AI The green neon over The Raven’s Nest bled through the rain and painted the wet pavement sickly bright. Rory pushed through the door with a paper bag tucked under one arm, shook water from her sleeves, and caught the smell of ale, lemon polish, and old wood before the room settled around her.
Silas looked up from behind the bar, one hand resting on the glass he’d been wiping. The silver ring on his right hand flashed once beneath the lamps.
“You’re late,” he called.
“Traffic.”
He tipped his head toward the back shelf. “If you mean Oxford Street crawling like a trapped rat, then I’ll allow it.”
Rory snorted and took a step in, then stopped so hard the bag pressed into her ribs.
A woman sat on the far stool with one shoulder turned to the room, hair cut blunt at the jaw and dyed copper at the ends, one knee crossed over the other in a way that looked practised in mirror glass and boarding gates. She wore a black coat with a sharp collar, the sort of coat that shut out weather and questions both. Her fingers circled the stem of a wine glass without touching it.
Rory knew the curve of that wrist. The small scar near the thumb. A white line she had once traced with the tip of her nail while lying on a narrow bed in Cardiff, both of them too awake for the hour.
The woman glanced over.
Her face drained of its polish, just for a beat.
“Rory?”
The name landed like a hand on the back of her neck.
Rory set the bag down on the bar with too much care.
“Eva.”
Silas’s gaze moved between them. His mouth flattened, not quite a smile, not quite anything else .
“Looks like I’m surplus to requirements,” he muttered, and reached for another glass.
Eva slid off the stool. She stood taller than Rory remembered, or maybe she only carried herself that way now, shoulders back, chin lifted, as if she had spent years learning how not to ask permission from a room.
Rory looked at the copper ends of her hair, the clean line of a cream blouse under the coat, the slim gold band on her left hand.
“You got married,” Rory said.
Eva’s eyes flicked to the ring, then back.
“You got observant.”
Rory let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh, but it snagged somewhere in her chest. “You look like you stepped out of a magazine and into the wrong postcode.”
Eva’s mouth twitched. “And you look like you’ve had a rough week.”
“Rough six years.”
Silas cleared his throat from behind the bar, then slid a pint glass down the polished wood toward Rory without asking.
She ignored it.
Eva gave the room a quick look. The old maps on the walls. The black-and-white photographs of men in hats and women with hard eyes. The low amber lamps pooled over the tables. She took in the place the way strangers did, and that looked wrong on her. Eva used to know every crack in every room Rory entered. She used to steal chips off Rory’s plate and call her ridiculous for caring.
“This is yours?” Eva asked, glancing at Silas.
“His,” Rory answered.
Silas raised two fingers in a lazy salute. “Temporary ownership. The walls have the final say.”
Eva looked back at Rory. “You live here?”
“Above it.”
“Of course you do.”
The words weren’t cruel. That made them worse.
Rory reached for the bag again, opened it, and passed the order slip to Silas without looking at the food.
“Golden Empress. Yu-Fei’s extra chilli duck and noodles.”
Silas took the bag. “I’ll keep it warm.”
Eva’s eyebrows lifted. “Delivery girl now?”
Rory leaned her hip against the bar. “Part-time.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying you drag rice through Soho on a bike in the rain.”
“Better than whatever this is,” Rory said, and tapped the ring on Eva’s hand with a finger.
Eva’s hand closed around the stem of the glass. “You always did hate when other people changed first.”
Silas turned away to the sink, giving them the illusion of privacy.
Rory stared at Eva’s face and found the girl she had once known buried under the expensive coat and the careful mouth. The girl who had smoked in alleyways behind the college library, who had cut her own fringe crooked in a bathroom with no mirror, who had once shared a cheap bottle of cider with Rory on a Cardiff rooftop and sworn she would leave before the city swallowed her whole.
Rory had left, too, just not on purpose.
“Six years,” Rory said. “You vanished.”
Eva’s chin tilted. “You vanished first.”
Rory let out a short laugh that held no humour. “You’re not serious.”
“I am.” Eva’s fingers tightened on the glass. “You stopped answering. Then your number went dead. Then your mother stopped posting those picture-laden Christmas cards and I got the message.”
Rory looked down at the scar on her own wrist, pale against the cuff of her jacket. “I moved.”
“You fled.”
Silas, at the sink, set down a glass with a soft clink.
Rory lifted her eyes. “You’re here to lecture me?”
Eva’s gaze hardened, but only at the edges. “I’m here because my train got in early and I remembered this place.”
“You remembered this place.”
Eva gave a single, sharp nod. “I thought I’d have a drink before I headed to the hotel.”
Rory looked at the ring again. “Hotel.”
Eva rolled the stem of the glass between two fingers. “Work trip.”
“Work.”
“Still allergic to nouns?”
“Still dancing round questions?”
Silas set a clean glass on the mat with a quiet thud. “If you two mean to reconstruct history, I’d appreciate it if you did it in a way that didn’t involve me mopping up after.”
Neither of them looked at him.
Rory pulled out the stool beside Eva and sat without asking. The seat gave under her weight with a soft groan. For a second, neither of them spoke. The room went on around them. A couple at a table by the window bent close over a shared packet of crisps. A man in a tweed coat argued with the jukebox as if it had insulted him personally. Someone near the back room laughed too loudly and then checked themselves.
Eva watched Rory’s hands.
“You still bite your nails,” she said.
Rory tucked her fingers under her thigh. “You still notice too much.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you here.”
“You said that already.”
Eva’s eyes moved over Rory’s face, searching for something old and familiar . “I meant I didn’t think I’d see you at all.”
That landed in the narrow space between them and stayed there.
Rory looked away first, at the photos on the wall. One showed Soho in grainy black and white, a street slick with rain and men in overcoats. Another showed a stern-faced woman holding a cat with both hands as if she expected the animal to bolt. The glass reflected Rory’s own face back at her, bright-eyed and sharp, but with the weariness settled deep enough to shadow her mouth.
“You did all right, then,” Rory said.
Eva gave a dry little huff. “Define all right.”
“You’ve got a ring, a coat that probably cost more than my rent, and a haircut that looks like it came with a personal assistant.”
Eva laughed once, and the sound cracked something open in the room. “You used to say I looked like I’d slept in a hedge.”
“You did.”
“And you used to steal my cigarettes when you had none.”
“You left them in my bag.”
“I left them in your bag because you asked.”
Rory turned back to her. “Did I?”
Eva’s expression changed. Not much. Just enough. “You don’t remember.”
Rory met her eyes. “I remember enough.”
Silas walked past with a fresh towel over one shoulder, his limp barely visible until he turned. “I’m putting the duck on a plate. If you ladies intend to reduce the temperature of the room any further, do it after the food arrives.”
Eva glanced at him. “You’ve not changed.”
Silas gave a slight shrug. “A grave error. It’s robbed me of opportunities.”
He moved into the kitchen doorway, leaving them with the soft hiss of heat and the steady murmur of the bar.
Eva reached into her coat pocket and drew out a slim cigarette case, silver scratched at the edges. She flipped it open, checked it, then closed it again without taking one out.
Rory stared at the case. “You still smoke?”
“Not really .”
“You still carry them.”
Eva looked down at the case in her hand. “Old habits collect themselves.”
Rory leaned on the bar with both forearms. The wood felt cool through her sleeves. “What are you doing in London?”
Eva’s laugh had no ease in it. “Working. Surviving. The usual miserable pageant.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“I know.”
The words came out quiet, and Rory heard the fatigue under them before she saw it on Eva’s face. Not just tiredness. Something pulled thin. A life assembled under pressure, piece by piece, each one placed where it needed to go.
Rory studied her. The blunt cut. The ring. The tailored coat. The way she held herself as if every surface in the room might ask her to prove she belonged. This wasn’t the girl who had once kicked off her shoes under a library table and laughed until tea came out of her nose. This woman had edges cut down, polished, managed.
“You look different,” Rory said.
Eva’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “So do you.”
“Yeah, well.” Rory brushed a hand over the back of her neck. “I had a few things rearranged.”
Eva’s gaze dropped to the crescent scar on Rory’s left wrist, bare where the jacket cuff had ridden up. Her expression shifted again, this time into something that held on too long.
“I saw the news once,” Eva said. “Not about you. About Cardiff. Your father’s name came up in connection with one of those legal things he used to do.”
Rory barked out a short laugh. “You were stalking my family on the news?”
“I was avoiding a call.”
“From your husband?”
Eva’s jaw tightened. “From my mother.”
Rory looked at the gold band again. “Right.”
Silas came out from the kitchen carrying a plate that steamed with dark sauce and chilli. He set it down in front of Rory, then another beside it, though nobody had ordered for Eva.
“On the house,” he murmured.
Eva looked up at him, startled by the kindness of it. “I didn’t—”
“It’s been a long enough reunion to earn a meal.”
Rory gave him a sideways glance. “Since when did you get sentimental?”
Silas lifted one eyebrow . “Since I started charging extra for it.”
He moved off toward the till, giving them his back.
Eva stared at the food for a moment before she touched the plate with one fingertip, as if checking whether it belonged to this version of her life .
“You still work with the restaurant?” she asked.
Rory picked up a chopstick, then set it down again. “Yu-Fei lets me stay employed in exchange for punctual deliveries and not setting fire to the kitchen.”
“That was never your gift.”
“True.” Rory watched steam curl up between them. “You used to say I had more nerve than sense.”
“I used to be right.”
Rory smiled, but it faded before it settled. “You wrote that in my yearbook.”
Eva’s face went still.
A pulse seemed to pass through the room. Rory could feel the gap of years open beneath the table, full of unopened letters and silences that had gone on so long they had become furniture.
“You kept your yearbook?” Eva asked.
Rory gave a small shrug. “Packed it when I left Cardiff. Never unpacked it.”
“Why?”
Rory picked at the edge of the napkin. “Because throwing things away felt too easy.”
Eva let that sit , then took a breath. “I looked for you, after.”
Rory’s eyes lifted.
Eva went on before Rory could speak. “Not at first. At first I was angry. Then I was busy, then I was poor, then I was tired, then I told myself you’d resurface when you’d sorted whatever had gone wrong.”
Rory’s grip tightened on the chopsticks. “And when I didn’t?”
Eva’s mouth pressed thin. “I got on with it.”
“Right.”
“No.” Eva leaned forward a little. “Not right. Just what happened.”
Rory held her gaze, and for a moment they looked young again, all the years scraped off them by the brutal honesty of a room they couldn’t leave without paying for. The noise of the bar dimmed around the edges. The rain ticked against the front window. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pan hissed under heat.
“I wrote to you,” Rory said.
Eva blinked. “What?”
“Twice.” Rory’s voice stayed flat, but the words came with effort. “The first time was stupid. I didn’t know what to say. The second time was worse. I wrote it on lined paper because I couldn’t stand the sight of the laptop. I put the old flat address on the envelope because I didn’t know where else to send it.”
Eva swallowed. “I never got them.”
Rory gave a short, humourless laugh. “No. Of course not.”
Eva looked down at her hands. When she spoke again, the words came out stripped bare.
“I moved three times in a year.”
“Mm.”
“And then Mum died.”
Rory’s head came up. “Eva.”
Eva shook her head once, quick and hard. The gesture cut off anything Rory might have said. “Don’t. I’m not saying it for sympathy. I’m saying it because after that everything went strange. I sold the flat. I took a job in Bristol for a while. Then London. Then a firm that liked people who could keep secrets and not ask for decent coffee.”
Rory stared. “You work in law.”
Eva’s mouth tipped. “You sound offended.”
“You hated law.”
“I hated being told I couldn’t read contracts.”
Rory let out a slow breath through her nose. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s close enough.”
Silas came back out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the towel. He set a fresh pint before Rory and nodded once at Eva’s untouched wine.
“Drink before it turns,” he told her .
Eva gave him a look. “Do you always interfere like this?”
“When the mood suits me.”
“And does it suit you now?”
Silas glanced at Rory, then back to Eva. “I’ve seen worse reunions. Less food, too.”
He left them again.
Eva looked into the wine glass at last, then took a sip. Her face did not soften, but something in her shoulders eased by the smallest degree, as if the room had stopped pressing on her ribs.
Rory picked up a bite of duck and stared at it without eating.
“Did you come here often?” Eva asked.
“Live above it,” Rory repeated.
“You said that already.”
“You didn’t hear me the first time.”
Eva laughed under her breath. “You always did that. Toss out the truth like it was nothing, then act shocked when it hit.”
Rory looked at her, really looked, and saw it then: not just the polish, the coat, the ring, the careful hair. The cost. The hollow under the ribcage. The effort it took to remain upright. It had been years, but the shape of Eva’s pain still fit inside the shape Rory remembered.
“Why now?” Rory asked.
Eva held her wine in one hand and let the glass rest against her knuckles. “I had a meeting across the square. It finished early. I saw the sign.”
“The neon.”
Eva nodded. “Green light. Same old door. I thought I’d have one drink and leave.”
“And then?”
“I saw you.”
Rory’s chest tightened. She looked down at her plate again, at the dark sauce pooling around the noodles, and then back at Eva.
“You should’ve knocked,” she said.
Eva’s eyes shone under the low light, though whether from the room or something sharper, Rory couldn’t tell.
“I was terrified you wouldn’t open the door.”
Rory’s hand stopped halfway to the glass.
Eva held her gaze, the wine untouched, her jaw set like she had braced for a blow and decided to stand still through it.
Rory opened her mouth, closed it, then rested her forearm on the bar and looked at her friend across the narrow distance between two stools, two lives, two versions of a city that had swallowed everything and kept on walking.