AI The plastic delivery bag crinkled as I slung it over the back of the stool, rainwater dripping from the folded umbrella tucked under my arm. I’d just dropped off a tray of har gow and siu mai to a Soho townhouse where the owner’d tipped me with a packet of salted peanuts, and my calves ached from the hour’s walk back from Golden Empress. The bar smelled like roasted hazelnuts and burnt bourbon, the same mix it had since I moved into the flat upstairs six months prior. The walls were lined with yellowed maps and black-and-white photos of Soho street corners, just like Silas had explained when he handed me the lease.
I pushed the half-empty ginger ale across the oak counter, and Silas didn’t look up from polishing a set of rock glasses at first. His left knee creaked when he leaned over to grab the soda tap, a faint tell everyone who rented from him knew meant he was running low on patience for slow shifts. When he did look up, his hazel eyes flicked to the scar snaking along my left wrist, the crescent-shaped mark from the bike crash we’d shared at 12, and he nodded once, like he was acknowledging both the scar and the long day I’d just finished. His silver signet ring caught the green neon glow filtering through the front window, glinting sharp against his grey-streaked auburn beard.
The bell above the door jingled loud enough to cut through the slow jazz trickling from the jukebox in the corner. I looked up, expecting a group of tourists spilling in after a West End show, or a pair of accountants from the nearby building society grabbing a quick pint before their trains home. Instead, a woman stood in the doorway, shaking rain off a tailored charcoal wool coat, her sleeve catching on the door frame so hard the fabric pulled tight across her shoulder.
She didn’t look like the girl I’d shared a dorm room with for three years at Cardiff University. The curly waist-length blonde hair I’d spent hours braiding on sleepover nights was gone , replaced by a sharp blunt bob dyed a muted chestnut, cut so straight it looked like it had been measured with a ruler. Her round, freckled cheeks—once dotted with freckles that faded only in the dead of winter—were now angular, her jawline defined by a set of sleek silver hoops I’d never have picked out for her back then. She scanned the bar, and her eyes locked on mine, and for a second, her jaw tightened, like she was trying to place a face she’d not seen in six years.
“Rory?” she said, and her accent was still the same soft Welsh lilt , but it was edged with something sharp, the way people talked when they spent all day in boardrooms and courtrooms. “Is that you?”
I sat up straighter, my fingers brushing the crescent scar on my wrist without thinking. I’d cut my own hair three months prior, trimmed the shoulder-length black straight hair myself with a pair of kitchen scissors, after Evan had joked that long hair made me look like a lost sheep. I’d been wearing scuffed leather boots and high-waisted black jeans for the delivery shift, a far cry from the baggy Cardiff University hoodies I’d hidden in when Evan told me I looked too “attention-grabbing” in anything form-fitting.
“Eva?” I said, and my voice came out quieter than I meant it to. I’d not heard her name since I packed the last of my boxes in the Cardiff flat, the one Evan had rented for us, the one where I’d stopped calling my friends because he’d said they “didn’t understand the kind of life we were building.”
Eva pushed off the doorframe, her tailored wool coat swishing slightly as she walked over to the bar. Silas grabbed a glass for whiskey, poured neat bourbon, and slid it across the counter without a word, his limp more pronounced as he turned back to polishing the rest of the glasses. He didn’t need to say anything; we both knew this was a conversation he didn’t need to be part of.
“I didn’t think I’d find you here,” Eva said, staring at the glass in front of her. She picked at the rim with her thumb, a nervous tic I remembered from when she’d have to present her art portfolios to university lecturers. “I asked Mia—you remember Mia, from the art studio? She moved to London last year. She said you were living above a bar named after a bird. I thought she was winding me up.”
I laughed, a short, dry sound. “It’s the Raven’s Nest. Silas owns it. I’ve been renting the flat upstairs since May.”
“You look … put-together,” Eva said, and her eyes flicked to my leather jacket, the one I’d bought with the first delivery shift wages, the one that fit me properly, not the oversized blazer Evan had made me wear to avoid “unwanted attention.” “Back in Cardiff, you used to hide behind your textbooks, like the world was going to eat you if you spoke up.”
“I was hiding behind more than textbooks,” I said, and the words slipped out before I could stop them. The bar grew quiet, save for the grandfather clock in the corner tick-tocking off the minutes, and I watched Eva’s throat tighten, like she’d been waiting six years to hear those words.
“I didn’t know,” she said, and her voice broke. She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, a frayed cashmere cuff that looked nothing like the paint-stained hoodies she used to wear. “When you left, you just vanished. You didn’t answer my calls, you didn’t leave a note. I thought you’d finally listened to Evan, that you’d decided I was just a nuisance you didn’t need anymore.”
I reached across the bar, and my hand hovered over hers for a second before I pulled back, afraid I’d cross a line she wasn’t ready to cross. “I was ashamed,” I said. “I stayed too long. I let him make me think you’d be better off without me, that I was just a mess he had to clean up. I called you twice, after I left Cardiff. But you didn’t answer.”
Eva’s eyes widened , and she shook her head. “My phone got stolen the week you left. I changed the number, but you didn’t text me your new one. I spent six months looking for you, asking everyone in Cardiff if they’d seen you. I thought you hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you,” I said, and this time, I reached out and took her hand. Her nails were neat, filed to a soft square, no chipped polish from painting murals on the side of the student union building, no dried paint under her fingernails from the stray cats she’d brought home to the dorm. “I just thought you’d be mad at me for staying so late. For letting him hurt me.”
She squeezed my hand, and for a second, I could feel the same teenage girl I’d sat next to in art history, the one who’d snuck me into the campus bar to drink cheap cider when we were 19, the one who’d helped me cut my hair for the first time when Evan had told me I looked “too pretty” for my own good. “I would never have been mad at you,” she said. “I would have helped you. I would have left with you, if you’d asked.”
We sat in silence for a minute, listening to the clock tick-tock, watching the rain streak down the fogged windows. Eva took a sip of her bourbon, and her posture relaxed, just a little, like the weight of six years of looking for me had finally lifted off her shoulders. “I took the bar exam last year,” she said, and her voice was steady now, no more cracks. “Passed on the first try. Moved to London to work for a firm that specializes in employment law—helps people leave abusive partners, Rory. That’s what I do now.”
I stared at her, shocked. Back in Cardiff, she’d told me law was “just for rich pricks who wanted to push poor people around.” She’d rather paint murals on street corners than work a 9-to-5 office job. “You?” I said. “You’re a lawyer?”
She laughed, a warm, familiar sound, and she nodded. “I found out what happened to you, after I moved to London. Mia told me about Evan, about how you left. I wanted to find you then, but I didn’t know where you were. I’ve been looking for you, on and off, for two years.”
I pulled my hand away, and I reached into my delivery bag, pulled out the crumpled receipt from the townhouse, and folded it into my jacket pocket. My phone buzzed in another pocket, a text from the restaurant’s group chat saying they needed me for a Saturday double shift, but I ignored it. Eva pulled a business card out of her briefcase, slid it across the bar to me. The front had her name: EVANOR “EVA” MORGAN, SOLICITOR, HOLBORN LAW FIRM. The back had her mobile number, scrawled in messy handwriting that was exactly the same as the notes she’d left on my dorm room fridge back in Cardiff.
“Call me,” she said. “Anytime. I don’t keep strict office hours anymore. I can meet you anywhere. Dim sum, if you want. My treat.”
I picked up the card, running my thumb over the inked number. “I will,” I said. “Soon.”
Eva stood up, grabbed her coat, and shook the rain off it one more time. The bell jingled as she stepped out into the Soho rain, and I watched her walk down the street, her bob bobbing slightly as she turned the corner. I sat there for a minute, staring at the business card, when Silas slid a crumpled piece of paper across the bar.
It was a missing person flyer. The top read MISSING: LEAH MARLOWE, 26, LAST SEEN IN CARDIFF, OCTOBER 2021. The photo showed a girl with shoulder-length brown hair and a crescent-shaped scar snaking along her left wrist, identical to mine. Below the photo, it read CONTACT SOUTH WALES POLICE IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION.
The grandfather clock tick-tocked, and the neon green glow of the Raven’s Nest sign flickered outside. Silas leaned against the bar, his left knee creaking, and his hazel eyes locked on mine.
“Leah Marlowe was staying with Evan when he disappeared,” he said.