When I first met Beth, another neighbour named Claire (though she spelled it differently) moved into the building at roughly the same time.
For an embarrassingly long period, I could not remember which one was Claire and which one was Beth. The nearer neighbour became “Claire Beth”, and the other one was simply “not Claire Beth, the other one”.
At some point while checking the mailboxes, I created a temporary administrative solution scribbled on the kitchen splashback:
Claire: apartment 6
Beth: apartment 4
This eventually evolved into the contact card on my phone:
Claire Beth (Actually Beth)
The problem was solved years ago.
The solution survived.
Which, now that I think about it, may explain more things than feels entirely comfortable.
A surprising amount of modern life appears to consist of temporary systems quietly hardening into permanent reality simply because removing them would require more effort than collectively pretending they still make sense.
The QWERTY keyboard layout still exists partly because mechanical typewriters used to jam. “CC” and “BCC” in email survive from carbon paper office copies. Entire generations now recognise the “save” icon without ever having seen a floppy disk in real life.
Perhaps “Claire Beth (Actually Beth)” belongs quite naturally among them.
Anyway.
Her name is Beth.