Run: 2026-02-19-01KHV72HMP1FWNC3F862YM406Y

The Raven's Nest was quiet on Tuesday evenings. Rory had come to depend on that. She sat at the far end of the bar with a glass of red she hadn't asked for — Silas had set it down in front of her without a word, reading whatever it was he always read in the way she held her shoulders — and she was working through a crossword that had already defeated her twice. Silas moved glassware at the other end of the bar, the clink of it a slow, unhurried rhythm. Two men in the corner shared a bottle of something amber. The old maps on the walls soaked up the low light and gave nothing back. The door opened. Rory didn't look up. Doors opened. But then Silas said, "Evening," in the particular register he used for strangers, and something in the quality of the silence that followed made her lift her eyes. The woman standing just inside the entrance was shaking rain from a pale mac, her dark hair cut short in a way that changed the whole geography of her face. She was thinner than Rory remembered. She had a new way of holding herself — upright, composed, the kind of stillness that looked practised. She was scanning the room the way people scan rooms when they expect to recognise no one. Then she saw Rory. Neither of them moved for a moment. "Rory." The name came out soft, almost experimental, like she was testing whether it still fit. "Priya." Rory set the crossword face down on the bar. "What are you doing here?" Priya walked over slowly, unbuttoning her mac as she came. Up close, the changes were sharper. There was a tiredness behind her eyes that hadn't been there at twenty-two, and something else, something more guarded. She'd always been the one who talked with her whole face. Rory used to tease her about it — you couldn't lie to save your life, she'd said once, you broadcast everything. The face in front of her now broadcast very little. "I'm meeting someone." Priya glanced down the bar, then back. "They're not here yet." "Sit down." She hesitated, just briefly enough to notice, then pulled out the stool two along from Rory's. Not adjacent. Silas materialised, unhurried as weather, and Priya ordered a gin and tonic without looking at the bottles. Silas withdrew. "You live above here," Priya said. "I didn't know that." "How did you know that?" "Mina told me." A pause. "She mentioned it when I called her at Christmas." "You call Mina at Christmas." "I call Mina at Christmas." Rory turned the crossword over, more for something to do with her hands than from any interest in finishing it. Three years. Three years since she'd last seen Priya, and that occasion had not been a good one — a going-away party for someone whose name she barely remembered now, a flat in Bethnal Green, and Priya telling her across a kitchen counter that she thought Rory was making a terrible mistake staying with Evan. Rory had told her to mind her own life. They'd not spoken since. "You cut your hair," Rory said. "Eighteen months ago." Priya wrapped both hands around her glass. "You kept yours." "Mine's shorter than it was." "Is it?" "A bit." Priya smiled, small and brief, and for just a second it was the old smile, the one that arrived without warning and took over her whole face. Then it receded. "You look well," Priya said. "You don't have to do that." "I'm not doing anything." "The polite thing. You're doing the polite thing and it's strange coming from you." Rory drank some of her wine. "You look tired." Priya absorbed this without offence. "I've been in Singapore for two years. Jet lag's become a sort of permanent condition." "Singapore." Rory hadn't known that. "Work?" "Regional director. Financial services." She said it flatly, as if reading from a document. "It's a good role." "But?" "No but. It's a good role." Rory said nothing. The two men in the corner laughed at something, the sound bouncing off the old maps, and then the bar went quiet again. "How's your dad?" Priya asked. "Fine. I don't speak to him much." "And your mum?" "Priya." "What?" "We're not doing the family round-robin." Rory turned on her stool to look at her directly. "We haven't spoken in three years. You can ask me the actual thing." Something shifted in Priya's expression. The composure didn't crack exactly, but it thinned slightly, like ice in February. She looked down at her glass, moved it a quarter-turn on the bar. "Are you alright?" she said. "After — are you alright?" "I am." Rory held her gaze. "I left. Eventually." Priya nodded slowly. Whatever she was feeling, she kept it behind her eyes. The old Priya would have reached over and grabbed her arm by now, would have had tears in, would have said something urgent and heartfelt and slightly too loud for the room. This Priya sat with her hands still around her glass and nodded. "I should have called," she said. "When I heard." "You didn't know I was in London." "Mina knew." Rory didn't answer that. "I thought about it," Priya said. "Calling. A few times." "What stopped you?" The question sat between them. Priya lifted her gin and took a long sip before setting it down with the kind of care that meant she was buying herself time to find an honest answer. "I didn't know if you'd want me to," she said finally. "And Singapore was easier." "Singapore was —" She stopped. Started again. "Singapore was something I could make sense of. Targets, timelines, outcomes." Her thumb traced the rim of her glass. "You and I were never tidy." "We were best friends for nine years." "I know what we were." Silas passed at the far end of the bar, unhurried, not looking at them. The neon green from the sign above the door threw a faint wash of colour through the front window onto the floorboards. "I'm sorry," Priya said. "For the party. For what I said." "You were right." "That doesn't mean I said it well."