Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K5RCYCJ0KG2ZB1H0X6MCXR

The green neon bled through rain on Greek Street and smeared the wet pavement outside the Raven's Nest. Inside, low lamps threw amber pools over old maps and black-and-white photographs. The walls drank the light. A bookshelf stood shut along the back, its spines crooked and dust-thick. The air held beer and lemon oil and damp wool from the evening crowd. Rory wiped a ring from the bar and lined up clean pint glasses. Her straight black hair stuck to her neck where it met her collar. Her blue eyes caught the neon each time the door swung. She rolled her left sleeve to the elbow and the small crescent scar on her wrist showed white against the skin. Silas nursed his knee behind the pumps. His grey-streaked auburn hair curled damp at the temples. His beard matched it, trimmed close to the jaw. His hazel eyes tracked the room the way barmen twice his age never bothered to do. The silver signet on his right hand clicked against glass as he worked. He stood tall over the bar towels, a full head above Rory, and he shifted his weight off his left leg when he moved. "You want the top shelf restocked before close?" Rory glanced up. "I left the crisps in the flat. I can run up after this lot clears." Silas poured a head on a bitter and set it down without spilling a drop. "Leave the crisps. Talk to your punters." The door opened and cold air cut in with traffic noise. The woman on the step shook rain from a dark umbrella and stamped her boots on the mat. Sharp blazer. Sharp trousers. Hair pulled back in a knot the colour of wet bark. No paint under the nails. No safety pins. No laugh halfway down the street before she arrived. Rory stopped with the cloth bunched in her fist. "Eva?" The woman looked up. Her face did a quick,tes open thing. Mouth, then eyes. "Jesus. Rory." Eva crossed the room in four strides and stopped short of the bar, as if the wood changed the rules. "You work here?" Rory tucked the cloth under the counter. Her pulse beat hard in her throat. "I live upstairs. I pull a shift when Silas needs hands. I do drops for the Golden Empress in the day." Eva set the umbrella against a stool and took the seat opposite. She peeled off her gloves finger by finger. "You look the same. Same hair. Same—" Eva nodded at Rory's face. "Cardiff suits London, then." Rory laughed before she meant to. The sound came out thin. "You don't. You look—" She gestured at the blazer, the clean cuffs, the flat shoes with no scuffs. "Last time I saw you, you had half your head shaved and blue hands from the print room." Eva smoothed the lapel flat with her palm. "Last time you saw me, I slept till noon and stole your chips." Silas placed a beer mat in front of Eva without being asked. The signet flashed. "What can I get you?" Eva looked at the pumps, then at the optics. "Tonic water. Ice. No gin." Silas reached for a glass. His left leg dragged half a step as he turned. "Done." Rory leaned her hip on the back counter. Her fingers found the edge of the sink for balance. "Since when do you drink tonic?" Eva unwound the scarf from her neck and folded it over her knee. "Since three years and four months. Since the clinic in Bristol. Since I got the job with the housing charity and they drug-test." Rory stared at the ice in the glass Silas set down. Bubbles rose in a straight line. "I didn't know about Bristol." Eva picked up the tonic and put it down without tasting it. "You were on night buses by then. Or that hostel off Mile End. I rang Yu-Fei's place and some kid told me you were out on the bike." Rory crossed her arms. The scar pulled when she bent the wrist. "I was out on the bike. Rain like this. Pissheads ordering chow mein at midnight." Silas moved down the bar to serve a bloke with a folded newspaper. He kept his distance but kept the sightline clear. "You told me to come down." Rory kept her voice low. "You said, get on the train, doss on my sofa till Evan stops sniffing round. I got to Paddington with a holdall and you never picked up." Eva rubbed her thumb along the condensation on her glass. "I know." The jukebox kicked in. Some old soul record with horns. Two men argued about football near the maps. Rain hammered the window by the door. "You were twenty-two and I was off my face half the week." Eva looked at her own hands. "I thought if you saw the flat, the state of me, you'd get straight back on the train to Cardiff. To him." Rory pulled a stool out with her foot and sat. The height difference vanished. Knee to knee across the bar corner. "I stayed anyway. Without the sofa." Eva met her eyes for the first time since she sat down. "I know. Your mum told me. Jennifer rang me last Christmas. She said you finished the delivery shifts and got the flat and you never went back. She sounded proud and sick about it at the same time." Rory picked at a chip in the varnish. "She still teaches?" Eva nodded. "Year Six. Same classroom. Same poster of Dylan Thomas with the corner curling. Your dad still does the barrister voice when he answers the phone." Rory smiled despite herself. The neon caught the blue of her eyes and turned them green for a second. "He does that to taxi drivers." Eva laughed. The sound cracked in the middle. She reached across the bar before she checked herself and touched the edge of Rory's wrist, just below the scar. "You got that climbing the fence behind the school. You dared me and I cried before you even bled." Rory turned her hand palm-up. The crescent showed clear. "You went home for a plaster and left me hanging upside down." Eva let her fingers rest there half a breath longer than strangers would. "I left you a lot of places after that." Silas returned with a fresh towel over his shoulder. He stopped a pace off, quiet authority in the set of his shoulders. "Another tonic?" Eva slid the full glass forward. "I'm fine. I talk too much when my hands have something to hold." Rory stood and took the glass to rinse it, to give her hands a job. Water ran hot over her knuckles. "You look well. That's not a line. You look like you sleep." Eva watched the back of her head in the mirror behind the optics. "I do now. I run. I do the accounts. I have a key to an office. I tell nineteen-year-olds not to go back to blokes who break their phones. I sound like a leaflet." Rory shut the tap off with her elbow and dried the glass. "You always sounded like you meant it." Eva twisted the scarf on her lap into a rope. "I meant it about Evan. I meant it when I told you to leave Cardiff. I didn't mean to disappear." The bloke with the newspaper called for another bitter. Silas answered with a lift of his chin and drew it, the limp clear when he stepped to the till. The signet rang against coins. Rory set the dry glass down in line with the others. "I needed you to pick up the phone." Eva pressed her lips together. Colour rose up her neck into her cheeks. "I know. I re-play that autumn every time I pass Paddington. I see you with the holdall. I hear the voicemail. I—" She broke off and drank the tonic after all. Ice clinked against her teeth. "I got clean and I told myself you'd be better off without another apology from me." Rory leaned both elbows on the bar. The wood bit into her forearms. "That's a neat trick. Deciding for me." Eva pushed the empty glass an inch toward Silas, then pulled it back. "I have a spare room now. Proper spare room. In Peckham. No mould. The bus stops outside. It's yours if—" Rory shook her head once. Hair swung and settled. "I have the flat. Above here. Silas lets me paint. I can see the sign from my window. Green all night." Eva looked up at the ceiling, as if she could see through plaster to the room. "Green suits you." Silas set a bowl of peanuts between them. He wiped a spill no one else had noticed and moved his bad leg out of the foot traffic. "Kitchen closes at ten. Nest stays open." Rory cracked a peanut and left the shell on the bar. "You still draw?" Eva flexed her right hand. A faint tremor ran through the fingers. "Not like before. I do diagrams for work. Fire exits. Rotas. I miss getting ink under my skin." Rory reached under the counter and pulled out a biro. She drew a quick crooked house on a beer mat and slid it over. The roof sagged. The door hung off. "Art class. Miss Parry gave you an A and me a detention for talking." Eva stared at the mat. Her shoulders shook once. "She fancied your dad. Everyone knew." The rain eased off the windows. Tyres hissed outside. Someone laughed on the pavement and the sound carried in when the door opened for a new couple shaking out coats. Eva folded the beer mat in half and put it in her blazer pocket. "Can I—" She fished out her phone and held it on her palm between them.