Run: 2026-03-18-01KM07JME66WZPJDPAQS74YKZE

The green neon above The Raven’s Nest buzzed against the damp Soho dusk, throwing a sickly stripe over the pavement. Rory ducked beneath it with a stack of delivery tubs pressed to her ribs, her phone wedged under her chin, Yu-Fei’s voice still ringing in her ear. “Don’t let them cool, Aurora. That lot paid enough to eat them warm.” Rory shifted the bags higher and eased the bar door open with her shoulder. The warmth hit first. Old brass, beer, citrus cleaner, fried onions from the kitchen. The place wore its usual face: low amber lamps, black-and-white photographs, maps curling at the corners, and the roomful of voices that rose and fell like a tide under the music. “Back again, Rory?” a man near the till called. She angled her head. “You lot keep feeding me, I keep coming back.” Silas stood at the far end of the bar, one hand resting on the polished wood, the silver signet ring on his right hand flashing when he shifted a glass. His limp barely showed until he crossed the room, but Rory always caught it. He gave her a quick once-over, then flicked his gaze to the bags. “You brought enough to shame the kitchen,” he muttered. “Your regulars ordered like they hadn’t eaten in a week.” “Some of them hadn’t.” Rory snorted and set the delivery tubs down on the counter. “Yu-Fei said to tell you she’d start charging you for storage if you kept using her dining room as a waiting bay.” Silas’s mouth twitched. “She’d enjoy that. Means she gets to bark at me.” He took the top tub, then paused, eyes shifting past Rory’s shoulder. Not at her. Through her. The change in him landed before she turned. The room had gone strangely thin. Someone had stepped in behind her, and the air seemed to have made room without asking her permission. Rory turned with the second tub still in her hands. At first she didn’t know the woman. Then recognition hit in two hard blows, one after the other: the line of the mouth, the shape of the eyes, the tilt of the chin she had once seen lit by Cardiff rain and cheap fairy lights. The rest had been stripped and rebuilt. The woman wore a charcoal coat cut close to the body, hair pulled into a clean knot at the nape of her neck. No flyaway fringe. No chipped polish. No battered tote bag with a cracked strap and a keychain shaped like a red fox. Her earrings were small gold hoops. Her nails were bare and immaculate. She had the kind of face people trusted in meetings. Rory’s fingers tightened on the plastic tub until the lid creaked. “Megan?” The woman’s gaze snapped to hers, sharp and bright and gone still all at once. “No one’s called me that in years.” Rory let out a laugh that came out wrong, half breath, half disbelief. “Jesus.” Megan looked her over in return, her eyes sliding from Rory’s black hair, damp at the ends from the drizzle, to the delivery jacket, to the crescent scar on her left wrist where the sleeve had ridden up. “You haven’t changed enough,” Megan said. Rory barked another laugh. “That was rude.” “It was honest.” Silas set the glass down. “You two want me to leave you to it?” Rory glanced at him, then back at Megan. “You know her?” Silas’s gaze settled on Megan with a fraction of caution. “I know the shape of a few ghosts.” Megan’s mouth twitched, but it didn’t become a smile. “That sounds like something you’d say.” Silas only lifted one shoulder. “And yet, here we were.” Rory stared between them. “You’re both talking like this is normal.” “It isn’t,” Megan said. “No,” Rory said, still looking at her. “It bloody isn’t.” For a second nobody moved. The bar noise rolled on around them, someone laughing too loudly near the back, glasses clinking, a pool cue thudding against felt. Rory felt the weight of the tubs in her hands and the heat building under her collar. Megan broke first. “Can we sit?” Rory looked at the nearest booth. A dark leather corner beneath one of the old maps. She gave a short jerk of her chin and led the way, setting the tubs on the table hard enough to make the cutlery jump. Megan slid in opposite her. The coat opened just enough for Rory to catch the edge of a white shirt, pressed flat. No grime. No rolled sleeves. No old denim jacket with paint on the cuffs. Megan folded her hands on the table, one thumb pressing the other, and Rory saw the faint ridge of a healed cut across her knuckle. “You look expensive,” Rory said. Megan’s eyes narrowed. “You look like you fought a hedge.” “Delivery work does that to a person.” Silas brought two waters over without asking. He set one in front of Rory, one in front of Megan. “You didn’t come in for dinner,” he said. “No,” Megan replied. “No,” Rory repeated. “That’s the part where I’d really like someone to explain what’s going on.” Silas leaned one elbow against the booth. “That’s between old friends, I think.” Rory shot him a look. “Since when did you become the voice of restraint?” “Since I learned it was useful.” He straightened and moved back towards the bar, though Rory knew he wasn’t actually leaving. He’d hear every word if he wanted to. Probably read their pulse from across the room. Rory wrapped both hands around the water bottle and looked at Megan. “You vanished.” Megan’s shoulders held steady. “You left.” Rory stared at her. “I moved to London. You know that. I wrote.” “You sent three messages in six years.” “Three?” Rory’s voice cracked on the last word, anger slipping through before she could cork it. “You made me count?” Megan’s gaze held hers. “I answered one.” “That’s not an answer.” “It was at the time.” Rory let the silence sit between them, thick and alive. She remembered a kitchen in Cardiff, too small for the two of them and the kettle that never quite switched off, rain tapping the window while they bent over application forms and cheap instant noodles. Megan with her hair shoved into a scrunchie, flour on her cheek because she’d stolen half the cake mix before baking it. Megan laughing so hard she’d bent double when Rory had tried to fake a Welsh accent for a joke and butchered it completely. Megan looked too polished now for those memories. Too tailored. Too clean. It made Rory angry in a place she hadn’t expected. “You answered once,” Rory said, lower now, “to tell me not to come to your mum’s funeral.” Megan’s face changed at that. It was small, but Rory saw it. A flicker at the mouth. The lids lowering over her eyes like shutters. “You shouldn’t have come.” “I did come.” “I saw the flowers.” Rory blinked. “You were there?” Megan’s jaw tightened. “At the back.” “Then you could’ve said something.” “And ruin your heroic gesture? You always did love an audience.” Rory laughed then, but it had no humour in it. “Christ. That’s what you’ve got? That’s your greeting after seven years?” Megan’s fingers finally shifted. She touched the bottle, turned it once, then let go. “I didn’t know what else to use.” “You could’ve started with hello.” “Hello,” Megan said, and the word landed flat between them. Rory looked at her properly then, at the neat coat, the clipped hair, the almost severe stillness in her posture. “What happened to you?” Megan gave a tiny exhale through her nose. “You ask that like you didn’t know people changed.” “I know they change. I just didn’t expect… this.” “Disappointing?” “Don’t start.” “You started it.” Rory leaned back and crossed her arms. “Fine. You look like you’ve got a board meeting in the City and a knife hidden in your boot.” That got a real reaction. Megan’s mouth pressed thin, though not quite into a smile. “You were always quicker than you looked.” “Thanks.” “It wasn’t a compliment.” “I know.” The booth creaked as Rory shifted. She could feel the old hurt under the anger, the same one that had sat in her chest for years like a stone she’d stopped noticing until somebody pressed on it. “You disappeared after Cardiff,” Rory said. “No warning. No address. One day we were making plans to share a flat in London and the next you were gone.” Megan’s gaze dropped to the table. “My father had other plans.” Rory’s voice went softer despite herself. “He was the reason, wasn’t he?” Megan didn’t answer straight away. She reached for the water, twisted the cap, then set it down untouched. “He had friends,” she said. “The kind who asked questions when they shouldn’t. He decided I’d be safer somewhere else.” “Safer,” Rory echoed, disbelief curdling in her voice. “So you just went.” “I had to.” “And you couldn’t tell me?” “No.” The single word had no softness in it. No apology either. Rory looked away first, at the maps on the wall. Old routes. Old borders. Lines drawn by hands long dead. She found that she hated how much the room fit this conversation. Everything in it was a record of things that had once moved and now hung still. “You could’ve let me know you were alive,” she said. Megan’s eyes stayed on her. “You were the one who left Cardiff in the first place.” Rory’s throat tightened. “Because I had to.” Silence. It stretched. Then Megan said, “He hit you again.” Rory went still. The room seemed to tilt by a degree. She didn’t ask who. She didn’t have to. Megan’s eyes had gone hard, but not cruel. “I saw the messages. You were careful, but not careful enough. That bastard followed you farther than you knew.” Rory’s fingers loosened from her sleeves. The scar on her wrist caught the light when she moved. “You knew?” “I guessed.” “And you never called?” Megan’s mouth opened, then shut again. She looked away for the first time. Rory let out a slow breath and laughed once, a dry sound that scraped the back of her throat. “Brilliant. So that’s what this is. You were avoiding me because of him?” “Partly.” “Partly.” Megan’s shoulders rose and fell. “You always asked for the whole truth and hated it when it came in pieces.” “Because pieces are useless.” “They aren’t useless when they’re all you’ve got.” Rory stared at her. There it was. Not the old girl she’d remembered, the one who stole chips from her plate and quoted bad films and kicked off her shoes the second they got home. This version had edges filed down and rebuilt by whatever she’d survived. She carried herself like someone used to keeping doors shut. Rory hated that she wanted to know more and hated more that she understood, in the raw centre of herself, what being made careful could cost. “You came in here tonight,” Rory said, “and what? You wanted a drink? A fight? Closure? Pick one.” Megan’s eyes flashed. “I came because Silas called.” Rory turned sharply toward the bar. Silas, standing with a cloth in one hand, lifted his brows in mild apology that looked nothing like remorse. “I said I thought I’d seen a face she might know. I didn’t say she’d have a heart attack.” Rory looked back at Megan. “You spoke to him before you spoke to me?” “I was arranging to meet someone here.” “Someone.” Megan’s chin tipped up a fraction. “That’s all you need for now.” Rory gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Listen to you. ‘That’s all you need for now.’ You sound like him.” Megan flinched, just a little, and Rory saw it land. The buzz of the bar crept back in around them. A bottle broke somewhere near the far end. Someone cursed. The kitchen door swung open and shut. Silas moved behind the counter, his reflection doubling in the mirror behind the spirits. Megan reached into her coat pocket and placed a folded piece of paper on the table. Smooth, cream-coloured stock. Expensive enough to annoy Rory on principle. Rory didn’t touch it. “What’s that?” “An address.” “For what?” Megan’s eyes held hers, and for the first time the polish cracked enough for Rory to see the strain underneath it, the long-held line of something tight and unfinished. “For the reason I came back,” she said.