SHE CAUGHT the 8.16 am city train — stopping all stations, and then running via the city loop. Community gardens, peppercorn trees, small backyards, and towers of million-dollar apartments — familiar, comforting, and hypnotic.

Forever wish, remember and search for remnants of this … Our story? She was able to recall it now, without the syrupy fog of the meds in her mind, the start of it anyway, the safe part. She told it to Dean Cola — she wasn’t sure why — as if he was out there somewhere, needing to hear it from her point of view.

Jay Jays disco back home, New Year’s Eve, 1988. You were standing at the bar, or beside the dance floor. In my mind’s eye, there is nobody else around, but there must have been. You would have had a mate with you, and Petra, my high-school best friend, would have been there for sure. Were Petra and I dancing, or on our way back from the ladies’? Had you beckoned to me? Bought me a drink, made small talk: the weather, football, the possibilities of the incoming year? Danced with me. Did we kiss at midnight? Yes, I’m sure we did. Perhaps I’d been the nearest girl when the DJ counted down the New Year, and you’d swooped, scooping me into an opportune pash. Or maybe I, overcome by joie de vivre, had initiated that kiss. Picturing my shy teenage self, that seems unlikely.

Lost in Jay Jays, looking for Dean, she almost missed Southern Cross station.

Walking up Collins Street, she sensed the collective breath-holding at the sounds of car horns, brake screeches, a distant siren’s wail. There were fewer city workers in force than usual for the morning rush. Every third or fourth shop was closed.

She thought of Dean Cola again when a grey-suited man rushed past, bumping into her. Dark hair, tall, substantial. He dodged and wove gracefully through the thinned-out throng, looking at his phone. What kind of work would Dean have done?

Outside the Anpat-Enlaw building, a few bunches of flowers had been laid as a memorial to the Collins Street victims.

Waiting for her computer to start up, Sidney watched a window washer, dangling in his safety harness on the building opposite. He turned his head, made eye contact, and seemed to mouth the words Dean Cola. She knocked over her jar of pens.

‘I’ve moved all our old materials into the S drive,’ Ros said.

‘I thought you said we weren’t using the S drive anymore.’ Sidney tidied her pens.

‘Only for old materials. And you won’t have access to it anyway.’

‘What if I need to cross-check something?’

‘Then you’ll have to get IT to organise access. All the old files are saved in a folder labelled X files.’

‘With Mulder and Scully?’

Dee tittered, but Sidney’s attempt at a joke was lost on Ros. She’d have been watching Murder She Wrote back in the nineties.

What had Dean watched on TV? She remembered the smell of his family’s shop, Cola Hardware: paint, wood, fertiliser, espresso coffee, and the smoky-metal fumes from the key-cutting machine.

The shop was attached to your house. I can’t remember if it was at the back or upstairs. Video nights were a thing back then. Popcorn and a splash of bourbon or vodka in a bottle of soft drink. Southern Comfort. I think you drank Southern Comfort. Sweet, peachy-bubblegum flavour on your lips. Your arm draped along the back of the sofa, waiting for the right moment — the scary part of a horror movie, or the soppy bit in a rom-com — to make a move, staring at, but not really watching, the screen in awkward silence. No, you were never awkward.

‘Sidney … Sidney?’ Ros placed a hard copy of her updated style guide on Sidney’s desk.

‘Yes, thanks for that, Ros.’

By lunchtime, her fingers were stiff, her hands aching. Her pod mates asked if she’d like to join them for lunch at the Japanese restaurant around the corner. No, she wanted to get her work finished so she could leave early and avoid the rush at the gym.

When the pod had left, she did some hand stretches, opened a can of Diet Coke — Coke, Coke, Coke, that’s what his mates called him — and washed down a Panadol. She googled Hedera helix. Common ivy. She had a quick glance behind her, and typed Dean Cola into the search bar. She stared for a couple of minutes at the two words and blinking cursor. Wriggling her toes, holding her breath, she clicked ‘Enter’. The search revealed that on Facebook Dean Colacicco was a bodybuilder in a white singlet, living in Toronto; Dean Colangelo had a violin as his profile picture; and Giovanni Cola had a bulldog. Further down were profiles of Coca-Cola employees; a page with a black-and-white photo of James Dean sitting on a Coca-Cola fridge outside a shop; and a video of James Dean in a Pepsi-Cola commercial.

A further search came up with college and university deans, and Earl R. Dean, the guy who designed the original Coca-Cola bottle.

Of course, Dean wouldn’t have an internet profile. Silly to have looked. He had a sister. Kelly? Sally? No. Shelley. She returned to Facebook and typed Shelley Col—

‘What are you doing?’ Ros said.

She spilled her drink on her hand. She thought Ros had gone to lunch too.

‘Nothing.’ She closed Facebook, changed her gloves, and went back to copyediting materials for a Certificate III in Hairdressing.

She drifted down the street towards the station. It was one of those late-summer, egg-yolk-coloured afternoons where everything seemed to be wilting. Not a breath of air.

She was too tired for the stairs at Southern Cross, let alone the gym. The escalator felt as though it was going backwards.

Through the train window, she noticed the graffitied warehouses and dodgy asbestos skillions more than the new apartments. At Jolimont station, there was a sign: a billboard advertising Coca-Cola — a group of shiny young people suspended in time, mid-jump inside a giant see-through Coke bottle floating on the ocean. Open a Coke, open happiness. She closed her eyes.

She was jolted awake at Collingwood to another sign — they were everywhere if you were looking for them — her phone buzzing with a Facebook friend request. She didn’t often get those. Petra Sommer! Why now, after all this time? The universe at mysterious-way work. She checked out Petra’s profile as the old Collingwood football ground flashed by outside the window. The twenty-one years in which they hadn’t spoken had not been as kind to Petra’s face as they had been to Sidney’s. Petra’s hair, now worn in a gamine style, was faded to rust and peppered with grey; her freckles had joined together on leathery skin. There was a body of water behind her that looked like the lake back home.

Perhaps Sidney’s long-lost bestie was a friend of Dean’s friends, or of his friends’ friends? His mates hadn’t liked Sidney. Why was she bothering with this? Accept? Dare she? Take the boat back down that river? Her finger hovered, before pressing ‘Confirm’.