AI Rain worried at Soho like a hand that wouldn’t stop knocking. Aurora came in with it on her shoulders, the damp stitched into the black of her hair, her jacket smelling faintly of fried garlic and ginger from Golden Empress. The Raven’s Nest took her in the way it always did—dim, familiar, a low ceiling of shadow and the slow amber of lamps that softened everything they touched. Old maps stared down from the walls, their seas inked with monsters and their borders scabbed with age. Black-and-white photographs watched from crooked frames: strangers grinning with cigarettes, men in uniforms, a river somewhere she didn’t know.
She paused just inside, letting her eyes adjust. The green neon sign outside threw a ghostly stripe across the entrance, a sickly color that never reached the back of the room. A Tuesday night crowd, which meant not a crowd at all—three men hunched over pints like they were conferring , a couple tucked into a corner with their knees turned inward, and one woman at the bar, alone, posture held like a decision.
Silas stood behind the counter, polishing a glass with patient violence. Grey streaked through his auburn hair like ash in a hearth. When he look ed up, his hazel eyes took in the rain on Rory’s collar, the fatigue at the edges of her bright blue gaze, and he nodded once as if he’d filed her under “home.”
“Late,” he said.
“Yu-Fei had a table of twelve who wanted everything at once,” Rory replied, peeling her jacket off and hanging it on the peg by the bar. “And one man who kept asking if the dumplings were ‘authentic’ as if he’d personally invented China.”
Silas’s mouth twitched toward a smile, then settled back into its usual line. His right hand—silver signet ring catching the light—set the glass down.
“You eat?” he asked.
“Enough.” Not quite a lie. Enough to keep her from thinking about food the way she sometimes thought about sleep: as an impossible luxury other people had.
She slid onto a stool. The wood under her palms was warm from the day’s bodies. She flexed her left wrist, feel ing the familiar pull of the small crescent-shaped scar there, the old childhood accident that had become a quiet mark of survival. The habit was unconscious now, as natural as breathing.
Silas reached for a bottle without asking and poured her something that smelled like citrus and smoke. “On the house,” he said, which meant: you look like you need it.
“Thank you,” she said, because there were still manners embedded in her bones from Cardiff, from her mother’s teacher’s voice and her father’s barrister’s precision. Gratitude, neatly spoken, even when it tasted awkward.
She lifted the glass and took a sip. The alcohol loosened something at the back of her throat, a knot she hadn’t admitted was there.
Then the woman at the bar laughed.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even particularly distinctive, and yet it hit Rory like a hand on a scar—sharp, intimate, impossible to ignore. The laugh came again, softer this time, as the woman leaned toward Silas to say something Rory couldn’t hear. The sound carried a memory with it: a bus shelter in Cardiff in the rain, two girls hunched in their school coats, sharing a packet of crisps they couldn’t afford to waste.
Rory’s hand stilled around her glass.
The woman turned slightly , and the light from the bar caught her profile—cheekbone, jaw, the line of her nose. Her hair was shorter than Rory remembered, cut into a blunt bob that tucked behind one ear. A little expensive, that haircut. A little severe. She wore a coat that look ed like it had never known a charity shop rack.
And still Rory knew her. Not the way you know a face from across a room, but the way you know a song you haven’t heard in years: the first note and your body remembers the rest.
Her chest tightened. Her mind, always quick to turn corners, went briefly blank.
“Silas,” Rory said, voice thinner than she meant. “Who’s—”
But Silas’s attention had already shifted, his gaze flicking toward the woman and back to Rory. Something in his look sharpened, an old operative’s instinct. He didn’t answer. He simply lifted his chin in the smallest direction, as if saying: you see her too.
The woman turned fully then, perhaps feel ing watched, perhaps sensing the weight of Rory’s stare. Her eyes met Rory’s.
For a moment she didn’t react. She look ed through Rory in the way people sometimes did when they were tired —taking in shape and color without recognition. Then her eyes widened , and it was like watching a door open on a room that had been locked for years.
“Rory,” she said.
The name landed on the bar between them, soft and heavy. It was a name no one here used except Silas, and even he often said “Carter” when they were alone, the way he liked to keep everyone a slight distance away.
Rory’s throat worked. “Eva.”
Eva stood, slow as if her knees had to remember how. Up close, the changes were clearer. Her face was thinner, the roundness of youth sharpened into angles. There was a faint line at the corner of her mouth like she’d been learning to hold her words back. Her eyes—dark, still dark—held a polish that didn’t quite hide the exhaustion underneath.
“You—” Eva started, then stopped, as if there were too many endings for that sentence. You’re here. You’re alive. You didn’t call. You left.
Rory slid off the stool before she knew she was moving. She stood there, suddenly aware of her delivery uniform under the jacket she’d removed, of the smell of restaurant kitchens clinging to her skin, of the way the bar’s low light made everyone look like they’d been bruised .
“Hi,” Rory managed. It sounded ridiculous. Like bumping into someone you’d once sat beside on a train, not the person who’d yanked you out of a life you were drowning in.
Eva’s lips parted, then pressed together. “Hi.”
Silence pooled. Behind them, someone’s pint glass clinked against the counter. The rain at the door kept whispering.
Silas cleared his throat, subtle as a blade. “Table,” he said to Rory, not asking. He moved his weight , the slight limp in his left leg more apparent as he stepped aside, giving them space. It was what he did best—making rooms within rooms.
Rory nodded and led Eva toward a corner where an old map of the Baltic hung above a cracked leather booth. They sat opposite each other, the table between them sticky with varnish worn down by years of elbows and spilled beer.
Up close, Eva smelled like expensive soap and cold air. Not like Cardiff. Not like the cheap perfume she used to wear, the one that had smelled of cherries and desperation.
Eva look ed Rory over with a frankness that made Rory’s skin prickle. “You’ve… you look —”
“Tired?” Rory offered.
Eva’s mouth twitched again, not quite a smile. “I was going to say the same.” Her gaze caught on Rory’s wrist as Rory reached for her glass, thumb brushing the crescent scar. “Still got that.”
“Still clumsy,” Rory said, and managed a real smile this time, brief as a match flare.
Eva’s eyes softened. The softness made the next words harder. “I didn’t know you were here,” she said.
Rory let out a breath . “I live upstairs.”
Eva blinked. “Above this place?”
Rory nodded. “Silas rents me the flat. Cheap. Convenient.”
“Convenient,” Eva repeated, as if testing the word for hidden thorns. Her gaze flicked toward the bar where Silas stood. He pretended not to watch them, though Rory knew he watched everything. “So he’s… your landlord.”
“And more,” Rory said before she could stop herself.
Eva’s eyebrows lifted, a quick flash of the girl she’d been—curious, hungry for stories. Then her expression settled again, careful. “I suppose I’m not allowed to ask.”
“You can ask,” Rory said. “I’m just not sure I’m good at answering.”
Eva leaned back slightly . The leather creaked under her coat. “Neither of us were good at that,” she said quietly.
The words brought Cardiff back in a rush—her father’s voice on the phone, stern and loving; her mother’s hands chalk-dusted from school; the university halls with their fluorescent light and the way Rory had sat in lectures, feel ing like she was watching someone else’s life. And Evan—his name a stone in her mouth even now. The way she’d stopped telling Eva things because she’d been ashamed of what she’d allowed, because she’d been afraid of what Eva might do if she knew.
Eva’s gaze dropped to Rory’s hands. “You disappeared,” she said. Not accusing. Just stating a fact that had teeth.
Rory’s fingers tightened around her glass. “You told me to go.”
“I told you to run,” Eva corrected, and her voice cracked on the word. She swallowed, jaw working as if she were chewing on old anger. “I didn’t tell you to vanish.”
Rory look ed down at the table, at the scratches carved into it—initials, dates, a crude heart pierced by a dart. Someone had tried to leave proof they’d been here. Rory had left none.
“I didn’t know how to be… normal,” Rory said. The confession came out smaller than she expected. “After. I kept thinking if I called, I’d—” She stopped. If I called, he’d find me. If I called, you’d hear what I’d become. If I called, it would make it real.
Eva watched her closely. “Did he—” She didn’t say Evan. She didn’t need to.
Rory forced herself to nod. Once. “He tried. For a while.”
Eva’s nostrils flared. For a moment, her composure slipped, and Rory saw the old Eva—the one who’d sworn she’d smash his windows in if he ever laid a hand on Rory again. “And you didn’t think to tell me.”
Rory’s laugh came out jagged. “Tell you what? That I’d traded Cardiff for London and still couldn’t make myself safe?”
“You made yourself safe,” Eva said, fierce. “You got out. That was—” Her voice softened, the fierceness folding into something sad. “That was the bravest thing you ever did.”
Rory stared at her. Bravest. The word didn’t fit her memory. Her memory was of fear, constant and sticky, of packing a bag with shaking hands and look ing at her own reflection and not recognizing the girl in it.
“What are you doing here?” Rory asked, because if she didn’t change the subject she might tip over into something she couldn’t contain. “In this bar. In Soho.”
Eva hesitated. Her gaze flicked toward Silas again, then back. “Work,” she said.
Rory waited. She’d learned patience living above this place. People said what they were ready to say.
Eva exhaled. “I’m with a firm now,” she said. “Corporate. Risk. Compliance.” She grimaced as if the words tasted like dust. “I fly more than I sleep.”
Rory blinked. She’d expected—what? The old Eva had talked about art school, about running a little shop selling prints and handmade jewelry. About leaving Cardiff behind with laughter instead of bruises.
“You’re a solicitor?” Rory asked.
Eva’s eyes narrowed . “You sound surprised.”
“I’m allowed,” Rory said. “It’s been years.”
Eva’s gaze dropped for a moment. “I didn’t go to art school,” she said. “Mum got sick. Needed help. And I… I got practical.” She said practical like it was a sin. “By the time she died, I was already on the track. It’s hard to step off once you’re moving.”
“I’m sorry,” Rory said, and meant it in the way that hurt—sorry for the death, sorry for the life Eva hadn’t lived, sorry for not being there when it happened.
Eva nodded, once, briskly, as if she could file grief away like paperwork. “Thanks.” Then, sharper: “And you? You were going to be a barrister like your dad. You were going to argue circles around men twice your age. What happened to that?”
Rory could have lied. She could have said she’d deferred, that she’d taken time off, that she’d be back to it soon. But the bar around her—the maps, the photographs, Silas’s quiet authority—made lying feel childish.
“I didn’t go back,” Rory said. “After London I couldn’t… I couldn’t sit in a lecture hall and pretend I cared about torts when I was still counting days by how often my phone lit up with his number.”
Eva’s face tightened. “You should’ve told me.”
“I know,” Rory said. The words came out clean, no defense left. “I know.”
Eva’s gaze searched Rory’s face like she was looking for the girl she’d once known. Rory held still and let her look . She’d learned, in the years since, how to be observed without flinching. Silas had taught her that much, if not with lessons then with the atmosphere of his bar—everyone here watched, everyone here was watched.
“You look different,” Eva said finally. “Not just tired. Different.”
Rory lifted her shoulders, a small shrug. “London did it.”
“That’s not all,” Eva said. Her eyes flicked down again to Rory’s wrist, to the scar, then back up, as if the scar were a symbol of something deeper. “You used to fill silence with jokes. With plans. Now you’re… quiet.”
Rory swallowed. She could have said: I learned that silence keeps you alive. Instead she said, “And you used to fill silence with feel ings. Now you’re—” She searched for the right word and hated it as soon as it came. “Polished.”
Eva’s laugh this time held no warmth. “Polished,” she repeated. “That’s one word.”
“What word would you use?”
Eva look ed away. The neon from outside caught the edge of her cheekbone, painting her briefly green. “Armoured,” she said.
The word hung between them, heavy and true.
Rory felt a strange ache then, not sharp like pain but dull like an old bruise pressed too hard. She realized she had carried an image of Eva through the years—Eva as she’d been, wild-eyed and loyal, the girl who’d texted at three in the morning, Are you awake? I’m coming to get you. That Eva had become someone else, and Rory had missed every step of the transformation.
“You came here for work,” Rory said again, gently , because she could hear the strain in Eva’s voice when she said it.
Eva nodded. “A client wanted to meet someone discreet,” she said, and her eyes flicked toward Silas again. “Someone said this place was… reliable.”
Silas’s signet ring tapped once against the bar top, a quiet sound that somehow carried. Rory saw him reach for a bottle, pour, lean toward a man at the far end. The man’s face stayed in shadow. The Raven’s Nest held secrets the way other places held dust.
Rory look ed back at Eva. “So you’re here to talk to Silas.”
Eva held Rory’s gaze. “And I didn’t know you’d be part of the furniture.”
Rory smiled faintly, despite herself. “I’m not furniture.”
“No,” Eva said, softer now. “You’re not.”
They sat with the truth of that, with the years between them like a river that had flooded its banks and rearranged the land. Rory thought of the messages she’d started and deleted. The calls she’d nearly made. The way she’d told herself she was sparing Eva worry, sparing her the ugliness. The lie had been easier than admitting she’d been ashamed .
“I thought about you,” Rory said suddenly . The admission startled her as it left her mouth. “More than I let myself.”
Eva’s throat moved. She blinked once, quickly . “I thought you’d died,” she said, and her voice went flat with the effort of control. “Or that you’d gone back to him. Or that you’d decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Rory’s chest tightened. “You were worth—” She stopped, because the rest of the sentence was a mess of feel ing. You were worth everything. You saved me. I didn’t deserve you. I still don’t.
Instead she said, “I didn’t know how to be your friend and also be… whatever I was then.”
Eva’s eyes shone briefly, the polish cracking. She look ed down, pressing her fingers into the edge of the table. Her nails were manicured , pale and neat. “I wasn’t asking for perfect,” she said. “I was asking for a sign you were still… you.”
Rory stared at her hands, at the manicure, and remembered Eva biting her nails down to nothing as she revised for exams, laughing through her anxiety. Time did this—replaced old habits with new ones, old dreams with something that look ed like success from far away.
“You still have my number?” Rory asked.
Eva look ed up, a flash of surprise. “I never deleted it,” she said. Then, after a beat: “It’s probably changed.”
“It hasn’t,” Rory said, and felt absurdly grateful for that small fact. Like a thread still intact.
Eva’s gaze held Rory’s for a long moment, and in it Rory saw the weight of everything neither of them had said—Mum’s death, Evan’s shadow, the way Rory had built a life above a bar owned by a man with secrets. The way Eva had built a life of sharp suits and flights and clients who needed discreet meetings. Two versions of adulthood neither of them had pictured at nineteen.
Silas appeared at their table, moving with his measured limp, setting a fresh glass of water down in front of Rory without asking and a whiskey in front of Eva as if he’d known what she needed. His signet ring flashed as he adjusted the placement of the glass precisely . “Ms. Price,” he said to Eva, and the name was a subtle knife.
Eva’s eyes flicked to Rory. “Price,” she echoed , and there was a warning in the way she said it: not here, not now.
Rory felt something cold settle in her stomach. “You’re using a different name.”
Eva’s mouth tightened. “Work,” she said again, and the word carried more than corporate law now. It carried danger, or at least the performance of it.
Silas look ed between them, his expression unreadable , then nodded once. “Your client’s arrived,” he said to Eva. “Back room.”
Eva’s shoulders rose on a breath. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a card, sliding it across the table to Rory. The card was thick, expensive. Black lettering. Evelyn Price, Risk & Compliance. A London number.
On the back, in quick handwriting that didn’t match the printed polish, was another number and a single word: Personal.
Rory’s throat tightened. She picked up the card as if it might crumble. “Eva,” she said, because she needed to say the name again, needed to anchor it.
Eva stood. For a moment, she look ed as if she might reach across the table and touch Rory’s hand. Instead she just nodded, a small, fierce gesture. “Don’t disappear again,” she said.
Rory’s fingers closed around the card. The crescent scar on her wrist pressed against its edge. “I won’t,” she said, and this time she meant it as a promise, not a wish.
Eva turned to follow Silas. Rory watched her cross the bar, watched Silas reach up to a bookshelf and pull at a spine that wasn’t a book at all. The shelf shifted with a soft click, revealing a seam of darkness behind it. Eva stepped through without look ing back. The shelf closed, maps and photographs staring down as if nothing had happened.
Rory sat still in the booth, the rain still whispering at the door, the bar still murmuring with low voices and clinking glass. In her hand, the card warmed to her skin. She stared at the word Personal until her eyes blurred, and in the blur she saw two girls in a Cardiff bus shelter, sharing crisps, laughing like the world couldn’t touch them.
Time had touched them anyway. Time had pressed hard, reshaped, taken its due.
Rory lifted her glass and drank, the citrus and smoke burning a clean line down her throat. She held the card tighter, as if she could hold on to the years that had slipped through her fingers, as if she could make something solid out of regret.
Upstairs, her flat waited. Down here, the Nest breathed secrets. Somewhere behind the bookshelf, Eva sat with a client in the dark, armoured and polished and still, somehow, the person who had once said, I’m coming to get you.
Rory stared at the closed shelf and listened to her own pulse, steady and stubborn, and tried to believe that some doors could open again.