Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTQQSP12SMBKQRK7E0ZKT8F

The faint glow of the green neon “Raven’s Nest” sign bled through Soho’s bristling night air, tainting the drizzle-stained pavement a sickly jade. Aurora Carter ducked under her hood, knuckles pink as she pushed through the bar’s battered door. Inside, the din of pint glasses, low laughter, and the undercurrent of an old jazz LP shrouded the cramped gloom. Her eyes caught the battered maps lining the walls—Africa faded and bisected by thumbtacks, a black-and-white Paris, unsmiling faces in Soviet hats. She walked a little lighter. She scanned the crowd, searching for Silas. Flashes of auburn new growth poking through a mop of grey—the man himself prowled behind the bar, murmuring to a glass-lifting regular. Rory turned toward the corner, making straight for the tall table near the bookshelf, already half-picturing her unwelcome to-do list of late-night deliveries. Her legs ached at the thought. A figure unfolded from a dark booth beside the whisky bottles—someone slim, braced with the air of a man who hadn’t meant to be noticed. Rory stopped, heart giving a sharp twist. It shouldn’t be him, couldn’t be. The slope of his nose, eyes darker and softer than she remembered, jawline sharp as glass even after all this time. Jamie O’Donnell. She tasted the name behind her teeth, keeping her face level. He looked older, but that wasn’t it—he looked new-made, reassembled. Gone were the startled, reckless smiles. His suit fit, sober and black, hands clean but fidgeting in a way that made her want to reach for the old boy’s knuckles peeking out from under too-long sleeves. He caught her watching. “Rory Carter. Hell, I thought you’d left London,” he said, voice rougher, slower. Eyes tight, but mouth curling into a searching half-grin. “Been busy keeping my head down,” Rory answered, stepping forward. “Didn’t expect Soho to cough you up, Jamie. Thought you’d flown off to Dubai, or vanished to Stanford. Opened a yoga studio in Croydon, something absurd.” He laughed, but it cracked somewhere in the middle, shoulders inching up before he caught himself. He offered her the chair across. She didn’t take it—leaning against the bookshelf, hands in pockets. Familiar distance, old wires. “Your dad always said you’d make a lawyer. I figured you’d be on telly—‘The Barrister’s Daughter’—cross-examining MPs for fun,’” Jamie said, running a thumb along the grey ring on his finger. His nails sat shorter, cleaner. The rings under his eyes matched the whiskey in his voice. “Didn’t stick the landing. Couldn’t hack sermonising from nine to five. I deliver Chinese now. Golden Empress, just round the corner. My social skills are best left untested on clients.” “Yu-Fei’s place. No kidding.” His voice dropped, the next words hovering, trailing away. His gaze flicked around the bar—maps, mirrors, strangers. “You never texted me back.” Rain battered the street, flattening ghost-lit faces in the window. Rory met Jamie’s stare. “You didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address, mate. Last I heard, you’d ‘borrowed’ your uncle’s Astra and buggered off after that disastrous gig in Bristol. Five years.” A small, sad smile perched on his lips, as if some piece of the younger Jamie stood beside him, arms folded, silent. “There was a girl. Or a disaster—I can’t tell the difference now. Spain for a while. Mostly running from the same stuff we all ran from.” He dug at a beer label with his thumb, shreds curling under his nails. “London felt like a punishment. But here I am, circling the old haunts.” The jazz slid to a stop, replaced by the crackle of a new record. Rory shifted, eyes falling on the little shine of a scar at Jamie’s wrist—paler, but still there. She remembered late-night dares on Cardiff rooftops, hands sticky with cider and carelessness. “You look—different, Jamie. Like you finally found your real bones.” He bristled, almost flinched, but grinned anyway. “Spent enough years pretending I was someone else. Fitting rooms, stages, promotions I didn’t want. None of it stuck. Now I push paper round a dull office and pay the bills.” “You look miserable.” His laugh came short—huffed out in a breath. “Are you happy, Rory?” She didn’t answer right away, tracing the seam of an old National Geographic map with her eyes. “I’m not haunted,” she said. “That’s the best I can do, most days.” He tugged his chair closer, elbows on knees. Old echoes—a shared cigarette on a church roof, bad songs sung in freezing alleys, Jamie breaking into tears at a late train. He’d grown into stillness, but the fidget never left his hands. “Remember that winter in year twelve?” Jamie’s gaze hunted her, daring her to lie, to laugh it off. “Everyone else at Douglass’ party trying to snog, or worse. You, me, out in the garden, making plans. We thought we’d take the world by the throat.” “You tried to teach me to smoke joints made of mint leaves,” Rory replied, half-smiling despite herself. “You said we'd be rich doing street magic and reading palms on the beach in Barcelona.” “We never got further than your dad’s old deck of cards. I think about it more than I should.” He toyed with a beer mat, but his eyes glimmered, toeing the edge between amusement and apology. “I should have written.” “You could have,” Rory replied. “But the world rolls on. We weren’t built for postcards.” Jamie reached for her wrist, fingers pausing just short of her sleeve. “There were things I owed you. Explanations I never gave.” Rory drew back, a small, calm defiance in her mouth. “I had to start over. Didn’t have time to wait for old apologies.” He looked down. Above the bar, Silas limped between tables, head cocked at the two of them before he turned, half-smiling at Rory. The barkeeper’s presence felt like a reset; both of them older, sharper, watchful. Rory braced her arms on the table, gaze fixed on Jamie. “Your dad… he’s still around?” Jamie’s voice softened, the old habit of sidelong questions returning. “Cardiff. Mum as well. They send letters, pretend I’m taking the city by storm. They don’t know about Evan. Or why I left—the real reasons.” She tapped the scar at her wrist. “I’m not much for explaining myself either.” Jamie let out a breath, lines around his eyes biting deeper. “The days get shorter after you leave home. I always thought there’d be another chance.” “There isn’t. Not for most things.” Resignation curled around them, a gentle press. Rory stood, her back aching, the weight of old days and missed phone calls settling like damp. Jamie traced the rim of his glass, voice tight. “If you ever want to talk—” “I’ll find you. Or not,” Rory cut in, but her lip quirked at the corner. “Things don’t always break just because you drop them, Jamie.” Rain battered the glass. Jamie nodded, grave as a priest, hands folded around his empty glass. Rory left him there, hiccuping between the memory of old gardens and the sharp, live wire of now. She met Silas' gaze as she slipped past the bar. He raised his brow just slightly—Are you alright?—and Rory shivered, nodding in return. She stepped into the London night, drizzle slick on her skin, the world outside neither kinder nor crueler, only itself, indifferent to who had stayed or left. Behind her, the green neon shimmered, steady and unworried.