Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HAEZ063KJ18TT9Y79P586

Aurora carried the last delivery bag into the Raven’s Nest with rain running down the back of her coat. The green sign above the door painted the puddles at her feet. Inside, Silas had taken the stools off the tables, but half the lamps still burned, and a woman stood at the bar with both hands wrapped around a glass of water. “Kitchen’s closed,” Silas called. “Good thing this is for you.” Aurora set the bag beside his till. “Yu-Fei put in the extra chilli oil.” The woman turned at the sound of her voice. Her hair was cut close to her head. A thin white line crossed one eyebrow, and she wore a navy coat with an identification badge clipped inside the lapel. Aurora looked at the badge before she looked back at the face. “Eva?” Eva set down her water. She used to wave both arms when she spotted someone across a street, as if she were bringing a plane to ground. Now she kept her hands on the bar. “Rory. I thought you’d gone back to Cardiff.” “I live upstairs.” Eva glanced at the ceiling. “Of course you do.” Silas took the delivery bag. His gaze moved between them, then he carried the food to the far end of the bar. The limp in his left leg marked each step. He put two clean glasses within reach of the tap and left them there. Aurora pulled off her wet coat. Eva watched her fold it over a stool, watched the crescent scar on her wrist flash white beneath her sleeve. “How long has it been?” Eva asked. “Six years since we’ve stood in the same room.” “We saw each other at the station.” “You were on a train. I was on the platform.” “You ran alongside it.” “For about three seconds.” Eva touched the edge of her eyebrow. “Six years, then.” Aurora sat. The wood of the stool rocked beneath her, and she steadied it with her foot. At nineteen, Eva had painted a pair of gold wings on the shutter of an empty shop in Cardiff. She had persuaded Aurora to hold the paint tins while she worked. When the owner arrived, Eva had handed him the brush and asked whether he wanted to finish the second wing. For weeks afterward, she had greeted every person they passed as if they might be him. “Were you looking for me?” Aurora asked. “No. The rain got through my collar. I saw the sign.” Eva glanced towards the windows, where water blurred the street. “I had a course round the corner.” “In London?” “I’m back for two days. Work paid for a room near Euston.” “What work?” “Emergency housing. The council.” Aurora looked at the badge again. Eva turned it over, showing a photograph of herself with the same short hair and an expression that offered nothing to the camera. “You find people rooms?” “Some nights. Some nights I tell them there aren’t any. This week they’ve taught us a new way to record the second kind.” Silas opened a drawer and took out a clean towel. He placed it beside Aurora’s coat. “Your sleeve’s dripping on my floor.” “Then stop charging me rent.” “You’d miss having something to argue about.” He carried his food into the back room. Eva followed him with her eyes until the door shut. “He owns the place?” “And the flat. That’s Silas.” “You landed well.” Aurora rubbed rain from the table with the towel. “Eventually.” Eva looked down at her glass. “I know.” The last time Aurora had heard Eva’s voice, it had come through a phone pressed against her ear in a Cardiff bus shelter. Evan had been calling her for twenty minutes. Her suitcase sat between her shoes, its zip held shut by a length of string. Eva had given her the address of a vacant flat in London and the number for the woman who held its keys. Aurora had expected to find Eva there too. “You told me to come,” Aurora said. “Yes.” “I did.” “I know that as well.” “For the first week I kept thinking you’d knock on the door.” Eva slid a fingertip around the rim of the glass. She stopped when it made a sound. “I should’ve told you I wasn’t there.” “You sent messages.” “I sent an address and three messages about the boiler.” “You sent one asking if I’d eaten.” “Rory.” Aurora let the towel fall across her knees. Eva’s short hair exposed the shape of her ears, familiar from childhood, though Aurora could not remember when she had last noticed them. Back then Eva had cut holes in her school blazer pockets so she could pull sweets through the lining during lessons. She had once spent a whole Saturday persuading Aurora to board a train just to see the sea from a different town. “Where were you?” Aurora asked. “At home. Mum fell on the stairs. They thought she’d broken her hip.” “You could’ve told me.” “She hadn’t. It was her wrist. But at the hospital she couldn’t give them our address.” Eva lifted her glass and found it empty. “I stayed in Cardiff after that. Dad still went to work, and she kept letting people into the house because she thought they were my aunt.” Aurora pushed her own untouched glass towards Eva. Eva shook her head. “I rang you in March,” Aurora said. “I saw.” “You didn’t pick up.” “I was in a pharmacy with Mum. She’d emptied every packet in their display onto the floor. By the time we got home, you’d sent that message.” Aurora remembered the message. Don’t worry about it. I’ve found somewhere else. She had written it in the borrowed flat while a stranger’s clothes turned in the washing machine beside her. “I meant the room.” “I read it as you meant it.” Silas emerged from the back room with a plate in his hand. He stopped by the sink, scraped a few grains of rice into the bin and began to wash the plate. Behind him, maps covered the wall. Aurora found the Welsh coast on one of them, no wider than her thumb. “Is your mum all right now?” she asked. “She knows Dad most days. I go round before work and write down what she needs to eat. Yesterday she put my note in the fridge and the milk on the table.” “I didn’t know.” “You wouldn’t.” Eva took the badge off her coat and put it face down on the bar. One corner had worn pale where her thumb had rubbed it. “You still paint?” Aurora asked. Eva gave a short breath through her nose. “No. You still make lists of laws you’d change?” “I deliver food.” “That wasn’t what I asked.” “No.” Rain struck the window hard enough to turn a passing bus into a smear of red. Aurora remembered a notebook full of arguments written in the margins of her lecture notes, and Eva reading them aloud in a solemn courtroom voice until both of them laughed. She had thrown the notebook away when she left Cardiff. She could still hear Eva stumbling over the word *jurisdiction* on purpose. “You would’ve been good at this,” Aurora said, touching the badge. “Finding people a place.” “I give them the number of a hostel that’s full. Then I put that in a box on a form.” “You got me out.” “I gave you an address.” “It was enough to get on the bus.” Eva picked up her badge. She worked its pin through the coat lining, missed the hole, then took the coat off so she could see what she was doing. Her left sleeve had frayed at the cuff. Aurora caught hold of it before it dragged through a ring of water on the bar. “Your train?” Aurora asked. “Not till morning.” “Silas makes coffee if you ask him.” From the sink, Silas turned off the tap. “I heard that.” Eva looked at the coat caught in Aurora’s hand. “Does he make it as strong as you used to?” “Stronger. Mine always tasted of the spoon.” Eva eased the pin into place. Aurora let go of the sleeve, and Eva hung the coat over the next stool while Silas reached for the coffee tin.