AI The neon raven over the door glowed a bilious green that painted the puddles on the pavement. Inside, the bar hummed with low voices and the clink of glass against wood. Old maps crawled across the walls. Black‑and‑white faces from wars and weddings watched from their frames.
Rory wiped a ring of stout off the counter with a rag that had seen better days. Her shoulders ached from the lunch rush at Golden Empress and the dinner sprint here. She flexed her left wrist and the crescent scar showed pale against her skin, then vanished again under the cuff of her shirt.
Silas leaned on the far end of the bar, weight on his good leg, polishing his silver ring with the corner of a bar towel. He watched the door more than the glasses.
“City crowd’s due,” he muttered without looking at her. “Thursday. Bonuses. Regrets.”
Rory stacked clean tumblers.
“That a forecast or a confession”
“Occupational pattern recognition.”
The door swung open on a gust that brought in wet night air and the smell of perfume and photocopier toner. A knot of people in suits swept in, laughing too loud, glossy with office camaraderie. They shook rain from umbrellas, blinked at the dim.
Rory kept her eyes on the taps.
A laugh cut through the rest, bright, familiar , wrong in this room.
Her hand slipped. A glass tipped, caught on her palm an instant before it would have shattered .
Silas glanced up.
“Take the order,” he murmured.
Rory slid the rescued glass back into line and raised her head.
Eva stood in the middle of the group, hair longer than Rory remembered, sleek and pinned off her face, the deep auburn of wet leaves. A navy suit fit her like it knew her bones. Thin gold chain at her throat. A leather handbag hugged to her side with a lawyer’s grip.
Rory’s chest felt tight.
Eva scanned the bottles overhead, attention skimming past until it snared on Rory. The change on her face hit like a flash: search, doubt, then shock that wiped away the after‑work grin.
“Laila”
The old name rang across the bar.
One of the men in her group frowned at her.
“Who”
Rory’s jaw tensed.
“Rory’s fine.” She reached for a stack of menus. “What can I get you lot”
Eva stepped forward, away from her colleagues.
“It’s you.”
Rory forced her eyes to the others. “Drinks You look like you all need several.”
“We— yeah.” A woman with a lanyard half hidden in her blouse raised a hand. “Bottle of red, house. Four lagers. One gin and tonic. Whatever’s decent.”
Rory reached for glasses, muscle memory steadying her hands.
Eva’s voice came closer.
“You work here.”
“Among other places.” She turned a tap, watched foam creep up a glass. “Visiting or haunting”
“Team drinks.” Eva’s bag strap bit into her shoulder as she shifted. “I didn’t know you were in London.”
“London’s large. Hard to print flyers.”
A man in rolled‑up sleeves elbowed Eva, clueless.
“You know the barmaid, Evie Get us a discount, yeah”
Rory slid the first two pints along the counter, then the next.
“No discounts,” Silas cut in from his end, voice mild as if it came from the wall. “But I pour generous.”
The man smirked and turned back to his group.
Eva stayed fixed.
“How long,” her gaze moved over Rory’s black shirt, the delivery bag slumped behind the bar, the worn trainers, “How long have you been here”
Rory lined up gin over ice, turned the bottle till the liquid hit the meniscus.
“A while.” She set the tonic beside it. “You’re blocking my tip jar.”
Eva stepped aside, face colouring.
“Right. Sorry.”
Rory forced something that felt like a smile .
“Take these before my boss complains.”
Silas snorted.
Eva gathered the glasses, struggled to carry three at once. The man in rolled sleeves swooped in to help, already mid‑story about some office drama. They drifted to a high table near the maps.
Rory watched them go, then caught herself and reached for a cloth.
Silas shifted closer, limp slight in the way he moved around a crate of bottled IPA.
“Friend”
“Once.” The cloth moved in circles under her hand. “From Cardiff.”
“Hmm.” He wiped an invisible spot from the bar. “Door swings both ways. Let me know which side you land on.”
He moved off to serve an older couple in the corner.
Rory stole glances across the room. Eva’s group rooted themselves, coats over chair backs, ties loosened. Office laughter pulled and tugged, rose and fell. Eva sat pressed between two people who monopolised the conversation. Her eyes kept flicking to the bar.
On her third look, Rory held the gaze.
Eva lifted her empty wine glass like a signal.
Rory raised one hand in acknowledgement and pulled a bottle from the rack.
Eva broke from the table and wove through the bodies to the bar.
“Another glass of that red,” she rested her elbows on the wood, “and a conversation.”
“Red I can do.”
Rory poured, the wine catching the low light.
Eva studied her.
“You cut your hair.”
“It grows. I cut.”
“You swore you’d never chop it. You said it interfered with your dramatic entrances.”
“I ran out of drama.”
“Liar.”
Rory pushed the glass across.
“On the house.”
“I thought you didn’t do discounts.”
“I charge your friends. You I owe interest.”
Eva’s mouth twitched.
“Let me buy you one.”
Silas appeared with a rag over his shoulder, like he had risen from behind the bar.
“Staff drink after shift,” he drawled without warmth . “House rule.”
Eva straightened.
“Then break it. Once.”
Silas looked her over, then looked at Rory.
“Finish in an hour,” he spoke to Rory . “Take the booth. Don’t let the bankers stain the upholstery.”
He limped away without waiting for reply.
Rory grabbed a clean glass.
“Wine then. I’ll knock it off my wage.”
Eva watched her pour.
“Always did argue with authority.”
“That was you. I just drafted the points.”
“Exactly. You made me dangerous.”
Rory filled the glass to a line that would make Silas sigh and set it aside, then picked a table in the shadow of a map of Europe pinned with rusted tacks. It was away from both the entrance and the toilets. Ears would miss them there.
“When I’m free, we’ll talk,” she told Eva . “If you’re not too busy firing people by then.”
“I’m not—” Eva shook her head. “Just hurry.”
The next hour crawled and snapped, full of orders, spilled beer, a card machine that froze. The office crowd loud in small pockets, then louder. Someone played “Wonderwall” on the old jukebox. A man in a parka argued about closing time like he hadn’t read the sign.
Every time Rory glanced up, Eva sat anchored at the booth with her untouched glass. Her colleagues asked where she’d gone; she waved them off with a tight smile and stayed.
At ten, the rush thinned. Silas wiped his ring against his shirt and nodded toward the back.
“Go,” he told Rory. “Before she wears a groove in my seat.”
Rory unknotted her apron and hung it on the hook. She rolled her shoulders, then crossed to the booth.
Eva stood as she approached, awkward and eager in the same breath.
“I thought you’d vanished again.”
“I live upstairs.” Rory slid into the bench. “Hard work to vanish vertically.”
Eva sat opposite, hands wrapped around the stem of her glass.
“You live here. Above a bar.”
“Above a very specific bar, but yes.”
“Last time we spoke you were mid‑applications.” Eva’s eyes tightened as old scenes walked in. “Pupillage interviews. You had charts.”
“I have menus now.” Rory sipped her wine. It tasted cheap, sharp, honest. “Less backstabbing. More dishwashing.”
“You loved the law.”
“I loved arguing.”
“You were good. Better than me.”
Rory watched the map behind Eva’s head. The old paper had browned at the edges where the wall light brushed it year after year.
“You became the solicitor we used to make fun of,” she nodded at Eva’s suit. “You win.”
“I’m not sure that’s winning.”
“City firm”
“For now.”
“How noble.”
Eva’s mouth pressed into a line.
“You disappeared, Laila.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You picked it. First day of uni. Said ‘Aurora’ felt like a lamp brand.”
“I picked it for then.” Rory traced the rim of her glass with one nail. “Things change.”
“People.”
“Those too.”
“You left Cardiff without a word,” Eva’s fingers whitened on the stem. “One day you’re in lectures with me. Next day you’re gone. I had your toothbrush in my bathroom and your coat on my chair and no forwarding address. I thought you were dead in a ditch.”
“You knew why I left.”
“I knew Evan shouted through your door a lot. I knew you had bruises you blamed on doors. I didn’t know you’d vanish in the middle of the night.”
“He broke my wrist.”
Eva flinched.
Rory touched the pale crescent scar with her thumb.
“Not this one. That was a bike. The other break didn’t scar neat. The hospital staff looked at me like I’d walked into the wall for a hobby.”
“You rang me.” Eva’s voice thickened. “Two in the morning. Whispering. Said, ‘If I don’t get out now, I won’t.’ Then the line cut. I spent three hours calling taxis and shelters. I went to the police.”
“I remember the sirens behind his estate as the train left.” Rory’s lips pulled in something that wasn’t quite a smile . “You did your part.”
“I should have come myself.”
“You had an exam.”
“I should have come.” Eva drank, the wine lowering fast . “I stayed in bed and stared at my phone and thought, ‘She’s smart. She’ll handle it.’”
Rory rested her hands flat on the table.
“I handled it.”
“You landed above a bar in Soho.”
“Better than under a man in Splott.”
Eva choked on a half‑laugh, half‑sob.
“Trust you to phrase it like that.”
“Old habits.”
Silence sat between them while the jukebox changed tracks. Someone at the bar whooped at a dart landing where it should.
Eva looked around.
“This place. You picked it at random”
“Mostly.” Rory glanced toward the counter. Silas watched with the detached interest of a man monitoring CCTV. “Someone here owed someone there a favour. I needed distance and a bed that didn’t smell like him.”
“And law school”
“Doesn’t run well on trauma and overdraft fees.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Eva’s voice dropped. “You cut me off. New number. No replies. Mum called mine in tears. She thought I’d driven you away.”
Rory’s thumb moved along a groove carved into the table by decades of restless hands.
“I didn’t have the energy to be anyone’s daughter or best mate. I wanted to be a ghost.”
“You were my only witness,” Eva’s laugh came out sharp. “We built our whole escape plan together on the roof of the halls. You, me, a stolen bottle of cheap vodka, saying we’d own the city by thirty. And you ran off to London without me.”
“You told me to.”
“I told you to leave him. Not your entire life.”
“It all came as a set.”
Eva’s breath left in a long exhale.
“I kept your timetable on the wall for a year. I’d look at Tuesday ten a.m. and think, ‘Contract law. She’d hate that.’”
“Correct.”
“Then I started working these hours.” She flicked a look at her colleagues at the high table. “Buried in due diligence and billable targets. I stopped looking at the clock for you and started looking at it for clients.”
“World turns.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what”
“Shrink it down to one line so it hurts less.”
Rory’s jaw worked.
“Fine. It hurt. Happy”
“No.”
“Good.”
Something eased in Eva’s shoulders at the honesty.
“You look different,” she studied Rory’s face. “Older. Sharper. Like you bite.”
“Do I look worse”
“You look… less breakable.”
“You look like you earn actual money.”
Eva glanced at her cufflinks.
“The suit’s rented for court hearings. I’m still on trainee wages and caffeine.”
“We always thought caffeine made us special.”
“We thought a lot of things.”
“They felt true then.”
Eva leaned forward, elbows on the table.
“Do you regret it”
“Which bit”
“Leaving. Not coming back. Me.”
The last word hung there, naked.
Rory stared at her hands. The scar on her wrist caught the light again, a pale crescent over old bone.
“I regret the bruise on your mum’s face when she opened the door and saw I wasn’t with you.”
Eva flinched.
“How did you—”
“She sent me a card. Two years ago. Forwarded through my dad. She apologised for you.”
“For me”
“For not coming after me. For not dragging me back for finals. For letting me vanish because it made sense on paper.”
Eva’s eyes glistened.
“She never told me.”
“She thought you had enough on. City job. Big life.”
“She thought wrong.”
“Parents often do.”
Eva swallowed.
“So you heard from them. From yours.”
“Occasional postcard. Guilt in ink.” Rory tapped an invisible dot on the table. “Dad signs with his full name like I’m a client. Mum draws a daft little sheep near the border.”
“You never replied.”
“I didn’t know what to write that wouldn’t sound like an excuse.”
“‘I’m alive’ would’ve helped.”
Rory met her eyes.
“I regret that I didn’t send that. Yes.”
Eva’s breath hitched.
“I regret not banging his door down that night with a baseball bat.”
“You’d have got arrested.”
“So what”
“So you wouldn’t be here in your rented suit and I wouldn’t have a barstool with your name on it tonight.”
“This feels like a consolation prize.”
“It’s a drink.” Rory raised her glass. “Start small.”
Eva touched hers to it, fragile.
“I missed you,” Eva’s voice broke on the last word.
Rory looked at the wine, then at the old maps, the photos on the wall, the neon green smear under the door.
“I missed who we were before things cracked.”
“Is that gone”
“I don’t know.” Rory’s mouth curved, not quite bitter . “You’re ‘Evie’ now with colleagues. I’m ‘Rory’ with barflies. The girls on the roof feel like cousins we never visit.”
“Invite me up,” Eva’s eyes held hers. “To the flat. To your life. Don’t keep me downstairs with the suits.”
Rory hesitated. Upstairs meant the small bed, the stack of casebooks she never finished, the delivery helmet, Silas’s presence in the stairwell, the version of her that survived.
“You’d hate the stairs.”
“I’ll cope.”
“Your heels won’t.”
“I’ll take them off.”
Rory ran her tongue over her teeth.
“I’ve built something here,” her voice came out low. “It’s not what we planned. It’s patchwork and weird. I don’t know where you’d fit.”
Eva leaned back, stung.
“Right.”
“That’s not a no.”
“It sounds close.”
“It’s an ‘I don’t know how to carry the old us and the new me in the same room without one of them suffocating.’”
Eva laughed, short.
“You still do that. Turn feelings into metaphors. You used to do it in essays. Lecturers loved you.”
“They gave me a B.”
“They feared you.”
Rory’s lips twitched.
“Maybe.”
“You said ‘maybe.’”
Rory blinked.
“Bad habit.”
Eva studied her like a puzzle.
“Let me earn my way back in,” she said. “Cup of tea one day. Help with your tax return. Legal advice for bar fights. Something mundane.”
“You offer pro bono now”
“For you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough. You’re the girl who stole a library key so we could study after hours, then built a lock‑picking set out of hairpins. You’re the woman who left a man who hurt you, alone, with nothing. You don’t owe me your story. You do owe yourself someone who remembers you before he bent you.”
Rory breathed out.
“You remember the night on the roof,” she asked. “When we listed the worst things that could happen if we failed.”
“You launched into that whole speech about ending up pulling pints in a dodgy Soho bar.”
Rory’s gaze slid to the counter where Silas moved through his kingdom.
“Yeah. That bit.”
“And I said I’d rather scrub toilets than draft contracts for oil companies.”
“How’s that going for you”
Eva’s laugh came wet.
“Badly.”
“So here we are. Both worst‑case scenarios.”
“Does it feel like that”
Rory glanced at the door. Someone new came in, blinked, retreated. The neon washed their back in green as they left.
“Some nights,” she answered. “Some nights it feels like exactly where I had to end up. To not be dead with a broken neck at the bottom of the stairs in Splott.”
Eva’s throat worked.
“Then I’m glad you picked the bar.”
“You pushed me,” Rory met her eyes. “Out of Cardiff. Away from him.”
“I pushed you off a cliff and didn’t check if you landed.”
“You’re here checking.”
“Late.”
Rory held her gaze for a long beat.
“Late’s better than never.”
Eva’s shoulders dropped like she’d been braced against a wall for years.
“Can I call you ‘Laila’ again,” she asked, tentative . “Just me. When it’s just us.”
Rory’s fingers tightened around her glass.
“That version of me died in Cardiff.”
“Then let her haunt London with us.”
Rory let the request sit. The bar noise washed around them, a different tide than the halls parties they once knew.
“I’ll think about it.”
Eva nodded, acceptance and disappointment braided together.
“Do you finish late every night”
“Most.”
“I’ll come back,” Eva said. “At closing. Less bankers. Less noise.”
“You’ll be knackered.”
“So will you.”
Rory’s mouth twitched.
“You still hate karaoke”
“Of course.”
“We have a mic in the back for private functions.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
Rory gave a small, genuine smile.
“Then come back when the sign outside’s off,” she said. “We’ll see which ghosts follow you in.”
Eva’s eyes warmed at that, something like hope sliding in beside regret .
“I will.” She glanced at her colleagues. “I should get back. They’ll start discussing targets and I need to look engaged.”
“You always did.”
“I faked it better when you sat next to me.”
Rory watched her stand. The navy suit moved with purpose. At the edge of the booth, Eva paused.
“You’re really okay”
Rory looked down at the scar on her wrist, the map, the wine glass, the stairs behind the bar that led up to her room.
“I’m... still here.”
Eva nodded slow.
“That’s enough for tonight.”
She walked back to her table, heels punching small beats into the floorboards. Her colleagues ribbed her, grinned, waved empty glasses in Rory’s direction.
Rory stayed in the booth, fingers pressed to the grain of the wood, listening to the native tongue of the bar and to the echo of an old laugh on a Cardiff rooftop that had followed her farther than she had planned.