Run: 2026-09-23-01M36WQPZNVWEJHKR93QZ2FHS3

The rain had turned mean and sideways, hammering the awning of The Raven's Nest in bursts. Rory sat at the end of the bar with her delivery bag on the floor by her feet and the smell of five-spice still clinging to her jacket. The lunch crowd had gone. A grey afternoon in November pressed against the windows, catching on the edges of old maps — Paris, Prague, Marrakech — that papered the walls alongside black-and-white photographs of people whose names no one remembered. Silas had disappeared behind the bookshelf door an hour ago. The bar was hers. She'd just reached for the bottle when the door swung open and the bell above it rang once. A woman stepped in from the rain, folding an umbrella with quick, exact motions. She wore a long charcoal coat — expensive, tailored, the kind of thing that got dry-cleaned rather than washed. Leather gloves went into one pocket. Her hair was dark and cut at the jaw in a line so precise it looked measured. A thin gold chain caught the light at her throat. She stood with one foot angled toward the door, the way she'd always stood at parties. Rory's hand froze on the bottle. "Eva?" The woman turned. For a moment neither of them moved. The rain beat the awning. A tap dripped behind the bar into the quiet. "Rory?" Eva's voice caught on the name. She crossed the room and stopped close enough that the small changes accumulated — the fine line between Eva's brows, the way Rory's black hair fell past her shoulders now, the pale crescent scar on Rory's left wrist catching the dim light. "Christ. Rory. It's really you." "You live in a bar." Eva looked at the maps, the photographs, the empty stools. "Upstairs. The commute's a killer." Rory poured two whiskies without asking. She slid one across the bar. "Sit down." Eva sat. She unbuttoned her coat with one hand and draped it over the stool beside her. Underneath: a silk blouse the colour of bone. She picked up the glass but didn't drink. Her thumb moved along the rim — once, twice — then stopped. A new habit. The Eva she remembered had fidgeted with her hair, her sleeves, anything loose. This Eva held herself like she'd been assembled in a wind tunnel. "You look—" Eva stopped. "Like someone who sleeps above a pub." "No." Eva turned the glass. "You look like yourself. Which is strange. I expected—" She shook her head. "I don't know what I expected." "Someone better?" Rory leaned against the bar. Her reflection in the mirror behind the bottles showed her the way she was: hair too long, jacket too big, delivery bag on the floor like a dog that had given up. "Someone different." Eva sipped. Her eyes stayed on Rory over the rim. "You were going to be a barrister." Rory ran a thumb along the bar's edge. The scar on her wrist shifted. "I was going to be a lot of things." The words landed in the space between them. Eva set the glass down and pressed both palms flat against the counter. The gold band on her left hand caught the neon glow from outside — green, the colour of the Nest's sign. "You're married." "Three years. James. He works in finance." Eva paused. "Don't." "I didn't say anything." "You were going to." Eva's jaw tightened and then loosened. "I'm at the QEII Centre for a conference. Two days of slides about corporate restructuring and men who say 'leverage' like they coined the word. My firm sent me." "Which firm?" "Whitmore and Hale." Eva said this to the counter. "Partner. Eighteen months." "At your age, that's—" "Fast. Everyone says fast." Eva looked at the mirror behind the bottles and found her own reflection and looked away. "It's just work, Rory." "Just work." Rory let that sit. "You used to have red hair and you broke a window at the Students' Union because someone said Thatcher wasn't that bad." "I was twenty." "You were fearless." "I was drunk." Eva almost smiled. Her mouth shifted and then settled back to where it had been. They looked at each other. The photographs on the walls held their silence. The tap behind the bar dripped. "What happened to you, Ev?" Eva's thumb found the rim of the glass again. Once, twice. Then stopped. "People grow up." "That's not what I asked." Something opened behind Eva's face and closed again. Rory watched it happen — the way Eva's shoulders shifted and her gaze moved to some middle distance and then came back and she was still sitting on the stool but some other version of her had stepped to the side. "I tried to ring you," Eva said. "After you left. A few times." "I know." "You never called back." Rory traced the wood grain on the bar. Long, straight lines running the length of it. She'd done this before — on nights when the flat above felt too quiet and the city outside had nothing to say. "Everything I had was broken," Rory said. "You drove me to Paddington at three in the morning and you didn't cry and I thought — she's fine. She's always fine. She doesn't need me." Eva's hand curled around the glass. "I wasn't fine, Rory." The words sat between them. Dense. Small. "I know that now." "No." Eva looked up. Her grey-blue eyes — the same eyes from the shared flat in Cathays, from hungover mornings at the greasy spoon on City Road, from that terrible Christmas in the pub in Pontypridd when they'd sung carols off-key until closing — held something very still and very deep behind them. A room with the door shut. "You don't know. Because I never told you." Rory reached across the bar. Her fingers stopped an inch from Eva's hand. "Ev—" Eva stood. Her coat came off the stool and onto her shoulders and she was buttoning it before Rory found the next word.