AI The green neon sign hummed overhead, casting an otherworldly glow on the damp pavement of the Soho alley. Aurora Carter—Rory to anyone who'd known her longer than a week—pushed open the heavy door to The Raven’s Nest, the familiar scent of old wood, polished brass, and Silas’s good whiskey washing over her. It was a smell that had come to mean safety, a stark contrast to the metallic tang of fear that had clung to her life just a year ago.
She slipped onto her usual stool at the far end of the bar, the one with a slightly wobbling leg that Silas kept meaning to fix. The place was quiet for a Tuesday, just the low murmur of a couple in a corner booth and the soft clink of glass as Silas polished a tumbler. He looked up, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, and gave her a slow, almost imperceptible nod. His right hand, the one that always bore the heavy silver signet ring, moved with practised ease as he set the glass down and reached for the bottle of Tamnavulin without her having to ask.
“Rough one, Rory?” he asked, his voice a low rumble that seemed to emanate from the very foundations of the place . He poured two fingers, neat.
She offered a tired smile, running her thumb absently over the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. “The new sat-nav system at Golden Empress is a menace. Sent me to three different Wellingtons. I think Yu-Fei is trying to will the city’s geography into something more logical through sheer force of annoyance.”
Silas’s mouth quirked. “The city resists logic. It’s part of its charm .” He pushed the glass toward her. His movements were economical, precise, but she’d learned to notice the slight favouring of his left leg, the ghost of Prague that would never quite leave him.
She was about to take her first sip when the door opened again, letting in a burst of cool, diesel-scented evening air and a man silhouetted against the neon glow. He hesitated for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the dim light, scanning the room as if looking for a specific table or confirming a memory . Then his gaze landed on her, and stopped. The casual assessment hardened into genuine, stunned recognition.
Rory felt the air leave her lungs. It was Tomasz. Tomasz from Cardiff. Tomasz from the debating society, from the library all-nighters fueled by terrible coffee and shared ambition, from the world before Evan, before London, before she’d had to become someone else entirely.
He looked… successful. That was the first, jarring thought. The Tomasz she’d known had been all sharp angles and second-hand tweed jackets smelling of mothballs and earnestness. This man wore a beautifully tailored navy coat, his hair was expertly cut, and he carried himself with an assurance that seemed to take up physical space in the quiet bar . But his eyes, when they finally met hers, were the same—wide, intelligent, and now, utterly bewildered.
“Aurora?” he said, the single word laden with a decade of questions.
“Tomasz,” she replied, her voice thankfully steady. She gestured to the stool beside her. “Join me?”
He approached slowly, as if navigating a minefield, and slid onto the stool. He unbuttoned his coat, revealing a crisp shirt and a silk tie. The Tomasz she remembered had owned one tie, a garish thing covered in cartoon pigs that he’d worn for every formal occasion.
Silas materialized, a silent question in his raised eyebrows. “Whiskey, please. Whatever’s good,” Tomasz said, his voice deeper than she remembered, polished smooth .
“Two of my best customers in one night,” Silas murmured, his tone utterly neutral, but Rory caught the subtle shift in his posture. He was assessing, filing information away. The Spymaster was always on duty. He placed a fresh glass in front of Tomasz and retreated to the other end of the bar, giving them the illusion of privacy.
For a long moment, they just looked at each other. The silence was a chasm filled with the ghosts of who they had been: two bright, fiercely competitive students from modest backgrounds, certain they were going to conquer the world of law, to be a voice for the voiceless. They’d argued philosophy on the steps of the National Museum, sketched out their future chambers over pints of cheap lager, dared each other to be brilliant.
“I heard you’d moved to London,” Tomasz began, finally breaking the silence . He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “After… everything.”
‘Everything’. Such a small word for the cataclysm that had been Evan. The control, the isolation, the way he’d systematically dismantled her confidence, her friendships, her sense of self until the idea of a legal career felt like a pathetic joke from another lifetime. Tomasz had been one of the friends she’d been forced to let go.
“I did,” she said simply.
“And you’re… a barrister here? Chambers?” he asked, hope and professional curiosity colouring his tone. It was the most obvious, the only logical path. The one they had planned together.
Rory took a sip of her whiskey, letting the heat of it fortify her. She could lie. She could spin a tale of a small practice, of pro bono work. It would be easier. But the weight of his expectation, the sheer force of the person he still believed her to be, felt oppressive .
“No,” she said, her voice quiet but clear . “I deliver Chinese food.”
The sentence hung in the air between them, absurd and devastating. Tomasz blinked, his smile frozen, then slowly melted away. He looked around the bar again, as if searching for the hidden cameras, for the punchline .
“You’re joking.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m not.”
“But… your mind, Aurora. Your arguments. You were the best of us. Professor Davies said you were the most naturally gifted litigator he’d seen in twenty years.” He was leaning forward now, his voice intense, almost angry. “You were going to take on the Crown Prosecution Service. You were going to change things.”
Each word was a little hammer tap on the shield she’d built around herself. She remembered that fire . She remembered believing it. It felt like remembering a story about someone else.
“Plans change,” she said, her tone flat .
“Plans don’t change like that,” he insisted, his polished veneer cracking to reveal the dogged, uncompromising debater he’d always been at his core. “Not for someone like you. What happened?”
The real question hung unspoken in the air: *Who happened to you?*
She looked down at her hands, at the scar on her wrist. A childhood accident, she’d always said. A lie she’d told for so long she almost believed it herself. She could tell him. She could say the name ‘Evan’ and watch the understanding dawn in his eyes. She could unload the weight of the fear, the desperate midnight flight to London with nothing but a backpack, the months of terrified paranoia, jumping at shadows, certain he would find her.
But to say it aloud would make it real in this space, in this new life she’d painstakingly built. It would bring the ghost of that man into The Raven’s Nest, into the one place she felt safe. And she saw the man Tomasz had become—successful, assured, untouched by such grubby, destructive chaos. The gap between them wasn’t just years; it was a canyon of experience.
“Life happened, Tomasz,” she said finally, meeting his gaze. Her voice held a steadiness that surprised her. “It’s not a tragedy. I have a roof over my head. I have a job. It’s a quiet life. There’s value in that.”
He stared at her, and she saw the moment his lawyer’s mind, trained to find the root cause, the culpable party, gave up. He saw the finality in her eyes. The conversation was closed. The hope in his expression drained away, replaced by a profound , bewildered sadness. He was mourning her. He was sitting right next to her, drinking Silas’s excellent whiskey, and mourning the loss of the brilliant girl from Cardiff.
“A quiet life,” he repeated, the words tasting foreign . He knocked back the rest of his drink in one go, the expensive whiskey wasted on the gesture. “I’m at Clayton & Pierce. Commercial law. Mergers and acquisitions.” He said it like a confession, an apology for his own success in the face of her… quiet life.
“I’m glad you’re doing well,” she said, and meant it.
He stood up, buttoning his expensive coat. The movement was stiff, awkward. The easy confidence he’d entered with was gone . “It was… really good to see you, Aurora.”
“You too, Tomasz.”
He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more—an offer, a plea, a way to bridge the impossible divide. Instead, he just gave a curt nod, turned, and walked out of the bar. The door sighed shut behind him, sealing the silence back in place.
Rory let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her whiskey glass was empty. Silas appeared as if summoned, wiping the bar where Tomasz’s glass had been.
“Old friend?” he asked, his tone carefully casual .
“The past,” Rory corrected softly, her thumb finding the scar on her wrist again . It was a map of a different life, a small, silent testament to the things that break and the things that heal, however quietly.