AI "You count that money like it owes you something."
"It does owe me something. Rent's due Friday."
Rory flattened the last of the evening's takings into the delivery pouch and pushed it off the bar. Her jacket hung over the neighbouring stool, still carrying the Empress kitchen in its collar, sweet chilli and peanut oil, a smell that had become hers the way other women wore perfume.
Silas set down a glass of the dark stuff he kept for the two of them and never named.
"On the book."
"Everything's on the book."
"That's why there is a book."
He went back down the bar towards his crossword, the bad knee stiff on the boards, and the Nest settled into its Tuesday sounds. The fridge. The radio turned low. One couple arguing in whispers beneath the maps.
The door swung and let Soho in for a second, a lorry reversing, somebody's hen party shrieking at nothing. Then it closed, and a woman stood under the low lamps, blinking while her eyes adjusted. A conference lanyard hung against a camel wool coat. She pulled off one glove with her teeth, looked at the bottles, at the photographs, at Rory.
"Aurora Carter."
And there it was, the full name. Nobody in this city used the full name. It lived three hours west on the train, and it stayed there.
"Rory."
"What?"
"Nobody here calls me Aurora."
"Oh my God. Mun."
They performed the half-hug of people who had once shared a bathroom, one arm each, wrong angles, Carys's cold cheek against hers. She brought the outside in with her, cold air and a perfume like a hotel lobby. Up close, the polish had seams. The Cardiff had been planed off her vowels, sanded down to something you would hear in an airport lounge, and her teeth had been done, and her nails were the colour of an expensive grey morning.
She took the stool beyond Rory's jacket and unwound a scarf that had cost more than a week of cash tips.
"Wine," she said to Silas . "The red. Whatever won't offend."
Silas pulled the cork and poured and gave her the look he gave new faces, one full second, filed. His signet ring tapped once on the zinc.
"You'll be a friend of Rory's."
"We were flatmates. Second year. She lived on my pasta and my electric ."
"We were," Rory said.
He took the note and moved off.
"So how long has it been? I lose track."
"Three years in March."
"Four for me. You went dark before you went, mun."
Rory turned her glass a quarter turn and said nothing, because it was true, and because the true things always sounded like accusations in that accent .
"God, you look exactly the same. Your hair. That's an insult to the rest of us, frankly."
"You look expensive."
"I look like a conference. Two days at the Barbican. Employment law. The firm has initials people know."
"Do they pay by the initial?"
"By the initial, the hour, and my soul, in that order." She held her left hand up to the light and waggled a diamond at it. "Richard. Tax."
"Congratulations."
"He's solid."
"I can hear myself," Carys said, and drank.
"And what do the initials have you doing?"
"Dispute resolution. Settlements, mostly."
"Gagging orders."
"That's the ugly word for them."
"You had Legal Aid or Nothing on your folder. In biro."
"I also had a skateboard and no pension."
Rory let that sit .
"And you? What does Aurora do in London, apart from elude people?"
"I ferry food. A Chinese place round the corner runs its own bikes. I'm on their books. Cash tips, free spring rolls, no away-days."
"You're doing deliveries."
"I'm doing logistics."
Carys laughed, loud for that room, and some of the blow-dry went out of her, and for a second she was twenty again, boots on the rail outside the law library, swearing at the reading list through a roll-up. Then the second passed and the conference came back on.
"Where do you live, then?"
"Here, actually. There's a flat upstairs."
"You live above a pub."
"A bar."
"That is the most you thing that has ever happened."
"Your dad still at it?"
"He'll die mid-cross-examination and call it a career highlight." She turned her glass by the stem. "I pupil'd in Cathedral Road, did I say? His chambers. He took me to lunch my first month and interrogated me about privilege for an hour."
"That's his love language."
"He keeps a photo of you on the desk. Graduation, the gown. He says, my daughter's finding her feet in London."
"Mothers say finding yourself. Fathers say finding her feet. Nobody says hiding."
Carys's smile slipped a gear. She looked into her wine, then around the room instead, at the maps gone soft with age, the black-and-white photographs, the bookshelf that no one but regulars ever leaned on.
"What is this place? It's like an explorer's bedsit."
"Him. Maps of everywhere he's been right about something. Photographs of everywhere he wasn't."
"Prague, 1989?" She squinted at the nearest frame. "Who's the boy?"
"Cities where something went wrong. He collects them."
"Bit like Cardiff." She drank. "I should ring my mum more."
Rory reached over for the bowl of peanuts, and her sleeve rode up, and Carys's eyes went straight to the small crescent of scar on the left wrist, the way eyes go.
"How's the cat?"
"There was never a cat, Carys. Bike spoke. I was nine."
The wine sat still in Carys's glass.
"I never actually met a cat. I told people about the cat. At parties." She gave up on the sentence halfway.
"You bought me a jumper once. July."
"I know."
Carys turned her ring, round and round, the diamond catching the low lamps. Silas came back with two glasses of water and no comment, the grey in his auburn beard catching the light, and went away again.
"We were twenty-two. What did we know."
"You knew."
"Don't."
"I rang your mum, after. Twice. She said you were finding yourself. Mothers lie beautifully." She emptied the glass and signalled for another with two fingers. "You went quiet, is all. That's what everyone said, that you'd gone quiet on him. He said it at Dewi's wedding, in the speech. This whole bit about patience, about waiting for people to come back and explain themselves. Everyone laughed." Her thumb worried the stem of the glass. "I laughed, Aurora."
"Rory."
"Rory."
Silas brought the second glass and took the empty, and he looked at Rory a moment longer than the job needed.
She kept her voice level, the voice she used for reading delivery tickets.
"How is he?"
"Made partner in March. Finally. He worked..." She caught something in Rory's face and stopped. "Sorry. That's..."
"It's fine."
"He's actually here this week. The conference. He's on a panel tomorrow. Reputation in the digital age, protecting the client." One syllable of laughter, no humour in it. "Standing room only, probably."
Carys checked her phone, face down on the bar and lit with a queue of little messages, and her posture reorganised itself.
"God, is that the time. There's a reception. The conference do, some club off Greek Street. I only ducked in for one quiet one, my head's killing me, the cab's at ten..."
"He'll be at that."
"He's hosting it. His firm's turn this year. The partner do, whatever." She said it lightly, already gathering her scarf. "Funny, actually. You might bump into him this week. He'd love that. He'd be..." She stopped with one arm in her coat.
"When did you last see him."
"Saturday. Conference drinks. Why?"
"You told him you'd seen me."
The arm came back out of the coat. Carys put both hands flat on the bar.
"He asked. He does this thing where he goes quiet and sad, and the whole room tilts towards him. He asked if anyone had heard from you, and I'd had two glasses, and I said I'd seen you."
"Where."
"London! I said London. That's all, I swear."
"London's big."
"I know it's big."
"How did he look, when you said it."
Carys opened her mouth, and closed it, and the blow-dry went out of her altogether.
"He cried."
The word sat on the bar between them like something spilled.
Men like Evan cried at weddings, at the end of films, on the kitchen floor with her wrist held in one warm hand. Rory knew the full catalogue. She had shelved it herself.
"Rory."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I never do. Saves time."
Carys wound the scarf up to her throat. At the door she stopped, half-turned, the lanyard swinging against the camel wool.
"I won't say I saw you. Obviously."
"Enjoy the reception."
"Aurora..."
"Rory."
"Rory. My number's the same. The old one. I kept it. In case."
The door swung, let Soho in and out, and closed her on the far side of it.
Rory counted to four.
"Si."
He was already under the till, and outside the window the green died in the glass.
"Give me a name."
"Evan."
He set his cloth down. He crossed to the bookshelf that no one but regulars ever leaned on, and the third shelf gave under his hand, and the whole case swung open on its quiet hinge, the room behind it dark and ready.