AI Rory wiped a ring of stale beer from the counter and watched it vanish into the rag. The Raven’s Nest carried the night like smoke in its timber; even with the front door shut, Soho noise bled through the walls in thin, restless threads. The green neon outside painted the window glass the colour of old bottle shards. Maps peeled at the corners along the back wall, and the black-and-white photographs stared down with their dead-eyed certainty.
Silas leaned on his good leg near the till and rolled his silver signet ring with his thumb. His gaze went over the room the way it always did, not as a look but as an inventory .
“Leave the last two stools,” he muttered. “If I need the floor clear, I don’t want you fighting furniture.”
Rory lifted a brow, rag still in her hand.
“You expecting trouble or company?”
He tapped the ring against the wood, a small, hard sound.
“In my line of work, they tended to arrive as the same thing.”
Rory snorted and turned to the shelves. Glasses clinked as she set them back in place, a neat line of clean mouths catching the low amber light. Her left wrist flashed pale when she reached up; the crescent scar cut through the skin like a tiny moon.
Silas’s attention slid away before it turned into a stare. He shifted his weight, knee complaining in the way it always did when the hour got late.
“You eat?” he asked.
Rory hooked the rag over her shoulder.
“Had a dumpling over the sink. Living like a queen.”
Silas’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“Yu-Fei would kill you for that.”
“She’d have to catch me.”
The front door rattled. Not the usual shove of a drunk lad leaning his weight into it, but a controlled movement, a hand that knew its strength and didn’t waste it. The bell above the door gave a brief, clean note.
Rory looked up, ready to tell whoever it was that they were shut, and the words dried on her tongue.
A woman stood on the threshold with rain on her coat shoulders like flecks of glass. She held the door open behind her with one hand and let the room take her in. She looked the way people looked when they walked into a place with hidden rules: eyes scanning the corners, measuring the distance between exits. Her hair sat in a blunt bob that shone too bright to be natural under the bar’s dim light, a warm honey colour that did not belong to the girl Rory remembered. The woman’s lipstick gave her mouth a hard edge. Her coat hung expensive on her frame, and a thin chain strap crossed her shoulder.
She closed the door and let the bell quiet.
Silas straightened a fraction.
“You’re late,” he said.
The woman’s gaze went straight to him, then moved across the bar top, and then it hit Rory and snagged. Something opened in her face for half a second—shock, then a quick shuttering, like a curtain yanked across a window.
Rory’s fingers tightened on the rag until her knuckles stung.
“Eva?” The name came out rough, as if it scraped on the way.
The woman’s mouth parted. Her throat worked.
Nobody spoke for a beat. The bar’s fridge hummed. Somewhere upstairs, pipes ticked as they cooled.
Eva stepped forward, one foot, then another, as if the floor might change.
“Rory,” she managed. The syllables carried the old rhythm, the one that used to call her across school corridors and pub gardens back in Cardiff. Then Eva’s eyes flicked down, took in Rory’s black shirt, the apron still tied at her waist, the damp cloth in her hand. They came back up sharp. “What… what are you doing here?”
Rory let out a short breath through her nose.
“Working.”
Eva’s gaze jumped to Silas, and Rory watched the realisation spread across her features, a picture developing in a darkroom.
“Oh.” Eva’s voice thinned. “You’re—”
Silas cut in, dry as a snapped twig.
“Close the door properly if you’re coming in, Evelyn.”
Eva flinched at the name. Rory caught it and stored it. Evelyn. Not Eva. Not Ev. Something polished and new.
Eva’s hand went back to the door without looking. It clicked shut. She stood there as if she waited for someone to give her permission to move.
Rory slid the rag off her shoulder and dropped it behind the bar. Her palms felt empty and exposed without it.
“How long?” Rory asked.
Eva’s eyes narrowed , confusion flashing.
“How long what?”
“How long have you been walking around London looking like that and not telling me you were breathing?”
Eva’s jaw tensed. She came closer, slow, her boots quiet on the worn floorboards.
“I didn’t know you were here.”
Rory barked a laugh that carried no humour.
“Right. Because London’s so small. Because we don’t have phones. Because you didn’t drag me here and then vanish like a magician with stage fright.”
Eva’s gaze shifted to Silas again, then back. She swallowed.
“I didn’t drag you,” she threw back . “I told you to get out.”
“And then you stopped answering.”
Silas moved behind the bar, the limp in his left leg more obvious in the silence . He took a glass and began to polish it with a cloth that looked older than Rory.
“This is your reunion,” he said, not looking up . “I’ll be in the back if either of you decides to throw something.”
He headed for the bookshelf at the far wall. His hand pressed into the wood beside it, fingers finding a catch. The shelf shifted with a soft groan. A slice of darkness opened behind it like a mouth.
Eva’s eyes followed him, and her posture tightened, shoulders rising.
Silas glanced back.
“Don’t touch anything you can’t pay for.”
The hidden door closed behind him with a muted thud. The bar returned to its lower, ordinary secrecy: maps, photographs, the smell of spirits and damp wool.
Rory leaned her hip against the counter and folded her arms.
Eva stood on the customer side, rain still melting down her coat in faint tracks.
“I didn’t think you’d end up behind a bar,” Eva said.
Rory’s mouth curled.
“I didn’t think you’d end up with a new name and a coat worth my rent.”
Eva looked down at the coat as if it had appeared on her body without her consent. Her fingers brushed the lapel, then dropped.
“It’s not—” Eva stopped. She let out a breath . “Can I sit?”
Rory jerked her chin at one of the stools she hadn’t put away.
Eva perched on it like she expected it to bite. Under the bar light, her face carried angles it hadn’t before. Her cheeks sat higher. The softness of youth had burnt off somewhere.
Rory reached for a bottle and a glass, the motion automatic, hands doing what they knew even when her head spun.
“What did you drink back then?” Rory asked, voice flat .
Eva’s eyes flickered , caught on a memory.
“Vodka and lemonade,” she answered, almost with a wince. “Because it tasted like nothing.”
Rory poured, the clear liquid slapping the glass.
“That still your thing, Evelyn?”
Eva’s fingers curled around the glass but didn’t lift it.
“Don’t call me that,” she said. The words landed quick. “Not from you.”
Rory slid the glass forward until it sat in front of Eva like an offering that could also be a challenge.
“Then don’t bring strangers into my bar and act surprised you found me.”
Eva’s grip tightened. The tendons in her hand stood out, pale under the skin.
“This isn’t your bar.”
Rory leaned forward.
“No. It’s the only roof I had when you stopped picking up.”
Eva flinched. Her eyes shone, not with tears, but with heat .
“You think I didn’t look?” Eva snapped. “You think I didn’t— Christ, Rory, you vanished. You left the last place I had for you and you—”
“I moved to London,” Rory cut in. “At your behest. That was the whole point.”
Eva’s mouth worked, words caught like fish in a net.
Rory watched her, the new haircut, the new mouth, and felt an ache behind her ribs that had nothing to do with softness. It felt like biting down on a bad tooth .
Eva lifted the glass and took a swallow. Her throat moved. She coughed once, a rough sound.
“Still tastes like regret,” Eva muttered.
Rory’s laugh came out sharp.
“That’s one way to brand it.”
Eva set the glass down with care.
“You look different,” Eva said, eyes scanning Rory’s face like she tried to match it to an older picture. “Your hair— it used to fall in your eyes. You used to—” She stopped, frustrated. “You used to look like you waited for permission.”
Rory’s lips parted, then closed again. She reached for another glass, gave herself something to do.
“And you used to look like you belonged in the same postcode as the rest of us.”
Eva’s gaze dropped to Rory’s hands as she poured herself water. The scar on Rory’s left wrist showed again, white against the darker skin.
Eva’s eyes softened for the first time since she walked in.
“You still have that,” Eva whispered, and the words carried the weight of school days and dares and a stupid accident with a broken mug that left Rory bleeding in Eva’s mum’s kitchen . Eva’s voice turned rough. “You never healed fast.”
Rory slid the water to her side of the bar, didn’t drink.
“I healed,” she replied. “Just not tidy.”
Eva’s fingers drummed against the glass, then stopped.
“I wrote to you,” Eva said.
Rory stared at her.
“You wrote.”
Eva nodded, sharp.
“Emails. Letters. I—” Her jaw clenched . “They came back. The letters. Like I’d posted them into a bin.”
Rory’s laugh came thin.
“You had my address in London?”
Eva’s shoulders rose, then fell.
“I had the one you gave me.” Eva’s eyes didn’t flinch from Rory’s this time. “The flat above the bar.”
Rory’s throat tightened.
“I didn’t live here when I first came down.”
Eva’s mouth pressed into a line.
“Then you moved without telling me.”
Rory felt heat rise behind her ears.
“I moved because I couldn’t afford where I was. I moved because the job you promised—” She cut herself off, teeth grinding together. “You don’t get to stand there like I’m the one who disappeared.”
Eva’s nails tapped the glass once, hard.
“You think I didn’t have my own reasons?”
Rory leaned in over the bar.
“Then speak.”
Eva’s gaze slid toward the maps on the wall, the photographs. She looked at the room like she tried to learn its language in one glance.
“You chose a place with a lot of eyes,” Eva murmured.
Rory’s stomach tightened. The way Eva said it sounded like she recognised the pattern: corners watched, exits measured .
Rory kept her face still.
“It’s a bar.”
Eva’s mouth twisted.
“Right.”
Silence stretched between them, and in it Rory heard the years she hadn’t asked about, the nights she’d sat on a mattress on the floor of a too-bright room and watched her phone stay dead.
Eva’s voice dropped.
“I couldn’t be seen with you,” she admitted.
Rory’s fingers dug into the underside of the bar top.
“Couldn’t,” Rory repeated, tasting the word.
Eva lifted her chin, and for a moment the old Eva flickered in her eyes—reckless, stubborn—but it came wrapped in something colder.
“I got in deep,” Eva said. “Not with drugs. Not with some bloke. Don’t give me that look.” She leaned closer, and the smell of rain and perfume hit Rory, clean and sharp. “I took work. The sort that doesn’t come with a uniform. The sort that changes your name.”
Rory’s mouth went dry.
“You took spy work,” Rory shot back, the words half a jab, half a dare.
Eva’s lips twitched.
“Listen to you,” Eva muttered. “You always had a mouth on you when you felt cornered.”
Rory held her gaze.
“And you always ran when you felt watched.”
Eva’s eyes flashed.
“I didn’t run,” she snapped. Her hand tightened around the glass. “I got pushed. I didn’t know who to trust, and you—” She stopped, swallowed, and when she spoke again her voice turned quieter. “You had enough bruises on you already.”
Rory’s stomach dropped. She pictured Cardiff again: Evan’s hand on her arm too tight, his smile too wide for his eyes, the way he spoke like he owned the air around her.
Eva watched Rory’s face as if she read it.
“He found out you’d left,” Eva continued. “He came looking. Not for you at first. For me. For anyone who knew where you’d gone.” She let out a breath . “I couldn’t lead him to you.”
Rory’s nails bit into her palm.
“You could’ve told me.”
Eva’s laugh burst out, short and ugly.
“Told you what? ‘Hi Rory, your ex has started sniffing around and I’ve got myself tied to something that would chew you up’? You would’ve come back.” Eva’s eyes hardened. “You would’ve walked back into his hands if you thought it would fix it.”
Rory’s chest tightened.
“I wouldn’t.”
Eva’s stare didn’t move.
“You would’ve,” she repeated. “You always used to pay the bill for everyone else’s mess. You still do. Look at you—working for someone else’s bar, living upstairs like a spare chair.”
Rory’s face heated, and she hated that the words landed because they carried truth.
Rory pushed off the counter and moved along the bar, closer to Eva, close enough to see the faint line of a scar near Eva’s hairline, half-hidden by the new cut.
“When did you get that?” Rory asked, nodding at Eva’s head.
Eva’s hand flew up, fingers brushing the spot.
“Long time ago.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Eva’s mouth tightened.
“Neither is ‘I’m working’ when you’ve got that look in your eyes like you’ve swallowed knives.”
Rory leaned on the bar opposite her, their faces a few feet apart. The room felt smaller, the old photographs pressing in.
“You came here for him,” Rory said, voice low . “For Silas.”
Eva’s fingers stayed near her hairline.
“He sent a message.”
Rory’s laugh came out without humour.
“Silas didn’t even know you existed an hour ago.”
Eva’s gaze flicked toward the hidden bookshelf, then back.
“He knew enough,” Eva replied. “He knew where to drop the words so they’d reach me.” She paused, then added, “I didn’t expect you.”
Rory’s throat worked.
“Not once in all these years?” Rory asked. “Not a single time you walked into some place like this and thought, ‘If Rory’s still alive, she’ll be—’ what? Carrying plates? Running from something?”
Eva’s face shifted, and the hard edge softened into something raw.
“I thought you’d hate me,” Eva admitted. “I thought you’d spit in my face if I showed up.”
Rory’s jaw clenched .
“I might still.”
Eva’s eyes held steady.
“Go on, then.”
Rory stared at her. The old urge rose in her, hot and simple: to do something that would match the size of what she’d carried. Instead she reached for Eva’s glass and slid it a few inches away, out of her grip, like she disarmed a weapon.
Eva’s hand stayed in the air, fingers curled.
Rory looked at that hand, then at Eva’s face.
“You changed,” Rory said. The words came out quieter than she meant.
Eva’s breath shuddered once.
“So did you.”
The bookshelf at the back shifted with a soft scrape. Eva’s head snapped toward it, shoulders tightening, her body remembering something before her mind caught up.
Rory didn’t turn. She kept her eyes on Eva.
“You came in ready for a fight,” Rory muttered. “That’s new.”
Eva’s mouth pulled into a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“You didn’t?”