Amelia rose slowly out of the dark.
The sheet under her hands was clean and soft. The air was cool, carrying a faint smell of disinfectant, but not the heavy sting she remembered from the psychiatric ward.
She opened her eyes to a white ceiling and a strip of winter light falling past a half‑drawn curtain.
Not the ward.
Her pulse jumped. For a second her mind went blank. Then she turned her head, carefully, afraid the world would spin again if she moved too fast.
A man sat in the chair beside the bed, long legs stretched out, a file open in his hands. Thin‑framed glasses rested on the bridge of his nose.
He looked older than the boy in her memory, his face leaner, his shoulders broader, his coat more expensive. But his eyes were the same as they had been in university: calm, steady,
