AI The low hum of the refrigeration unit in the back of The Raven's Nest vibrated through the polished dark wood of the bar. Rory traced the condensation gathering on her pint glass, the cool moisture a familiar sensation against her fingertips. Outside, Soho pulsed with the indifferent rhythm of a Tuesday night, a muffled roar beyond the thick glass. Silas polished a row of tumblers behind the counter, his movements economical, his grey-streaked auburn hair catching the faint glow of a vintage map tacked to the wall. He moved with a quiet gravity, the kind that settled deep into bones, never quite erased by time or retirement. Rory lived upstairs, a practical arrangement of convenience and trust, but tonight she just felt… adrift in the dim, amber light.
The heavy oak door creaked open, spilling a momentary draft of cooler air and the distant shouts of revellers into the bar. Rory glanced up, her attention snagged by the silhouette framed against the streetlights. Not Silas’s usual clientele. Not tonight’s quiet regulars. A woman stood there, hesitating, scanning the room. Something about her posture, a rigid, almost frantic energy she radiated even from a distance, pricked at Rory’s awareness. Then, the woman stepped further in, and the low lights caught her face, highlighting sharp cheekbones and a carefully constructed smile that seemed brittle, like glass about to shatter.
Rory’s breath hitched. The glass slipped a fraction in her grip, hitting the wood with a soft thud.
"Eva?" The name, a ghost from a different life, a different city, escaped her in a hushed exhale.
The woman’s scanning gaze locked onto Rory. Her smile faltered before snapping back into place, wider this time, though it didn't reach the bright, anxious pools of her eyes. She took a few quick steps forward, her heels clicking a sharp rhythm on the worn floorboards.
"Rory? Bloody hell, Rory. Is that really you?" Eva’s voice was higher than Rory remembered, a touch strained, like a violin string pulled too taut . She stopped a few feet away, eyes doing a swift, almost aggressive sweep over Rory’s simple jeans and the restaurant’s discreet branding on her t-shirt.
Silas, sensing the shift, paused his polishing and gave a curt nod towards the back storeroom, a silent signal. He didn’t intrude, but his presence was a steady anchor in the sudden swell of the unexpected.
"It's me," Rory managed, pushing her pint glass slightly to the side. Her own voice felt thick, unused to this particular tremor of shock. "Eva. Wow." She stood, feeling a sudden awkwardness, as if their shared past was a coat she’d shed long ago and found herself suddenly expected to wear again.
Eva’s gaze finally settled, a flicker of something unreadable crossing her face – shock, perhaps, or a complicated appraisal. The years had etched fine lines around her eyes like tiny, intricate cracks in porcelain . Her dark hair, once a tumbling contrast to Rory’s own straight black, was now severely styled, pulled back so tightly it seemed to lift her brows perpetually in surprise. She wore a sharply tailored suit, expensive, perhaps, but the cut was all sharp angles, mirroring the tension in her jaw.
"Years," Eva said, the word hanging heavily between them . "Must be… what? Five? Six?"
"Six, nearly seven," Rory confirmed softly . She remembered the biting wind of Cardiff that last winter, the frantic packing, Eva’s tearful face at the train station. "Since I left…" She trailed off .
Eva laughed, a short, sharp bark that made a couple of solitary drinkers at the far end of the bar glance over. "Since you bolted. Never looked back, then?" Her eyes darted around the bar, lingering on the faded maps, the framed photographs of forgotten faces on the walls. "This place hasn't changed a bit. Still feels like stepping into a time capsule. You still working for Silas? Delivering those noodles?"
Rory felt a prickle of defensiveness, quickly suppressed. Silas’s quiet efficiency behind the bar had an unspoken grace to it. He’d offered her a stable roof and a semblance of anonymity when she’d arrived in London, broken and adrift. The delivery job was… a job. It kept her head above water. "I manage," Rory said, her voice even. "Silas runs a good place. And yes, the deliveries are part of it."
Eva leaned against the bar a few feet away, pulling a slim cigarette case from a small, structured handbag. She tapped a cigarette against the polished wood; her fingers were long, adorned with several gaudy rings that flashed under the light. "Manage," she repeated, the word dripping with an implied pity that grated more than any direct insult. "God, Rory. I thought you’d be… I don’t know. Running boardrooms by now. That spark you had. Remember how we planned it all? Cardiff University chapel steps? World domination before thirty."
Rory’s own memories of those plans, fuelled by cheap wine and boundless, naive ambition, felt distant, like faded photographs. The reality now was rain-slicked streets, the rumble of the delivery scooter, and the quiet conversations with Silas in the early hours. "Plans change," she murmured, picking up her pint again. She took a slow sip, letting the cool ale slide down her throat, an anchor.
"Oh, they change alright," Eva said, lighting her cigarette with a flourish of a silver lighter. She drew deeply, the tip glowing orange, then exhaled a plume of smoke that curled towards the ceiling. "Mine certainly did. But I wouldn’t say I’m just 'managing'." She gestured with the cigarette towards the street. "I just closed a deal this afternoon that’ll set me up for the next year. High-profile. The kind of people who matter. The people who *make * things happen." Her eyes, however, still held that restless, unfocused gleam. There was a frantic edge to her words, a need to prove something that felt like a raw, open wound . It was a stark contrast to the quiet confidence Silas projected even in his silence .
Rory watched Eva, seeing not the girl who’d shared secrets and dreams under the Welsh stars, but a stranger, polished to a high sheen that seemed to mask something worn thin. "That sounds… busy."
"Busy is an understatement," Eva said, leaning closer, her voice dropping conspiratorially, though there was no one close enough to overhear. She smelled faintly of expensive perfume and something sharper, something anxious. "It's a constant grind. You have to be sharp, Rory. Ruthless, even. People will walk all over you otherwise. They tried it with me, even after Evan…" She stopped abruptly, her gaze flicking towards Rory, then away again, as if she’d stepped on a landmine.
Rory’s own hand, without conscious thought, drifted towards her left wrist, fingers brushing against the faint, crescent-shaped scar hidden beneath her sleeve. The childhood fall near the old quarry. A small, almost invisible mark that felt enormous in its history. "I don't think about Evan," she said, her voice surprisingly steady, devoid of the tremor that had underscored Eva’s mention of his name.
Eva exhaled another cloud of smoke, her expression hardening almost imperceptibly. "Don't you? He certainly hasn't forgotten you. Ask about you a lot, actually. Wonders where the 'sweet, naive Rory' of Cardiff went." She smirked, but it was a humourless thing. "Wouldn't believe the circles I'm in now. Saw Brendan and Jennifer a few months back. Still rattling on about your law degree. Probably couldn't believe you ended up here, would they?"
The jab landed, not with the force Eva might have intended, but with a dull, familiar ache . Her parents’ disappointment was a distant, but constant hum beneath her life choices. "They wanted what they thought was best," Rory replied, turning her pint glass slowly . She avoided looking directly at Eva, her gaze fixed on the rim where condensation had made the wood darker. The regret wasn't for the path not taken, but for the distance that had grown, for the friend she had found, then lost, in the passage of years. Eva had always been the one pushing, the one looking for an escape route. Now, it seemed, she was trapped by the very ambition she’d so fiercely pursued, chained to a life that demanded a ruthlessness Rory had wisely, or perhaps fearfully, sidestepped.
Silas appeared at Eva’s elbow, holding out a napkin and a fresh glass. "Whisky neat, was it?" His voice was a low murmur, calm and devoid of judgment.
Eva blinked, a moment of surprise, then smoothly accepted the offering. "Silas. Still the knight in tarnished armour, I see." She winked, a flash of the old Eva, before turning back to Rory, the brief warmth vanishing as quickly as it came. "See? This is what I mean. You get by, Rory. You get by with quiet charm and a ready smile and… convenient friends. I had to claw my way here. Every inch of it." She took a long swallow of the whisky, the amber liquid disappearing quickly . Her eyes, when they met Rory's again, seemed to hold a weariness that no amount of expensive tailoring or sharp talk could entirely disguise. It was the look of someone who had chased the horizon for so long, only to find it remained perpetually out of reach, a mirage shimmering in the heat of her own relentless pursuit. The shared dreams of Cardiff felt like a different language now, spoken by strangers who had tragically misunderstood their own vows.