Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0GFGSKXNVVJCAKBW2NJ2PY

The green neon outside The Raven's Nest buzzed through the rain, casting a sickly wash over the pavement. Aurora shook water from her coat as she pushed inside, expecting the usual Tuesday quiet, the low murmur of Silas's regulars, the smell of damp wool and whisky. What she didn't expect was the woman at the end of the bar, a glass of red wine held to her lips like a question mark, and the way her own name — her old one — caught in the back of her throat. "Niamh." The woman turned. For a second there was nothing on her face, and Aurora thought she'd been mistaken. Then recognition moved through her like weather. "Christ. Aurora?" Aurora crossed the room slowly, trying to match what she was seeing against what she remembered. Niamh O'Connell had worn her hair down to her waist in Cardiff, had lived in oversized jumpers that smelled of her flatmate's cigarettes, had argued contract law with a mouth full of chips. The woman at the bar wore a blazer the colour of dried blood and a watch that caught the lamplight like something expensive wanting to be noticed. Her hair was cropped, precise. She looked as though she'd been assembled. "Sit down before I lose my nerve," Niamh said, and her voice at least was the same — that low Cork lilt she used to put on thicker after a drink. Aurora sat. Silas caught her eye from behind the bar, a slight tilt of his head — the old question, are you alright? She gave him a small nod. He poured her a whisky without being asked and moved away, busying himself with a glass that was already clean. "You look —" Niamh began. "Don't." "I was going to say tired." "Better than what I was about to say to you." Aurora took the whisky. "You look like you're about to prosecute me." Niamh laughed, and for a moment her face broke open, and there she was, twenty-one and laughing over a book she couldn't be bothered to read. Then the laugh trailed off and the blazer-woman reassembled herself. "Slaughter and May." "Of course." "You say that like you knew." "I knew you'd get what you wanted." "Is that what this is?" Niamh turned the wine glass on its coaster. "I wasn't sure, for a while." Aurora didn't answer. Outside, a bus went by, dragging water against the kerb. She thought of the last time she'd seen Niamh — a kitchen in Roath, three a.m., a kettle whistling, Niamh saying, you're better than him, Aurora, please, please — and she thought of how she had said yes, I know, and gone back anyway. "How did you find this place?" Aurora asked. "I didn't. I had a meeting in Soho. It ran long. I walked past the sign." Niamh looked around, at the maps curling at their corners, at the black-and-white faces on the walls who seemed to be listening. "It's a strange bar." "It's a good bar." "Yours?" "I live upstairs. The owner's a friend." Niamh's eyes moved over her, taking inventory. Aurora felt it, the practised scan, the reading of evidence. The callused hands from hauling delivery bags up four-flight walk-ups. The cheap coat still shedding rain on the stool. The absence of a ring, the absence of the law books, the absence of everything Niamh had last seen her with. "Your mam told mine you'd gone to London," Niamh said. "She didn't say why." "She didn't know why." "Is he —" "I don't know where he is. I don't want to know." Niamh nodded once, as though she had expected no other answer, and took a long swallow of her wine. "I wrote to you. After. Twice." "I got them." "You didn't —" "No." Silence settled between them, thickening, and Aurora felt the weight of it pressing down through her shoulders. She thought she would have to say something to break it, and then she realised Niamh was not waiting for her to. Niamh was simply absorbing, the way barristers did, filing the blow away for later consideration. "I thought you hated me," Niamh said finally. "I didn't hate you." "You told me I didn't know what I was talking about. You told me I should mind my own flat and leave yours alone." "I remember." "You said worse things than that." "I know what I said." Niamh turned to her fully now. In the low light the lines at the corners of her eyes had appeared. She wasn't thirty yet and already she'd earned the faint tiredness that came with wanting things badly. "I wasn't brave," Niamh said. "I should have come and got you. I thought about it for months. I told myself you were an adult. I told myself I had exams. I told myself a lot of things." "You weren't responsible for me." "That's not the point, is it." Aurora turned the whisky glass in her hand. The crescent scar on her left wrist caught the light, and she watched Niamh's eyes find it and stay there, and she didn't cover it. She had stopped covering it a long time ago. "No," she said. "That's not the point." Niamh looked as if she might reach across and touch the scar, and then she remembered herself, and her hand went back around her glass. "I made partner track last month," she said, in the tone of someone confessing. "Congratulations." "I don't know if I want it." "You always wanted it." "I wanted it when you were going to want it with me." Niamh's jaw worked. "When there were going to be two of us. I wanted all of it then." Aurora felt something shift inside her chest, an old hinge giving way. She thought of the nights they'd spent in the law library, sharing a pair of headphones, circling dense paragraphs with a pencil shared back and forth. She thought of Niamh saying, we'll be ruthless together, we'll be unbearable. "I'm sorry," Aurora said. It came out smaller than she meant. "For what?" "For not being the one you thought I was." Niamh's eyes went glassy for a second, and then she blinked it off, the way she'd once blinked off losing a mooting final. She lifted her glass. "To the ones we thought we were," she said. Aurora touched her whisky to the wine. The glasses made a small dull sound, nothing like a bell.