There are new pictures in her shoebox. Peter's wedding. The christening of his son. His ten-year anniversary. All of which she isn't invited to. She watches his life progress like a flip-book, years seeming to flicker by faster than they really are. She recognises familiar crows feet and grey hairs, recognises that crooked smile from years ago, and she tries hard to hate him.

Instead she takes up rock climbing and ascends mountainsides without a harness. She finds it exhilirating, like when West used to take her flying, and her life becomes less about finding ways to die and more about finding ways to feel alive.

She meets Christopher when she loses her grip and falls, breaking a good number of bones, including her skull and her spine. He's hovering behind her when she straightens herself out, stands, and turns her head. He stares at her for a second, pale and shaking, and then spins to empty his stomach in a nearby bush.

After reassuring him that he's not crazy, she invites him for coffee and explains everything.

Everything is an overstatement. She explains what she needs to and she misses out what she doesn't. Peter's name never crosses her lips. Immortality becomes a taboo subject, because she's found that most people don't have the capacity to comprehend her situation. There's a certain romanticism in the idea of living forever and it blinds them to the truth of it.

Forever is memories, broken pieces of life that she treads across. Life is seizing the present only to have it slip into the past, but eternity is crafting the past, clinging to it, because the future is too unbearable.

Christopher doesn't know this and he never will. She's good at what she does and these days she can just about make her smile reach her eyes.

-

Christopher is twenty-nine and Claire has the wardrobe, the make-up and the hairstyle of a woman in her early twenties. It's enough for a while, a few years at least, and she lives the illusion of domestic bliss, loves him in that light, uncomplicated way that reminds her of West.

She buys scrapbooks and slots them in beside her shoeboxes. She saves everything, snaps photos at every opportunity and starts a home-video collection. Somewhere beneath the temporary glee she knows that she's trying too hard, holding on too tight, spending too much time stashing memories away like a junkie instead of living them. But the past is her only present and in some strange way that she doesn't understand, it makes her feel lighter. She knows now that she'll never forget and that's enough for her.

When Chris asks her to marry him, she says yes, because if God can give her this curse, He can give her this blessing, too.

-

Her marriage lasts six years before it snaps. It breaks cleanly, leaving two wholes instead of two splintered pieces, both of them still too respectful of each other to let their differences boil over into hate.

It was good for a few years, that sweet ache in the pit of her stomach, until Chris began to feel a demanding broodiness for children that Claire had never experienced.

She doesn't know if it's her lack of maternal instinct or her fear of passing on her abilities that stops her having children, stops her wanting them. Maybe it's a little bit of both, but whichever it is, she knows her choice was the death of them.

It was inevitable. She's saddened by it, feels hollow for a little while, but with the memories hidden beneath her bed, she thinks it might just have been worth it.

-

She marries again when Peter's son is in his thirties. Samuel is an archaeologist from London with salt-and pepper hair and a George Clooney smile. He doesn't care that he's married to a woman that appears to be barely out of her teens, and she tells herself that it's because he appreciates her mind and not her youthful appearance. And he does. Claire has long since lost faith in intelligent stimulation, mostly because she's heard it all before, but she finds Sam's curiosity refreshing. It's people's belief that they know all the answers that annoys her. She's lived several lifetimes and she still doesn't know. But Sam doesn't pretend to know and derives a peculiar pleasure in trying to find the answers, even if he never succeeds. She likes taking that journey with him, and she travels that path for eleven years before the clothes and the make-up aren't enough. Sam grows tired of being unable to solve the mystery that is Claire and admits defeat with a heartfelt goodbye and a generous divorce settlement that she doesn't accept.

The photos in her shoebox are not the glorious memories she remembers. There are glamorous snapshots in which she stands beside her husband like a beautiful socialite, the intelligence dead in her eyes and a plastic smile curving her lips. Their faces lie, because this was not who they were. They were equals and Claire doesn't want to forget what that feels like.

She keeps them, anyway, because they are a symbol of her refusal to never give in or fade away. But they hide under the photos of her and Chris, of her and Peter. She places the one of Peter and Sophie on their wedding day on the top, and wonders how long it will be before Peter decides to follow his wife into death.

-

Peter is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in his sixty-fourth year, or what appears to be his sixty-fourth year. She finds out three days before Sophie turns up on her doorstep.

Peter's wife looks old, and Claire knows it has nothing to do with age. She's seen pictures of her, with hair that envious silver instead of brittle grey, wrinkles and creases barely noticeable because of the sheer exuberance and joy shining through. But that's gone now, like a light has been dimmed or switched off behind her features. The only thing shining are the tears in her eyes.

It takes Claire barely a fraction of a second to register her presence and to realise why she's here. She's never disliked Sophie, never hated her, and she's pretty sure that Sophie feels the same. There's a mutual respect there that has never been mentioned, that has grown despite the decades that separate them, and there's a silent understanding that they're both aware of. Claire gave up Peter so Sophie could have him for a lifetime, and a lifetime only.

They share one thing in common and that's Peter. And that's the only thing that's ever drawn them together and thrown them apart. Now things are coming full circle and Claire knows that Sophie is here to give back what can no longer be hers.

Too soon, she thinks. You didn't get your lifetime.

Even though she knows what's coming, Claire isn't prepared. As Sophie sits primly on her couch, staring absently at her coffee table, Claire feels something heavy settle in her stomach. Sophie doesn't even look at her when she speaks, unable to meet her eyes, unwilling to look at the young woman who she thinks will be responsible for rendering forty-odd years of her life insubstantial, infinitesimal. That hurts, and Claire hasn't felt that sharp, agonising stab in a long time.

She listens, though she knows what she's going to hear, and Sophie's voice fluctuates between a desolate whisper and a resolute bark. Claire can't decide if she's ordering her or begging her, but when Sophie looks at her, really looks at her, she sees the desperation there, the heartbreak that's leaching the colour from her face and dulling her gaze. And then she starts pleading, tears falling free to slide down her cheeks and curve beneath her chin. A litany pours from her lips. Please, please, I’ll give him back, I’ll give him back!

Claire tries to soothe her, tries to explain that when the time comes, Peter will think of Claire and it will be enough. But Sophie just stares at her, eyes wide and disbelieving, and she shakes her head, No, no, no, no.

And that's when it hits. That's when she realises. And suddenly the world seems to tip over, to shatter and splinter around her. Eternity crashes down on her shoulders, knocking the breath from her lungs, and she feels bile rise in her throat. Because Peter has made his decision finally, and he's chosen to forget her, chosen to leave her alone, chosen to die.

His broken promise tastes bitter on her tongue. She feels the hatred boil inside of her, feels, for the first time, that this hatred will be the death of her. But it never will be. It's useless. A fire that doesn't burn. But she lets it simmer there, anyway, just to feel something, anything.

And then she looks at Sophie, eyes hard and cold and determined.

I'll come, Claire tells her. But not yet. Not while he's still strong enough to fight me. And then we'll disappear. We'll have to, Sophie, you know that. And you can't follow. Do you understand? You're giving him back now. He's not yours anymore. But I'll take care of him, I promise. I promise.

Sophie is silent, minutes ticking by as she mourns what she's yet to lose. She has weeks, maybe months left with Peter, and it's not enough. Claire can see it. And she knows that even a lifetime wouldn't be long enough. Not for Sophie. She wants an eternity with Peter, not understanding that eternity is a curse that hollows you out, strips away faith and hope and all those things that really matter, and makes death the only thing worth living for. But Sophie still wants forever and Claire shakes her head sadly.

Love can't survive that long, she thinks. Can it?

Sophie lifts her head at that moment and gives Claire her answer. Yes, she whispers. Yes.

-

Claire waits seven weeks. Mid-way through the seventh, Sophie calls to tell her that Peter's lungs are shutting down, that the cancer has spread. And it's only when she's sure that Peter is weak enough that Claire finally pays a visit to the man that betrayed her.

She slinks into his room in the middle of the night, demanding beforehand that Sophie stay away. She has to do this alone.

Peter is sleeping when she approaches his bed, the ventilator breathing loudly beside him, and she settles herself on the edge of the mattress and stares down at him.

It's been a long time since she's seen Peter in the flesh, seen his face other than in pictures, and the sight makes her swallow heavily. She's seen him look older than this, but the disease has turned his pallor grey and made his face too thin. His cheeks are hollow, his eyes sunken and his lips paper white. This is Peter as she never wanted to see him, standing at Death's door, and her chest hitches with barely-contained sobs. Tears well and fall unnoticed as she slips her hand into his, staring at the fine bones that gleam white in the shadows. It's almost enough to make her wake him, to make him look at her, to make him recognise and remember her so she can see the life seep back into him.

Almost, but not quite.

Instead she leans down and presses her lips against his forehead. He doesn't stir, even as her tears carve tracks across his skin, not even when she moves her lips up to his ear and whispers, Don't forget. Please don't ever forget.

She pulls back and rises, stares at his face even as she leans over and flicks the switch. She listens to the sound of the respirator dying down, and then she slinks back, disappearing into the shadows.

And then she waits.

-

She does as she said she would, and her and Peter disappear. She buries him where he should have been buried the first time around. Even now, his gravestone is a familiar sight, though the epitaph is barely recognisable. It doesn't matter. She knows what it says and that's all that counts.

She found his shoeboxes stacked beneath his bed, and she buries them with him. Maybe they were memories he shouldn't have had, memories that he gathered on stolen time, but she knows that Peter would want them, would want to remember, because forgetting would make it all worthless in the end. And she hopes there's something of hers in there somewhere, some small piece that he can take with him. She likes the idea that, even though she can't die, some part of her has followed him into Death. It's a small, cold comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

Every decade thereafter, she visits his grave. She curls herself around his headstone, just like she did all those years ago when Peter came back to life the first, came back to her, and she waits, clinging to a hopeless hope that he'll find her there and bring her back to life.

But he never does and he never will. He's gone, really gone, and she knows this because she was the one to let him go this time. It was her punishment, her penance, her redemption, her last chance to undo a mistake that never should have been made.

And now she's alone. There are no new pictures in her shoebox, no new memories, only stale ones that are best left forgotten. But she can't forget, not really, and that's the problem. She remembers what it is to be alone, but more than that, she remembers what it was to walk beside Peter, to share her lifetimes with him. And now all that's left is memories.

At night she lays in bed and she prays. She prays for eternity to end, for her world to shatter, for her body to die. But most of all she prays that wherever Peter is, he is remembering her.

Because she, more than anything, wants to forget.