I looked up from my green tea and she was there, standing in the doorway of Marek’s Café with long fair hair plastered to her head by the rain. A puddle formed beneath the hem of her dripping coat as she folded her futile umbrella. Her eyes flickered around the dim light of the café searching, searching.

You might say I was surprised. It isn’t often the woman of your dreams walks into your life.

I mean that literally, I’d never seen her before but I’d been dreaming about her for two weeks. I knew that face, knew how the corners of her mouth creased when she smiled, how she pulled her fingers through her hair and tucked it behind her ears when it fell before her eyes.

She took two paces into the café, pulled the fingers of her left hand through her dripping hair and tucked it behind her ear. Her face turned towards me in the shadowy alcove at the back. Two seconds, then she marched up and stood facing down at me over the table.

“You’re Erica Fallon.”

I nodded. She pulled out the chair and sat. Marek appeared at her shoulder. “Espresso,” she said without looking up. “They say you’re good at finding people.” Her gaze held me with an intensity that might have been intimidating, from anyone else.

I steadied my breathing. “Who have you lost?”

“My brother.”

“When did you last see him.”

“Fifty-seven, but I don’t remember it.”

“Twenty-three years ago.” The sea was where it was supposed to be, the bio-war was at its height. “You must have been very young.”

“They thought six when they found me.”

Marek ghosted silently to the table and placed the small cup before her.

“CM-2057-phi-kappa?” I tapped my phone to pay.

She grimaced and nodded. That was one of the nastier of the weapons deployed in the war, went straight to the brain. Ninety-eight percent of infected adults died. Survivors, mostly kids, suffered total amnesia.

“They found me on a street corner. No idea where I came from, so they gave me a name and put me in an orphanage.”

“So what is it?”

“What?”

“Your name.”

The briefest of smiles flashed across her face, creasing the corners of her mouth. “Rosemary Baker.”

That jarred. It didn’t sound right. “And your brother was with you?”

“No.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

Her fingers stroked the handle of her cup. “Not much. He’s about six years older than me.”

“Does he have a name?”

She sipped her espresso. “Everything else I know is… unreliable, more likely to mislead you, like it has me.”

A brother she couldn’t remember, no evidence he ever existed. Her story was like something from a spin dream.

“I know that look,” she said. “You have a healthy scepticism, Erica. But put aside your preconceptions.” She took out her phone and flipped me five hundred picos. A generous fee. “That’s for trying. Double if you succeed.” She downed the remainder of her coffee.