Run: 2026-09-23-01M36REAT6KA1MX78JN3Z47V90

Rain ticked against the high windows of the Raven’s Nest. Rory came in with wet cuffs and the smell of fried garlic clinging to her jacket. The green neon sign painted a narrow stripe across the floor each time a car passed outside. Silas looked up from the bar. His silver ring caught the light as he set down a glass. “Last delivery?” “Last one. A man on Berwick Street tried to tip me with a lecture about his cholesterol.” “Did you take it?” “I left it on the pavement.” Silas’s mouth shifted. He reached for a clean cloth, and Rory slipped onto the stool at the end of the bar. Her shoulder-length hair clung to her neck. She rubbed a thumb over the crescent scar on her left wrist, then ordered tea. A woman at the table by the wall lifted her head. “Gin,” she called to Silas. “No tonic. And don’t put a slice of anything in it.” The words travelled across the room with the rain’s damp edge. Rory turned. For a moment she saw the woman as she had been: copper curls in her eyes, a split lip from some argument she had won by refusing to leave, both hands moving as she talked. Then the present settled over the memory. The curls were gone. A dark crop traced the shape of her head. Her coat had a clean line to it, her nails were cut short, and the small silver hoop she once wore through one ear had vanished. Eva stared back at her. “Rory.” The name caught between them. Rory stood. Her stool scraped the floor. “Eva.” Silas set the cloth aside. His gaze passed from one woman to the other, then he picked up his walking stick and limped toward the shelves behind the bar. “Tea can wait,” he said. “You two look as if you’ve misplaced something.” He left them with the bar’s low amber light and the photographs on the walls: faces from another century, all of them watching without interest. Eva rose from the table. She had a paper folder tucked under one arm. A blue tab marked the edge, and a Housing Advice Service logo sat in the corner. “You work here?” Her eyes moved over Rory’s damp jacket, the scar at her wrist, the black hair hanging against her cheek. “Upstairs. I live above the bar.” “Of course you do.” “What does that mean?” “It means you always liked having an exit.” Rory almost smiled. Eva’s mouth tightened before the smile could reach hers. “You look different,” Rory said. “I cut my hair.” “That’s not all.” Eva set the folder on the table. “No. I’m a solicitor now.” Rory glanced at the blue tab. “Housing?” “Mostly people who can’t afford to lose a room.” Eva pulled out the chair but didn’t sit. “You?” “Delivery work. A little of whatever keeps the rent paid.” “Not law?” “No.” Eva lowered herself into the chair. Her hands rested flat beside the folder, as if she had learnt not to fidget in rooms where other people needed answers. Rory sat opposite her. “You used to say you’d never wear a suit.” “I used to say a lot of things.” “You used to say you’d never live past thirty.” “That was before thirty started looking like a practical problem.” This time Rory smiled, but Eva only looked down at her hands. A pale mark crossed one knuckle, a thin line that Rory didn’t remember. Silas returned with a cup of tea and a gin. He placed them on the table without asking which belonged to whom. Rory’s tea steamed between them. “On the house,” he said, and tapped the table once with his ringed hand. Eva lifted her glass. “Thank you.” Silas gave Rory a look that held a question and no demand. She answered with the smallest nod. He went back to the bar. Eva took a drink. “I thought you’d be taller.” “You’ve always been terrible at remembering measurements.” “I remembered the train platform.” Rory looked into her tea. The surface trembled when a bus went by outside. “You put me on the train,” she said. “I bought the ticket.” “You handed it to me.” “You told me not to come.” “You said you’d follow the next week.” Eva’s fingers closed around the stem of her glass. “I did.” “You didn’t.” “No.” There it was: two words, clean as a cut. Rory let them sit between the cups. “I waited,” Eva said. “Not at the station. I mean, after. I thought you’d call once you got settled.” “I called.” “Once.” “Twice.” “I didn’t get the second one.” “I left a message with your mother.” Eva’s eyes rose. “She never told me.” “Maybe she forgot.” “She didn’t forget things.” Rory held her gaze. The old argument took shape in the space left by their years apart, familiar enough to step into and dangerous enough to avoid. Eva lifted her gin again, then set it down untouched. “I’m sorry.” Rory’s thumb found the scar on her wrist. “For what?” “For all of it.” “That’s a wide net.” “I know.” “You asked me to come here. I came.” “I know that too.” “You gave me a ticket and told me there was a spare room.” “There was.” “Then you didn’t follow.” Eva’s shoulders drew tight beneath her coat. “My mother got sick. I kept thinking I’d go once things calmed down. Then the flat needed work, and I had exams, and I had a job I couldn’t leave. After a while, every excuse sounded like a reason.” Rory watched her turn the glass by its base. The movement was precise. Once, Eva had never managed to keep still through a whole meal. “You could have told me,” Rory said. “I could have.” “I thought you’d changed your mind about me.” “I thought you were glad to be rid of me.” Rory leaned back. “Why would you think that?” “Because you stopped answering.” “I was working two jobs. I was trying to sleep without checking the lock every time somebody walked past my door.” Eva’s hand stopped on the glass. Rory’s voice had stayed level. She heard the words after they had left her and looked toward the window, where rain warped the neon green into long strokes. “I knew about Evan,” Eva said. “You knew what I told you.” “I knew enough.” “You knew the version I could say out loud.” Eva lowered her eyes. “I should have come.” “You were in Cardiff.” “I could have come.” “You had your mother. Your course. A life I’d asked you to leave alone.” “You didn’t ask me to leave you alone.” Rory’s jaw tightened. She wanted to deny it, but the old platform returned: Eva in a red scarf, one palm pressed against the train window after Rory had boarded; Rory staring at the seat opposite, waiting for Eva to appear with her bag. She had watched the doors close and called that a choice. “I didn’t know what to ask for,” Rory said. Eva’s face softened, then guarded itself again. “I thought you needed a door.” “I did.” “I thought that was all.” Rory stirred her tea though she hadn’t added sugar. The spoon clicked against the cup. “I didn’t know how to be your friend after that,” Eva said. “Every message felt like a question I had no right to ask. Were you safe? Were you eating? Had you left him? I wrote them, then deleted them. It seemed cruel to demand an answer from someone who’d just managed to escape.” “You could have sent one.” “I know.” “You could have sent ten.” “I know.” Rory looked up. “You sound like a solicitor.” Eva gave a short, humourless laugh. “Occupational hazard.” “What happened to the girl who climbed out of the school toilets to skip assembly?” “She got tired.” “You used to climb out of every window.” “I learnt which windows had alarms.” The joke landed between them without easing anything. Eva rubbed a thumb over the edge of her folder. Rory remembered that habit too, though Eva had once used it on the corner of a bus ticket, a library card, anything she could worry soft. “I kept thinking I’d see you,” Eva said. “In Cardiff. On the bus. Outside the shop where we used to steal those awful iced buns.” “You didn’t steal them. You forgot to pay.” “I was sixteen. That counts as theft.” “You were twenty.” Eva lifted her glass. “Then I had no defence.” Rory looked at the folder. “What brought you here?” “A meeting nearby. It finished early.” “And you came in for gin?” “I came in because the rain started.” Eva glanced around the bar, at the old maps and black-and-white photographs. “Then I heard you.” “From across the room?” “I’d know that voice anywhere.” The words sounded too close to affection, and Eva seemed to hear it. She reached for her glass, missed the stem, then caught it. Rory watched the small correction. “You don’t have to make this neat.” “I’m not making it neat.” “You’ve got the folder lined up with the table edge.” Eva looked down. She moved it half an inch, leaving it crooked. “I missed you,” she said. Rory’s hand stilled around the cup. The heat had faded. She could have answered at once, could have given Eva the same sentence and watched it settle. Instead she studied the line of her friend’s cropped hair and the careful set of her shoulders. “I missed who we were,” Rory said. Eva nodded once. “That’s not the same thing.” “No.” “Do you miss me?” Rory looked at Eva’s hands, at the pale mark on her knuckle, at the glass she hadn’t drunk from. “I don’t know what I’m allowed to miss.” Eva’s fingers opened on the tabletop. “You’re allowed to miss whatever you miss.” Rory reached for her tea. Her wrist crossed the table’s narrow gap, and the old scar caught the light. Eva’s gaze followed it, then returned to Rory’s face. “What did you want to say to me?” Rory asked. Eva took a breath, and her answer began before either of them moved.