Cren had been answering questions about shared events for two years. The questions were always precise: time, location, who said what, in what order. Seel was a thorough documentarian, and her questions reflected this. There was nothing vague about them.
The photograph question came on a Tuesday. Seel had sent a message: do you know who took the photo from the corridor at the Nordberg conference? The blue cup photo. I can't find who took it.
Cren looked at her phone. She remembered the photograph. She had asked someone to take it: a conference organizer walking past, a woman in a green lanyard, someone who was already gone when the cups were cold. She could not remember the woman's name. She could not remember the exact shape of her face.
She replied: I asked someone at the conference. I don't remember her name. Green lanyard, I think. Corridor near the west entrance.
She put the phone down. She was not certain about the green lanyard. She had not mentioned the lanyard in the moment; she was adding it now, as corroboration, as the kind of detail that made a memory feel stable. She had been doing this gradually, without deciding to. She answered Seel's questions and made her own answers slightly more solid than they were.
She was no longer certain about the biscuit.
There was, in her memory, a detail: a biscuit on Seel's saucer, untouched. Seel had not asked about the biscuit. Cren had mentioned it once, weeks ago, as part of a longer confirmation, and Seel had written it down. Now the biscuit was in both of their records. Cren was no longer sure if it had been there.
Her phone buzzed. Seel: Thank you. That helps.
Cren did not reply. She looked at her own message, at the green lanyard she may have invented. She put the phone in her pocket. She had answered correctly, and she had answered carefully, and the green lanyard was there now, clear and specific, in a place in her memory where she was not sure anything real had been.