fingers and ate them.

Nina unpinned the pool badge from her coat, slipped it into her pocket, and hung the coat by the door. Anna turned her phone toward her. The Center’s reminder was still on screen.

“Cancel this first.”

Nina opened the cancellation form on her own phone. Anna sat beside her and watched her complete each field. The reason was optional. Nina left it blank, entered her own name, and passed the identity check.

APPOINTMENT CANCELED. Anna’s phone sounded at the same time.

Nina read the refund notice. “They only return half. You can have all of it.”

“No. We both paid.”

“Then half each. And the boat ticket was because of me—”

“Work out the numbers first.”

Nina found paper and a pen.

“There’s also the contract you didn’t renew,” she said.

“How do you put a number on that?”

Nina did not lower the pen. Anna waited, then sighed.

“List the boat ticket. Leave the rest.”

Nina wrote it down. The line beneath remained empty.

They went through the other shared expenses of the past six months. Some were on Anna’s phone; Nina had kept receipts for others. Things that would not have required dividing after a merger now had to be found and assigned one by one. They did not finish. Anna folded her receipts and asked Nina not to delete the old records.

Nina set down the pen.

“Are you free next Tuesday? We could eat at Mom’s and go through the old albums.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing next week.”

“I’ll ask again later.”

Anna put the receipts in her pocket.

“What about the apartment?” Nina asked.

Anna carried the overnight bag to the bed, opened it, and took out her top.

“Leave things as they are.”

“I could find somewhere nearer the pool.”

Anna put the top into the waterproof pack and closed it.

“You don’t need to.”

She returned to the bed and put the charger and toiletries into the small bag.

Nina tried to lift the waterproof pack. It was heavier than she expected.

“Are you taking this too? I can carry it.”

“Leave it. I’m coming back for it.”

Nina put it down and did not help with the rest.

She put on her coat, took her keys, and opened the door. Anna lifted the overnight bag but stopped at the threshold.

“I’m going alone today.”

Nina’s hand stayed on the handle. “You just said we’d go together.”

“I did. But not now. I want some time with her by myself.”

After a moment, Nina released the handle. She returned the keys to her pocket, took off the coat, and stepped aside.

“Tell me when you get there.”

Anna nodded. On the second-floor landing she stopped to change the bag from one hand to the other. The door above her was still open. She did not look back.

Her mother’s door stood open. A quilt had been laid across the back of a chair in the corridor. Anna knocked twice. Her mother came to the door and looked past her.

“Where’s Nina?”

“I asked her not to come yet.”

Her mother opened the door wider.

With the dining table returned to the window, the room looked larger than it had on video. Four pale marks remained where the nursing bed had stood. Several plants had come back. One pot was still on the floor, resting on a plate.

Anna put down her bag and lifted it.

“Not on the sill,” her mother said. “Too much sun.”

Anna stopped. Her mother pointed beside the bookcase, where a space had already been cleared. Anna set the pot there.

Her mother brought scissors from the kitchen and opened the last box. Inside were plates wrapped in old newspaper.

“Hungry?”

“I ate.”

“Then help me wash these.”

Anna took off her coat and rolled up her sleeves. The tap still sprayed when pushed halfway to the right. She eased it back. The skin of her hands was thicker than it had been when she left, the water running over hard patches at the base of her fingers.

Her mother unwrapped the plates and handed them over. She touched Anna’s hand as she did.

“There are two boxes beside the bed in your room. Push them underneath. Don’t move everything around.”

“I’m only staying one night.”

“You still need somewhere to put your feet.”

Anna placed a plate in the rack. Her mother reached for the next one and paused.

“Was it hard out there? Did you eat properly?”

“The first two months were fine. Later there wasn’t much fresh food.”

“No wonder you’re thinner.”

“Beans for the last two weeks.”

Her mother laughed. “You wouldn’t eat them when you were little.”

Anna smiled as she took the plate. “After that, whatever they served, I checked for beans first.”

“You used to bury them in the flowerpots.”

“The blue one on the sill. I thought you never saw.”

“You watered the plant after every meal. How could I not know?”

“You even brought me the watering can.”

“I wanted to see what else you planned to do. Water, loosen the soil—it was more work than eating them.”

Her mother looked at Anna’s hands. “What happened here?”

“Rope.” Anna turned one palm up. “It stopped hurting weeks ago.”

Her mother took the hand and ran her thumb slowly over the hardened skin. Water travelled down Anna’s wrist into her sleeve. Her mother dried it with a cloth. Anna did not pull away.

They finished the plates. Her mother cleared the wet paper while Anna dried the counter. An armchair now stood by the table. Anna sat in the chair beside it.

She texted Nina: I’m here. Nina replied, Good. A moment later came a photograph of the page where their unfinished expenses were listed.

A message from the station had arrived a few minutes earlier. The team leader could hold a position open until the end of the month.

Anna turned off the screen.

Her mother brought two glasses of water and sat opposite her.

Anna woke the phone and found the eighteen-second video.

“That day. What were you laughing about?”

Her mother took the phone and raised the volume. Wind blew from the speaker and covered her own voice.

She played it once, then again.

“I don’t remember.”

Anna reached for the phone, but her mother kept hold of it.

“The car couldn’t find us. Nina told me to sit by the entrance while she went out to the street.”

“Was this after she came back?”

“It must have been. A car had broken down in front, so the driver told us to use the back.”

Anna pointed at the frozen image. “Isn’t this the front?”

“No. The front has a canopy. We went that way when you last visited.”

Her mother moved her glass aside and traced a route on the tabletop.

“My room was here. Two lifts outside. We normally turned left, but people were moving things there that day. We followed the men delivering sheets and took the lift on the right. Downstairs, we came out in the laundry.”

Anna followed the route beneath her mother’s finger.

“You went out through the laundry?”

“There was a narrow door. Nina had that borrowed chair, and she couldn’t get it turned. I stood up, and she was still wrestling with it.”

Her mother laughed. When the laugh passed, she looked down at the picture.

“Though I don’t think that was what we were laughing at.”

The video was paused on Nina’s outstretched hand. Anna set the phone beside the water and did not press play again.

“What happened next?” she asked.

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