Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXZQY0T7CYH07TER7298RV

The Raven’s Nest held the day’s damp on its walls like a secret it didn’t want to share. Maps curled in their frames. Old photographs watched with the kind of patience only paper learned. The green neon sign outside slid its glow across bottles and over the bar’s beaten wood, and the hum of Soho bled in from the street through the half-open door. Rory stacked two stools, turned, and caught Silas’ reflection in the backbar mirror. He rolled his left shoulder to work out a knot, silver signet ring glinting when he reached for a glass. The limp came with the first step he took from the till, a hitch so familiar that the floor felt wrong when she didn’t hear it. “Last two,” she said, lifting chairs with her scarged wrist bare. The white crescent flashed with every tilt. Silas lined up bottles with unnecessary care. “You’ve time. No rush.” “I’ve deliveries in twenty.” She checked her phone out of habit and slid it face down on the counter like it might do damage if left upright. The screen had started to crack in one corner. A fine spiderweb, barely there until you looked hard. “Yu-Fei can spare you a quarter hour,” Silas reached for a lemon and split it with a small knife. He pressed a wedge along the rim of a pint glass and rubbed the oil into the grain with his thumb. “You look knackered.” “Flattering.” The door opened and rain smell walked in with whoever had swung it. Conversation in the corner hiccoughed, then settled. Rory went back to the last set of chairs, chin tucked, hair falling forward. “Laila?” That voice punched straight through the neon buzz and bounced off the maps. Her back tensed. Laila was a name with dust on it, a nineteen-year-old on a cheap futon, a freshers’ week wristband still on. She set the stool down too hard and the leg scraped. She turned. Eva stood in the doorway, clutching a red umbrella that dripped onto the black tile. Her hair, once an untidy cloud of brown curls, lay straight and blunt at her jaw, pinned on one side with something pearl. A cream coat hung like armour, sharp at the shoulders. No eyeliner, no inked flowers sneaking up her own wrist. She looked cleaner, like someone had edited her. “Rory,” Eva tried again, the second name softer, like it had pricked her tongue. “You got fancy,” Rory heard her own voice and tasted its edge after it left her mouth. Eva glanced at the maps, at Silas, at the line of chalk on the backboard listing a stout she would have mocked. She pushed the umbrella into the metal stand and stirred the puddle with the tip like she could do something about the water that had already escaped. “You cut your hair,” Eva said. “Years back.” “I know.” She took a step and stopped. “Wasn’t sure if it—You know.” “Still me,” Rory leaned into the bar with her hip. Her fingers found the damp ring left by a glass and pressed until her skin cooled. “You’re drenched.” “I walked.” Eva tugged at her sleeve like it might slide off easier if it sat right. “I was… around. Work.” Silas had stopped fussing with his bottles. He didn’t look up, but he became the kind of quiet that had weight. “Drink?” Rory reached for a clean glass. “I don’t,” Eva started, then caught her breath, caught Rory’s face. “Do you have soda?” “We don’t serve things with umbrellas here,” Rory flicked her chin at the old tonic pump like she still joked for the two of them and not the noisy street. “Lime?” “Lime’s good.” Rory poured. The tonic hissed, froth sliding up the sides. She dropped in a wedge and slid the drink without letting their fingers risk confusion at the exchange. “You own it?” Eva wrapped both hands around the cold glass. “Live upstairs,” Rory lifted one shoulder. “Silas owns it. I just keep the ghosts entertained.” “Handy commute.” “Quiet neighbours.” Eva huffed, then let the sound die, surprised at her own laugh. She drank too fast, then winced when the fizz bit. Her coat collar creased under her fingers. She kept looking around, eyes hungry, like her old habit hadn’t died: taking in exits, faces, stories in misplaced chairs. Silas finally moved, set a beer mat under Eva’s glass that no one needed, and nodded at Rory. He slipped to the end of the bar, ring ticking the wood when he passed. His limp marked time until the storeroom swallowed him. “I sent you an email,” Eva kept her gaze on the lime slice as if it might answer. “Last summer. It bounced.” “Changed it.” “Twice.” “More, probably.” “I looked for you,” Eva breathed, the words cautious, like stepping into a stream without knowing how deep. “Cardiff wasn’t the same without you. Felt smaller.” “London’s big enough for both of us.” “I know where you were,” Eva tapped the bar once. “Golden Empress deliveries. Your face popped up on a friend’s story with those bags. I swore at my phone in front of my boss and told him I’d spilled coffee.” “You got a boss that lets you swear at lunch?” “Not lunch. Forever o’clock. I do compliance now. Banks. Boxes to tick. If they don’t get ticked, someone loses a job or a headline.” “That you?” “Headlines?” She laughed again, empty of where it used to land. “No. I write emails with too many bullet points. I talk people into not panicking.” “Look at you,” Rory pulled a clean tea towel out and folded it just to have a fold to chase. “Proper.” “You say that like it’s a disease.” “You used to wear glitter to the shop for fags.” “I’m still capable of poor choices.” “You stopped drinking.” “Three years, six months, twelve days,” Eva looked up with a small quirk. “It’s group homework to keep count.” “Right,” Rory said. Her own count had other homework attached to it. Nights since the last phone throw. Days without ducking windows. You kept track until counting made you angry, then you stopped until you slipped back into it because your hands wanted something to hold. “You still…?” Eva’s eyes slid to Rory’s wrist, the pale half-moon from long before any man. “Still what.” “Still put other people’s names on your door. Laila. Rory. Mal… something.” “Malphora.” Rory tasted the syllables like they belonged to someone else’s room. “Years back. Some bloke at uni thought it sounded like a witch and refused to sit next to me in Contract Law.” “You liked that,” Eva’s smile found something unbroken. “You flicked your hair in his notes.” “He spilled his Tesco meal deal over my laptop.” “What did you do.” “Crushed his crisps,” Rory drew a fat X on the bar with the tea towel corner, then wiped it away. “We starved together. Bonding.” “Under you, he probably became a barrister,” Eva’s mouth held its small line of humour, but her eyes had turned to inventory: what changed, what cost. “Not under me,” Rory’s hands stilled. “Rory.” The name landed soft and heavy. It moved other things with it. “You came to London,” Eva fixed her coat belt. “I found you a sofa. We ate delivery spring rolls off the lid of a shoebox. You cried once, at three a.m., and told me you had no idea what to do with your life. Then you disappeared.” “Left a note.” “A post-it on my kettle with your handwriting too neat for panic. It said ‘Back soon’ and then you took a year to be wrong.” Rory folded the towel again. Unfolded it. “Back then I… you know.” “You went back to him.” “Briefly.” “You stayed until you couldn’t hide the bruise with a jumper.” Rory’s hand went to the scar on her wrist and stopped just before the skin. “He liked jumpers.” “You liked him,” Eva said, and the words ground like a door opening onto a room no one wanted to enter. “Get to the point.” “The point is I watched you bleed and then you went home with the thing that did it. And I stopped knowing how to be around you.” “I made a mess.” “We both did.” The tonic hissed again somewhere in the pipework like the past had decided to put a soundtrack to itself. A couple near the jukebox argued about B-sides in murmurs that rose and fell in small waves. “Why now,” Rory asked, not quite looking at her. “After all your boxes.” “I walked by. The sign. The bird. I saw you through the glass.” Eva turned her glass in a slow circle. “I circled the block three times, like I would catch you from a better angle.” “Caught.” “Do you hate me.” “Mixed feelings.” “You’re still the neatest liar I’ve met.” “I’m not lying.” “You’re keeping the parts between.” “Those are mine.” Silas reappeared with a tray of lemons. He set them down where the bar took the weight. His eyes flicked at Rory, at Eva, and then to the bookshelf that wasn’t just a bookshelf. A corner of Czech railway map poked out behind a worn spine. He wiped his ring with a napkin and left it shining. “Use the back,” he said without pitch, as if he’d mentioned the loos. “If you’ve things best not played to an audience.” Rory knew the swell in her ribs meant she wanted to run and wanted to sit at once. She tapped the bar twice. Silas tilted his chin. The shelf gave when he pressed a thumb to the leather of an atlas. The click hid in the neon buzz. The door heaved inward. “Come on,” Rory lifted the plank that protected the working side of the bar and stepped through. “Before your boss calls you back to tick his disaster.” Eva looked at the doorway that pretended to be books and gave a short blink. “You work in a magic trick.” “Don’t tell the magicians.” The room behind the shelf had a different warmth. Quieter, like voices there stayed put. A small table leaned into a wingback that had seen too many knees. There were pins in a map with red thread that made a spider web of other people's business. An old kettle sat on a hot plate, the kind that took an age to boil. “You’re not a spy, are you,” Eva lowered herself to the edge of the chair. “Delivery driver, ex-law student, bar top cleaner.” Rory shrugged, then laughed before either of them made that sound brave. “I bring wontons. I occasionally listen.” Eva’s back found the chair with something like surrender. She pushed her glass forward an inch, set it down with care so it wouldn’t fall off the little table. “Do you remember,” Eva stared at the thread on the map instead of Rory’s face, “the night we stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on your residence hall ceiling. You told me the Big Dipper was a saucepan and I said you had no romance in you.” “You stole the stars from your flatmate who actually believed in horoscopes.” “I left her the moon. I wasn’t cruel.” “She cried about it for a week.” “We laughed at her. God, we were mean,” Eva’s shoulders rose. “We were kids.” “We were clever kids. We were arrogant.” “You were fearless. I clung.” “I was a mess with a good memory.” “You were mine,” Eva stopped herself, teeth catching her lip. The blush came in a rush she tried to press away with a palm against her cheek as if heat would hide heat. “My friend,” she corrected with a wince. Rory let the word unfold between them like paper you kept in a drawer because it still smelled of something you couldn't name. Her fingers found the edge of the table and traced the notch cut by some old accident. “After you left,” Eva crossed her legs, then uncrossed. “I wanted you to say sorry and then I wanted you to punch me because that would’ve been easier to carry than silence. I pretended I didn’t care and then I kept a kettle with a post-it on it for a year because I couldn’t throw your handwriting away.” “You loved saving people,” Rory said without accusation. “You were good at it. Me, stray cats, that man in Tesco with the meltdown at the self-checkout.” “He cried because it asked him to place his item in the bagging area, and he was holding flowers,” Eva’s mouth twitched. “We both cried, to be honest.” “You liked being the one who knew where to put things.” “And you liked being the one no one could place,” Eva’s eyes found her. Biblical. The way they found the worst line and drove there. “There’s that,” Rory agreed, voice light to make the floor less treacherous. “Is he gone,” Eva's hands had stilled, interlaced on her knee. “He’s a postcode I don’t live in.” Rory breathed through her nose. “I don’t say his name out loud. Waste of breath.” “Good.” “You got sober,” Rory lifted the kettle lid and peered inside. “You counting that the same way. Days without me?” “I tried,” Eva’s laugh cracked. “Didn’t work. Can’t do steps for people.” “What’s your job title.” “Assistant Vice Something. It’s a hyphen away from sleep.” “You look tired,” Rory poured water into the kettle from a bottle stashed behind files. The hot plate clicked impatiently. “You look like you were born in a storm and decided to rent it.” “Poetic. Has sobriety made you pretentious.” “Work did that. And you were always worse.” They let that hang, stuck between insult and affection. The kettle thought about boiling. The neon throb from the outside bled in along the ceiling and painted the edges of thread on the map green. “I wrote you a letter,” Eva leaned forward, voice steadier now she had found a thing she could hand over with words. “Last spring. I wrote it and didn’t send it because who sends letters. I told you I was sorry. For leaving you to go back. For not being a place you could be ugly. For only loving the parts of you I could carry.” “You posted it to your bin.” Rory had her own drafts folded into cookery books she never cooked from. “I still have it. In a folder on my desktop labelled ‘taxes’. I trick myself into opening it sometimes.” “You always were good with labels.” “Stop.” They both laughed and didn’t. “Do you want me to say sorry,” Rory asked, and it burned in her throat because it felt like a lighter left on too long. “Is that the trade we came to make.” “I don’t know,” Eva’s eyes shone in the kind of way people pretended was anything but wet. “Part of me wants you to say I ruined you. Then I get to be important in a story where you survive anyway. That’s ugly.” “True,” Rory took the honesty like a slap that woke her up. “The other part wants to sit here and watch your hands make tea, like we can go back to stealing someone’s stars and be moral garbage together. That’s also ugly.” “We can be ugly,” Rory said. “We always were better at that than saintly.” The kettle grumbled itself into a boil. She made two teas without asking what Eva wanted. She remembered: black, lemon if it was there, no sugar. There was a lemon. She sliced it with a small knife and the citrus lifted the room. She set the mug in front of Eva, flared with heat, a slice floating like a yellow boat with nowhere urgent to be. “You remembered,” Eva didn’t pick up the mug. Her fingers stayed on the saucer, moving tiny bits of dust in slow circles. “I remember some things.” “You forgot others.” “I did that on purpose,” Rory met her halfway and let the truth be clean. “If I held everything, I never got to put anything down.” “I missed you,” Eva put it out like a pottery piece she was ready to see smashed. “Then why’d you avoid Brixton for two years because I worked three streets from it,” Rory didn’t sharpen it so much as show its edge. “You’re not the only one that can count.” “I walked by the park you hate in May,” Eva said. “I ate chips on that bench and pretended you’d nick one and complain about the vinegar. I pretended we still knew how to sit together.” “We're sitting.” “We are.” They let the steam fog the thin air. The lemon oil spread and mixed with the old wood smell. Somewhere close, a laugh rose and fell, then the clink of new glasses said someone had arrived ready to pretend their life fit in a pint. “My mum asks about you,” Eva smiled, small and cracked. “She calls you ‘that nice girl with the better marks than you.’” “Jennifer asked about you last month,” Rory’s mouth curved too. “Told me if I messaged you I should send her love.” “Jennifer,” Eva repeated, tasting it. “You call your own mother by her first name to me like you always did.” “It keeps her human.” “Did you tell her about him.” “She knows enough to hate him with a healthy, quiet rage.” “And your dad,” Eva’s voice dipped around the old wound of Brendan’s judgments. “He knows I left. He knows I didn’t take his advice. He pretends that’s new.” Eva reached for the tea and found a grip. She lifted it and blew, then sipped. The lemon bit and made her eyes close for a beat. “I had a plan,” she said into the steam. “When we were eighteen. You were going to be a barrister in a sharp suit. I was going to be a journalist with a terrible flat. We were going to text each other at two a.m. about cases and sources.” “I had a plan too,” Rory stilled. “It didn’t include who I became.” “Do you miss her,” Eva asked. “The you in the plan.” “Sometimes. She had dinners. She slept through the night. She bought lamps.” “She didn’t know how to throw a plate so it missed and made a point.” “No. She didn’t know you could leave.” Eva set the cup down with care. She pressed her tongue to her teeth before she trusted it not to run. She glanced at the map thread again, at the red line that didn’t mean anything to her except that someone had tried to connect something to something else. “I met someone,” she said in a way that didn’t invite celebration. “He reads financial regulations for fun. He calls my job noble. He doesn’t know I used to live on a floor with a girl who let me crash for two weeks, and I left her a post-it and didn’t come back.” “He’ll learn,” Rory picked at a fantasy fluff of nothing on her jeans. “If you want him to.” “I worry he’ll like the wrong version.” “You’ll introduce them.” “Which one will he prefer.” “You’re asking the wrong person. I never dated anyone into my worst.” “You date,” Eva’s eyes did a scan, genuine curiosity under it. “I work. I run. I make dumplings stall at the market sound like a sacred rite. I don’t date much.” “You used to make a date of everything.” “I made a joke of everything,” Rory corrected. “It got me through until it didn’t.” Eva’s mouth pressed into a line she broke herself with a sigh. She ran a finger along the rim of her cup and caught a lemon seed that had escaped. She stuck it to the napkin and left it there like something saved on purpose. “I didn’t come to ask forgiveness,” she said, softer than anything in the room. “Good.” “I came to remember your voice.” “Here it is.” “It’s different.” “So is yours.” They looked at each other then. The lens they’d once used, the one that made everything feel framed and lit and meaningful, had cracked. Now bits of regret got caught in the break and glittered in places they didn’t expect. The weight of all the unsaids pressed in and didn’t explode; it shifted, made new room. “Do you want to finish my walk,” Eva glanced at the door shaped like books. “After. Down to the end of the street. No big plan. No old ghosts. We can point at shops and be rude.” “Silas will say the till takes priority.” “Silas looks like the kind of man who can stack his own chairs.” “Silas is many things,” Rory smiled in a way only the bar would recognise. “He’s also standing outside pretending to smoke when he doesn’t, just to give us a minute.” Eva smiled back, quick and grateful and confused at herself for it. She reached for her glass and drained the rest of the soda like it was something braver. “Okay,” she said. “A short walk. I’ve got a train. Early. Boxes.” “You always have boxes.” “I keep them neat. It helps.” “Fine,” Rory lifted her own tea and felt the heat press into her lip, into the tender bit an old nervous habit used to chew. “We’ll walk. And if it rains, we’ll share your posh umbrella.” “It was on sale,” Eva lied without practice and bit a grin into its not-convincing corners. They both stood, not in sync like before, but with a truce. Rory pressed the lever on the bookcase door and the bar noise grew from a hum to a present thing again. The maps and photographs waited out there with everyone else who had made other plans and came to the same room anyway. Silas’ ring flashed once where he leaned pretending he didn’t listen. Rory brushed her fingers over the mark her cup had made and left it there. Then she stepped back into the neon.