Run: 2026-03-15-01KKS2VCJRJKN78K03WS9SY2H0

The Raven's Nest hummed with its usual Tuesday quiet. Three patrons scattered across the dark wood tables, a jazz record crackling through the speakers mounted above the bottle shelf. Rory settled onto her usual stool at the far end of the bar, shoulders aching from the delivery run across Covent Garden. Silas placed a glass of tonic water with lime in front of her without a word, his left leg dragging slightly as he moved down to wipe down the taps. "Cheers." He grunted in response, the silver signet ring catching the low light as his hand worked the cloth in slow circles. The door swung open, letting in a slice of Soho evening air and a woman in a grey tailored coat. Rory's fingers tightened around the glass. The woman shook rain from her umbrella, folded it, and scanned the room with the practiced sweep of someone accustomed to finding specific people in crowded spaces. Her gaze landed on Rory. Stopped. "Megan Osei." Megan's mouth opened, then closed. She approached the bar with measured steps, her heels sharp against the worn floorboards. The last time Rory had seen her, Megan wore oversized jumpers and had ink-stained fingers from highlighting case law. Three years ago. A lifetime in Cardiff, before Evan's grip had tightened past the point of rationalisation, before Eva's panicked phone call, before the one-way train to Paddington. "You're here. In London." "Observant as ever." Rory swirled the ice in her glass. "Drink?" "Gin and tonic. Double." Silas glanced at Rory. She gave a small nod. He reached for the Bombay Sapphire without comment, poured, and slid the glass across the bar before retreating to the far end where he was restocking napkins. Not leaving. Listening. Megan perched on the stool beside her, shrugging off the coat to reveal a crisp white blouse underneath. A small gold pendant rested at her throat—something new, something expensive. "You look good." "You look like a solicitor." Megan laughed, the sound too sharp. "Barrister, actually. Called to the Bar last autumn. Family law." "Of course it is." Rory drained the rest of her tonic. The lime had gone bitter at the bottom. "Mum and Dad must be thrilled." "They flew in for the ceremony. Your mum sent her congratulations through mine. She asked about you." The jazz record skipped. Silas muttered something and moved to fix it. "I've called her. Twice this month." "Rory." "She never picks up." Rory flagged Silas for another drink, holding up two fingers. He raised an eyebrow at the second glass but poured regardless. "Dad probably tells her I've abandoned them. That I threw away everything they sacrificed." "Your dad's complicated." "My dad's a bastard who wanted a mini-him to parade through the courts." The words came out flatter than she intended. "How's Owen?" Megan's hand paused halfway to her glass. Owen. The name sat between them like a stone dropped in still water. Owen, who had held Rory's hand through first-year contracts revision. Owen, who had started dating Megan in second year. Owen, who had looked the other way when Evan grabbed Rory's arm too hard at that party in third year, because confrontation made him uncomfortable. "We broke up. Eighteen months ago." "Sorry." "Don't be. It wasn't working." Megan took a long sip of her gin. "He took a position with his uncle's firm in Bristol. I stayed in London. Different trajectories." "Different people." "Something like that." Megan set her glass down and turned on the stool to face Rory fully. The bar lights caught the angles of her face, sharper now, more defined. She'd lost the soft roundness of university, replaced it with something carved and deliberate. "I heard about Evan. Through the grapevine. From Sarah Chen, actually—she still talks to Priya occasionally." Rory's wrist itched. She rubbed the crescent scar through her sleeve without thinking. "Heard what, exactly?" "That you left. That it was..." Megan pressed her lips together. "That it was bad." "It was what it was." "I should have—" "Don't." Rory's voice cut clean through the ambient noise. "Don't do that. Don't stand here three years later and tell me what you should have done. You didn't. I didn't. We were twenty-two and stupid and I made my choices." Megan flinched. Good. The comfortable version of this conversation, the one where they both apologised in vague terms and exchanged numbers and promised to meet for coffee, wasn't going to happen. Rory wouldn't allow it. "You're right. I didn't." Megan straightened her spine, that barrister posture clicking into place. "I watched you pull away from everyone that last year. I watched you cancel plans and flinch when your phone rang and show up with explanations that didn't make sense. And I told myself it wasn't my place to push. That you'd come to me if you needed me." "And I didn't." "No. You didn't." Megan's voice dropped. "You disappeared. No forwarding address, no text, nothing. Eva told people you'd had a breakdown. Your parents told people you'd taken a gap year to find yourself. And I sat in our flat in Cardiff and stared at your empty room and wondered what I'd missed." The record started up again, something slow and mournful with a trumpet line that curled through the air like smoke. "I didn't want to be found." "I know that now. I didn't know it then." Megan pulled a compact from her handbag, checked her reflection, snapped it shut. The gesture was automatic, absent. "I'm not the same person, Rory. I don't think you are either." "Obviously not. You're a barrister. I deliver Chinese food." "There's nothing wrong with delivering Chinese food." "Didn't say there was." Rory finished her second tonic. The lime was fresh this time, sharp and clean. "It's honest work. I ride my bike across London, I hand people their dinner, I go home to my flat and I sleep. No one shouts. No one tells me I'm imagining things. No one—" She stopped. The words had come too close to the surface, too unguarded. Megan's hand moved toward Rory's arm, then pulled back. "I'm glad you got out." "Me too." "Are you? Really?" The question hung there, blunt and unvarnished. Rory looked at Megan's face—the carefully applied makeup, the controlled expression, the gold pendant that probably cost more than two months of rent—and saw the cost of all those years. The degrees and the ceremonies and the career trajectory, built on top of whatever guilt Megan had been carrying since third year. "Some days." "That's honest." "You asked." "I did." Megan finished her gin and placed the glass on the bar with a decisive click. "I have to be in court at nine tomorrow. Domestic violence case. Twenty-three-year-old woman, two children, husband with prior cautions that somehow never escalated to charges." The irony landed without either of them acknowledging it. "Good luck with that." "Rory." "What?" "I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking to be friends again. I just—" Megan stood, pulling on her grey coat, buttoning it with efficient movements. "I needed to see you. To know you were real. That you were okay." "I'm real." "Are you okay?" Rory considered the question. The bar, with its maps and photographs and green neon sign filtering through the window. Silas at the other end, pretending not to listen while his cloth moved in the same endless circles. The taste of tonic and lime, the ache in her shoulders, the scar on her wrist hidden beneath her sleeve. "I'm getting there." Megan nodded once, the gesture precise and final. She left a twenty-pound note on the bar and walked out into the Soho evening without looking back. The door swung shut behind her, cutting off the sound of rain and traffic. Silas limped over, collected the note, and started clearing the empty glasses. "Friend of yours?" "Used to be." He made a non-committal sound and reached for the gin bottle, topping up the dregs left in Megan's glass before pouring it down the sink. Waste not, want not. "You know," he said, still not looking at her, "people come in here sometimes looking for someone they used to know. They sit on that same stool, order that same drink, and convince themselves that one conversation can bridge three years of silence." "Did it work? For them?" "Never seen it happen yet." He finally met her eyes, his hazel gaze steady. "Doesn't mean they stop trying."