Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX8KZY8F299GCPEEJ76PTN

The green neon of the sign outside pulsed through the front windows and washed the bar in a swampy light each time the door opened. Friday in Soho, the air thick with old beer and new perfume, a low roar of voices over the hush of some jazz compilation Silas liked because no one recognised it. Rory stacked pint glasses under the counter. Her fingers moved on their own, muscle memory from too many late shifts. She had a smear of lime pulp on her wrist, caught against the faint crescent scar there. She scrubbed at it with a bar towel and missed. Silas leaned on the far end of the bar, weight off his bad leg, counting notes from the till. His silver ring tapped against the wood in a slow rhythm. “Last orders in twenty,” he called without looking up. A groan rolled through the crowd. Someone at the dartboard yelled to make it thirty. Silas lifted one brow in their direction and went back to the notes. The door swung again, a gust of cold air and city noise cutting through the warmth. A handful of people spilled in: suits, loosened ties, a woman in a sharp navy jacket laughing too loud at something on her phone. Rory’s eyes flicked over them, the way they always did, slotting faces into safe or trouble. Then stopped. The woman in the navy jacket turned, profile first. Same nose, still a little crooked at the bridge from the hockey stick in Year Ten. Same full mouth, now painted a deep red that matched the thin file tucked under one arm. Her hair had been a wild, copper tangle once. Now it fell in a smooth, controlled sheet to her collarbones. “Rory, get the new ones,” Silas murmured, fingers still on the cash. She didn’t move. The woman’s gaze swept the room. It passed over Rory, slid on, then snapped back like it hit a wall. “Aurora?” Her voice carried over the hum, clear, incredulous. Heads turned. Rory forced her grip to unclench from the towel. “No one calls me that anymore.” She reached for a clean glass. “What can I get you?” The woman’s jaw worked for a heartbeat. Then she laughed, tight. “Of course you’re tending bar. Why not. Gin and tonic. Double. No lime.” She stepped closer, elbows on the polished wood, eyes searching Rory’s face. “You remember my drink.” “You made a point of telling everyone you’d sue the place if they put fruit in it.” Rory reached for the Bombay, grateful for the busy work. “Some things stick.” “Niamh, you want a table?” One of the suits nudged her shoulder. “Place is heaving.” “In a second.” Niamh waved him off, gaze still locked on Rory. “You live here now? In London?” Rory scooped ice. “Depends who’s asking.” “That’s funny. You’re funny now.” Niamh leaned in, watching Rory’s hands. “Last I saw you, you were neck-deep in case law and colour‑coding exam timetables.” Silas slid the cash drawer shut and drifted closer, a faint curiosity in his eyes. “You two know each other.” “University.” Niamh straightened a fraction, smoothing a palm over her suit lapel. “Cardiff. Law. She disappeared.” Silas’s attention flicked to Rory, measuring. “Old friend then. Good night for reunions.” He eased back, favouring his left leg. “Rory, take five. I can handle the stampede.” She opened her mouth to argue. The look he gave her held no room for it. Niamh’s lips curved. “Rory, is it? When did that happen?” “When Auroras stop shining and start paying rent.” Rory set the glass on a coaster and pushed it over. “On the house.” “Put it on my tab,” Niamh shot back. “In case I hate you by the end of this.” Rory’s fingers stilled on the bar. She wiped them on her apron and untied it. “Booth at the back,” Silas nodded, already reaching for a pint glass. “I’ll send over crisps. No lime in those.” The regulars near the darts smirked. The moment loosened a notch. Rory led Niamh through the tangle of tables, past the wall of old maps and black‑and‑white photographs. The back booth sat in half‑shadow, under a framed shot of Prague in winter. Silas’s choice. Snow buried the tram tracks so the lines vanished into blankness. Niamh slid into the booth, dropping her file beside her. She took a healthy gulp of her drink and watched Rory settle opposite. “You look… different.” “I cut my hair.” “And your spine, apparently.” Niamh’s gaze swept her plain black t‑shirt, the faded jeans, the scuffed boots. “Aurora Carter pouring pints in a place that smells like wet coats. Your dad must be thrilled.” “Good to know you haven’t changed.” Rory folded her arms on the table. “Still launching straight for the jugular.” “Occupational hazard.” Niamh glanced towards the bar. Silas moved with slow, economic steps, his limp more pronounced at the end of the night. “Nice place. It’s… atmospheric.” “That’s polite for cramped and damp.” Rory watched her, catalogue in hand. The tailored suit, the thin gold watch, the way Niamh’s shoulders never quite dropped. “You on a work thing?” “Conference. Inns of Court sent a delegation.” Niamh clinked ice against the glass. “Supposed to network. I escaped before someone trapped me in a conversation about disclosure bundles. Wandered until I saw your weird green raven out there.” “Not a raven.” Rory nodded at the sign’s glow leaking around the door. “Silas picked it because the electrician misread his handwriting. We kept it.” “He owns this place?” “Yeah.” “He your boss or your dad’s replacement?” Niamh’s mouth twisted. “He has the same disapproving aura.” Rory’s fingers dug into the wood of the table. “You came in here and within two minutes insulted the bar, the décor and my family. Impressive.” “You left.” Niamh met her stare. “No note, no message, nothing. One day you were in the library colour‑coding revision notes, the next you were air. I called. I went to your halls. Your stuff was gone. I thought you were dead in a ditch off the A48.” “My phone broke.” “That’s the story you’re going with.” Silas appeared at the edge of the table, a small metal bowl in one hand. “Salt and vinegar or cheese and onion.” Niamh blinked up at him. “Surprise me.” He set down salt and vinegar. He lingered a second, gaze moving between them. “I’ll be polishing glasses if you two need anything that isn’t on the menu.” His hand brushed Rory’s shoulder as he left, a brief, grounding weight. Niamh reached for a crisp, stared at it, let it drop back. “I waited outside your seminar for an hour the week after you vanished,” she said. “Lecturer told me you’d withdrawn. Voluntarily. That what it was?” “Something like that.” Rory watched a ring of moisture from Niamh’s glass spread on the table. “Evan didn’t like me spending nights in the library.” Niamh flinched at the name. “Christ. He’s the reason? That lanky shit with the leather jacket and opinions about Nietzsche?” “He had more than opinions.” Rory’s tone came out flat. “He had keys. He had fists.” Niamh stared. “You never— You brought him to the Christmas party. You called him intense and caring and ‘a bit of a project’.” “I also called him temporary.” Rory’s jaw tightened. “Turns out I was the one on a trial basis.” Niamh’s throat worked. “Why didn’t you tell me.” “You liked him.” “I tolerated him for your sake.” “You laughed at his jokes.” “They weren’t funny.” Niamh leaned forward, fingers curling. “You think I wouldn’t have believed you? You think I’d have shrugged and told you to go back to him?” Rory opened her mouth. Closed it again. The memory moved in, unwelcome: Niamh on a library floor under a pile of statute books, snarling at anyone who suggested she drop one module. You don’t start something you can’t finish. “It wasn’t about you,” Rory muttered. “It was about getting away. Fast.” “So your grand escape route was to torch your degree, break your parents, disappear from every person who gave a damn about you and pour pints for hung‑over tourists.” Rory’s laugh came out harsh. “You rehearsed that in court or do you wing these things now.” “I’m in chambers, not on telly.” Niamh drained half her drink in one pull. “You could have called. Texted. Sent a signal flare. Something.” “I didn’t have… space.” Rory’s hands went to the elastic band around her wrist, snapped it against her skin. “He checked my phone. My bag. He knew my timetable better than I did.” “So when you got away. When he wasn’t breathing down your neck.” Niamh’s voice dropped. “That day. That week. All those months. You still didn’t call.” Rory stared at the map-covered wall over Niamh’s shoulder. West Africa blurred into South America in the half‑light. “I thought you’d moved on.” “With what, your lecture notes? Your spare hoodie?” Niamh’s boot kicked the seat. “We shared three years and a mouldy house with mushrooms in the shower. We shared…” She cut herself off, teeth on the word. Rory’s mind yanked up the image before she could stop it. Final year, the storm outside rattling their HMO’s rotten windows, the two of them cross‑legged on the floor between crates of law books, a bottle of cheap vodka between them. “You’ll smash it,” Niamh had slurred, ink on her fingers, hair a tangle. “You on the defence, me on the prosecution. We’ll terrify judges from opposite sides.” “Or we’ll burn out at twenty‑five and open a cat café.” “Flawed business model. Health regs.” “Always with the regs.” Niamh’s hand had brushed Rory’s knee. They’d both gone very still. Then Niamh had leaned in, daring the gap. The kiss had been clumsy, vodka‑sharp. They’d broken apart laughing, faces hot. “Drunk,” Niamh had muttered, gaze sliding anywhere but Rory’s mouth. “We’re drunk.” Rory had agreed. They never mentioned it again. She dragged herself back to the booth. “We were kids,” she said now. “We were twenty‑two. The age judges send people to prison.” Niamh’s nails tapped the side of her glass. “Do you know how long I waited outside that coffee shop by campus? The one with the sticky tables. When you didn’t show. Twice.” Rory rubbed the heel of her hand over her left eye. “I know the answer they give in trauma leaflets. Tell your friends. Reach out. Ask for help. That what you want to hear? That I messed up the correct protocol for survival.” “I want to know if I meant anything.” The words sat between them, raw as exposed wiring. Rory flinched. “You were the one part of Cardiff that wasn’t a checklist,” she said. “That clear enough for you.” Silence dropped over the booth. At the bar, someone knocked over a stool. Laughter barked. Silas’s low voice followed, calm and steady, smoothing the disturbance. Niamh’s eyes shone, but no tears fell. Law school had taught her that much control at least. “You could have wrecked my couch in London,” she muttered. “I’d have let you.” “I didn’t know your address.” “You knew the name of my parents’ farm. They’d have redirected a letter carved in stone.” “Letters take time.” Rory stared at the condensation spreading under Niamh’s drink. “I needed immediate solutions. Eva called. Offered a sofa above a Chinese restaurant in Camden. Then I ended up here.” “Delivering spring rolls and pouring lager.” “And not getting hit,” Rory snapped. Niamh sank back, shame flickering across her features. “I’m not diminishing that.” She picked up a crisp and bit into it neat and controlled. “I just… You had this brain. This ridiculous, stupid, over‑clocked brain. You could dismantle an argument and rebuild it from the other side in under a minute. You wrote essays in one draft. You—” “Don’t romanticise it.” Rory’s fingers drifted over a deep scratch carved in the table: RW + ? with the plus sign gouged over. “The law didn’t want a girl who couldn’t keep her own life in order.” “You don’t decide what the law wants.” Niamh’s mouth tightened. “Old men on committees do. And women like me, clawing our way up, citing precedent while people check our legs instead of our submissions.” “You sound thrilled.” “It’s not about being thrilled.” Niamh mimed a judge’s wig with one hand, ridiculous over her sleek hair. “It’s about standing up and saying, ‘This is the story that counts.’ And watching a whole room bend around it.” Rory watched the gesture, the flash in her eyes. The same old wildfire, bottled in a more expensive glass. “How many hours you do a week.” “Too many.” “You eat?” “When I remember.” “You sleep?” “On trains between cities.” A tired grin cut across Niamh’s face. “My highlight last month was a Costa coffee that wasn’t burnt.” “And you still think I should have stayed on that track.” “I think you should have had the choice.” Niamh’s fingers twisted the paper coaster into a tight spiral. “You didn’t have to pick him or nothing. You could have picked you.” Rory traced the edge of her own glass. “Picking me meant walking into an exam hall with bruises under my shirt and pretending I cared about torts more than how much my ribs hurt when I breathed. I couldn’t stomach that version either.” Niamh’s gaze dropped to Rory’s wrist, to the old crescent scar. “You used to make up case names for that scar,” she murmured. “‘Carter v Swing Set, 1999.’” “‘Public nuisance, injury to ego, damages in the form of extra ice cream.’” Rory’s lips twitched before she flattened them. “You remembered.” “I remember everything I wasted time highlighting in neon.” Niamh blew out a breath. “I’m not… I’m not angry you left him. Or Cardiff. I’m angry you cut me out of the before and the after.” Rory opened her mouth, closed it. Silence pressed warm and heavy between them. Around them, the bar thinned. People shrugged on coats, wove toward the door. The green light spilled over each face for a moment, then let them go. “Last orders,” Silas called, voice low but firm. “No, thanks,” Niamh answered without looking over. “Early start. Judges frown on counsel who smell like an ashtray.” “You don’t smoke,” Rory pointed out. “Metaphorical ashtray. Of life.” Niamh winced at herself. “Ignore me. I’ve been networking with barristers who use ‘robust’ unironically.” “You always liked words.” Rory fished her phone from her pocket, thumb hovering. “You still write in notebooks or is it all on tablets now.” “You’re deflecting.” “You’re lecturing.” “That used to be your job.” Niamh’s gaze caught on the cracked screen of Rory’s phone. “You still lose charger cables three times a term—I mean, sorry, a year.” “Upgraded to losing them once a month.” Rory unlocked the phone. The background photo glowed: Silas behind the bar, blurring a dodge from a stray cork, Eva mid‑laugh on a barstool, Yu‑Fei brandishing a ladle in the corner. A new orbit. Niamh watched her face soften around the edges. “You look… okay,” she said. “Better than okay, sometimes, I guess.” “Backhanded compliments from counsel.” Rory typed something, erased it. “High praise.” Niamh inhaled. “I shouldn’t have pushed you towards him,” she said. “That night in second year, when I told you to give him a chance. Remember? You said he checked your messages. I said at least it showed he cared.” Her jaw tightened. “I replay that on a loop at three in the morning.” “You were twenty.” Rory rested the phone on the table. “He fooled me and I slept next to him. You got the highlight reel.” “I’m supposed to be good at spotting lies.” Niamh’s laugh scraped. “Stands to reason I miss the ones that matter.” “Occupational hazard,” Rory echoed. Niamh’s watch beeped, a discreet tone. She glanced down, grimaced. “Car’s in ten.” She reached for her file, the movement making her shoulder seam pull. “Client who thinks he can charm a jury by smiling. I’m going to explain that’s not how fraud works.” “Teach him about disclosure bundles while you’re at it.” Rory’s thumb rubbed circles on the phone casing. “They’re your passion.” “They’re my curse.” Niamh stood. For a second, her hand hovered on the table, fingers flexing like they wanted something to do. A hug. A handshake. A rewind. Rory stayed seated. “Text me,” Niamh said. “If you want. When you want. Or don’t. But you don’t get to vanish without letting me know you’re alive again. That’s my one demand.” “You always did like conditions.” “Helps in contracts.” A corner of Niamh’s mouth lifted. “I’m in London more than I’m home these days. Chambers near Temple. If you ever get bored of serving gin to washed‑up litigators and want to watch them flail in their natural habitat, I can get you gallery seats.” “Front row to the life I abandoned.” “Front row to the mess we both waded into.” Niamh adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. Her gaze softened. “Take care of that brain, Aurora. Whatever you’re pouring it into.” Rory’s chest tightened at the full name on Niamh’s tongue. She nodded, words lodged somewhere behind her ribs. Niamh turned, weaving back through the tables. At the bar, Silas glanced up. Their eyes met. She dipped her chin, respect or thanks or both, then pushed out into the night. The green light from the sign washed her in colour for a moment and then let her go. Rory stared at the empty spot across from her, the damp ring on the wood, the twisted paper coaster. She picked up her phone. Her thumb hovered, then moved. New Contact. Niamh Walsh. She hesitated at the name field, almost adding Barrister, almost adding Cardiff, almost leaving it blank. She typed nothing extra. “You going to sulk there all night or help me clean up,” Silas’s voice drifted over. She looked up. He stood with a bar towel slung over one shoulder, ring glinting under the low lights. “Since when do I sulk.” “Since about five minutes after that woman walked in,” he counted off. “She a ghost or a reckoning.” Rory slid out of the booth, phone clutched in her palm. “Old friend,” she said. “New version.” She dropped Niamh’s card into the till drawer for now, tucked between coasters and spare pens, and reached for a stack of glasses.