AI The green neon came on at five and bled down Frith Street even in the rain. Rory watched it from the street door for a second before she pushed inside, the sign above the entrance buzzing faint against traffic — THE RAVEN'S NEST in that distinctive green that made the wet pavement look deeper.
It was too early for a crowd. The Nest held its usual dusk gloom even at mid-afternoon, dimly lit by low pendants over the bar and the amber wash from the bottle shelves. The walls were covered the way Silas always kept them, old maps soft at the corners and black-and-white photographs of streets that didn't exist anymore, Soho in the sixties, a young woman with a beehive outside what was now a vape shop. The radiators clicked.
Silas was behind the bar. He didn't turn immediately when the bell jingled, just lifted his chin a fraction, enough for Rory to catch his profile. At fifty-eight the grey had won more of his auburn than when she'd first taken the flat upstairs, streaked through at the temples and in his neatly trimmed beard. He was tall, six-one in his sock feet, but he favored his left side the way he always did since Prague, the old knee injury giving him that slight limp as he moved from the till to the optics.
"Yu-Fei work you that hard?" he said.
"She sent me to Battersea in this," Rory said. She shook out her anorak, straight black hair sticking to her shoulders, shoulder-length and blunt where she'd cut it herself over the sink. Water spotted the crescent scar on her left wrist, small and white and ridged. She'd gotten it at eight, reaching into a dishwasher.
She was twenty-five but felt older in the shoulders. Five-six in her trainers, blue eyes bright even when she was tired. She draped the delivery bag for the Golden Empress over a stool. The residual smell of chilli oil followed her.
Silas made a noise and poured her tap water without asking. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the light. "Evan call again?"
"No." She said it quickly, cool-headed . That was the trick she'd learned after Cardiff, after leaving — keep the answer clean, don't give it room. "New phone."
He didn't press. That was why she'd stayed. When she'd fled to London at Eva's behest two years ago, Brendan Carter the Irish barrister father back home fielding calls, Jennifer Carter née Ellis calling every hour from her classroom, Silas had offered the room above the bar without asking for the details of the ex-boyfriend with the soft voice. He carried himself with a quiet authority that didn't need your biography.
The bell jingled again and cold came in with it.
Rory didn't look at first. She was trying to get the lid off her thermal, fingers clumsy. The person who entered laughed at the weather, said sorry to no one in particular, and Rory's head came up on that second syllable because she knew the cadence.
Eva stood just inside the door with rain on her coat.
For a beat neither of them moved.
Eva Parry — Eva from Year Three, from Cardiff Academy, from the terraced house two streets over from Brendan and Jennifer's, who had sent the long, unsparing texts that got Rory on the National Express: *Come. My sofa. No questions. Now.* Eva had always been soft-faced, all cheeks, hair curled with cheap straighteners that never quite worked. Now her hair was cut into a severe bob that ended at her jaw, dyed a flat chestnut. She wore a wool coat that cost more than Rory's month at the Nest, belted tight, and a cream silk shirt beneath. Her make-up was sharp. Her eyes found Rory and widened.
"Oh my God," Eva said.
Rory felt her own breath snag, which was unusual. She was quick, adaptable, the one who thought out-of-the-box when things went wrong on a drop or when Silas' till jammed or when a customer got handsy. Now her mind went blank and then flooded.
"Eve."
Eva came forward fast, heels loud, and then stopped a foot away, hands hovering like she wasn't sure Rory wanted to be touched. The last time they'd seen each other, Rory had been crying on that same coat when it had been from Zara.
"You're — you're still here," Eva said, and then winced at how it sounded. "I mean, at Silas' place? This is Silas' place, right? The Nest?"
Silas watched from behind the bar, hazel eyes steady, wiping a glass although it was already dry. He gave Rory space.
"I live upstairs," Rory said. "Still. Always will, at this rate."
Eva laughed too loudly. "You look exactly — you look good, Ror. Really."
Rory heard the lie for what it was. She looked tired. She was in leggings and the restaurant's black polo with the oil stain. Eva looked like someone else entirely . Not just the clothes. It was a posture thing, a new stillness in her shoulders. The Eva she remembered bounced on the balls of her feet, talked with her hands, wanted to be a drama teacher. This Eva held herself contained.
"You don't," Rory said, then caught herself. "You look different. In a good way. Grown up."
"Corporate," Eva said, and there was a self-deprecating twist. "I got pupillaged last month. In London. I moved in March."
It hit Rory with a little delay. Pupillaged. Law.
"You did law?"
"Finished. Like you were supposed to," Eva said. The smile thinned. "I remembered you always saying Pre-Law at Cardiff was your father's idea and I thought — well, I liked arguing, didn't I? Turns out I like winning more."
Rory felt the familiar press at the base of her throat. Eva had been the one waiting outside the moot courtrooms with coffee while Rory pretended she cared about contract law. She'd been the one who said, run.
"I stopped replying," Rory said quietly. It wasn't an apology. It was a fact, stated coolly because if she warmed it it would crack.
Eva's eyes flicked down to the scar on Rory's wrist, then away.
"I know," Eva said. "After three months I thought — you know. Evan. Or London swallowing you. I didn't know which."
"He didn't. It didn't."
"I sent you that article about tenancy rights," Eva said suddenly, as if that explained anything .
"You did."
"You never —"
"I read it."
They stood there in the dim bar with the maps around them, and the space between their old shorthand and their present selves felt incredibly wide. Silas set two whiskies down without being asked , pushing one toward Eva, one toward Rory. Eva took it with both hands like a student.
Silas said, to make it easier, "You two need the back?"
"No," Rory said quickly . She didn't want the hidden room today, the bookshelf that swung open to the space where Silas took calls in low voices. She wanted the maps and the rain.
Eva sat. Rory sat opposite. Their knees almost touched.
"What happened to Laila?" Eva asked, and the use of the old nickname — from when they'd been eleven and decided Aurora Carter needed an alias for spying on teachers — made Rory's chest hurt.
"Rory's fine," she said. "Malphora's retired."
Eva's laugh was real this time, short. "Christ. Malphora. We were so weird."
"We were honest weird."
Another pause. Eva turned the whisky glass, studying it.
"I thought you'd come back," she said, softer . "After... after you left him. I thought you'd finish your degree. Mum and Dad kept asking about you — my mum, not yours — and I'd say, Rory's figuring it out, and then you just fell off. I sent you the barrister stuff thinking maybe — I don't know. I shouldn't have."
Rory watched her. Bright blue eyes, unwavering when she chose to be. She thought about the flat upstairs, the delivery bag that still needed to be logged, Yu-Fei shouting in Cantonese at the wok, the way Silas had taught her to check sight lines when she walked home late. She thought about Cardiff and the cold house and Brendan saying law was the only solid thing and Jennifer, her Welsh teacher mother, saying well if you must go then go.
"I didn't want to be saved and then owe you," Rory said. The honesty surprised her with its precision. "You got me out. It was the most important thing anyone's ever done. And then I couldn't look at you without remembering how bad it was. And how you were doing better. You always did empathy better than me."
Eva's eyes shone. She didn't let the tears drop; that was new too.
"I'm not doing better," Eva said. "I'm doing lawyer. Which is different. I hate most of it. I'm good at it, but I hate it."
Rory reached forward then. Her hand, small scar showing, covered Eva's. The bench creaked.
"You could have texted," Eva said, but without edge.
"You could have kicked the door down," Rory answered. "You knew where I was."
"You're right." Eva exhaled. "I liked the story where you were brave and gone. I didn't like the story where you were just upstairs and not calling. It made me feel..."
"Abandoned?" Rory supplied.
"Yeah."
"Yeah, me too," Rory said. "But differently."
Silas limped around the bar then, deliberate, to give them an out. He picked up the empty water glass and his ring tapped against it. The neon outside flickered green against the window, on Rory's wet hair, on Eva's expensive coat.
"You both staying for dinner?" he asked. "Yu-Fei owes me dumplings. Says she'll bring them over if I promise not to tell HMRC about the till."
Eva looked at Rory, asking a question she didn't voice. Rory's quick brain, the one that solved routes and diffused arguments before they started, saw the easy deflection and chose not to take it.
"Stay," Rory told Eva. "We can be weird again for an hour."
Eva nodded, once, and took off her coat, and the rain kept falling on Soho.