Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HG04491D1DNPFNRNA9CHR

The man in the corner had covered the table with paper napkins. Aurora counted seven from the doorway, each weighted with a beer mat or a coin. One held a drawing of the Cardiff University clock tower, crooked but recognisable. Another carried three phone numbers, all crossed out. The man leaned over a fresh napkin, pen balanced between fingers stained blue at the tips. He looked up when the bar door closed behind her. For a moment, neither of them moved. “Morgan?” He set the pen down. His hair had gone almost white, though he couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven. At university, Morgan Price had worn his dark curls past his collar and talked through lectures as if the rest of the room had come to hear him. The man at the table had cut his hair close to his scalp. A thin pale line ran from his chin into his collar. “Rory Carter.” His gaze dropped to the red delivery bag in her hand. “You found me.” “I didn’t know you were lost.” He touched the napkin with the clock tower and turned it face down. Aurora crossed the Raven’s Nest. Rain followed her in, darkening the shoulders of her jacket. The green neon sign over the entrance had laid a stripe across the wet pavement outside; inside, old maps and black-and-white photographs crowded the walls. Silas stood behind the bar polishing a glass, his silver signet ring flashing against its rim. “Delivery for table three,” Aurora told him. “Table three left ten minutes ago.” Silas glanced at the bag. “I tried ringing.” “My phone died.” “It has a charger.” “It had a charger.” Silas took the bag. “Go and sit down. You look as if you’ve walked here from Wales.” Morgan raised one hand. “She could.” “I remember,” Silas told him. Aurora stopped. “You two know each other?” “He came in an hour ago,” Silas said. “That’s the full account.” Morgan pulled out the chair opposite his. “You can keep standing if you like. I’ve become quite good at sitting.” Aurora hung her damp jacket over the chair and sat. Up close, she saw a narrow silver hoop in his left ear and a deep burn across the back of his hand. He folded both hands under the table. “White hair,” she said. “Black hair.” He tipped his head towards hers. “You used to colour it with those red packets from the chemist.” “I used to think they worked.” “They did, until it rained.” She looked at the napkin he had turned over. “You still draw on anything people leave within reach.” “Paper’s expensive.” “You could have bought a notebook with what you’ve spent on beer mats.” He shifted the coins. Three pounds and forty pence. No glass stood near him. Silas came over with two mugs of tea and placed one before each of them. “On the house. Don’t put the napkins in the mugs.” “I wasn’t going to,” Morgan said. “You did last Thursday.” Silas returned to the bar, his left leg catching for a step as he rounded the counter. Aurora wrapped her hands round the mug. “Last Thursday?” “I come here sometimes.” “I live upstairs.” Morgan looked towards the ceiling, then back at her. “I didn’t know.” “You could have asked Silas.” “I didn’t come looking for you.” “Neither did I.” He turned his mug by the handle without drinking. At eighteen, Morgan had made silence feel like a dare. He would grin until someone filled it, then find the one thing they wished they’d kept to themselves. Now he examined the brown ring left by an old glass on the tabletop. “When did you get to London?” she asked. “February.” “It’s November.” “Yes.” “How’s your mother?” “She moved to Pembroke. Her husband keeps bees.” “Your father?” Morgan picked a fleck from the edge of a beer mat. “Still in the house in Penarth. He retired from the council.” Aurora waited. Morgan had once told her that his father would die at his desk before admitting he owned a garden. She couldn’t picture him retired. “And you?” he asked. “You’re delivering food.” “Part-time. Golden Empress, round the corner.” “Your father must love that.” “He hasn’t ordered from us.” Morgan gave a short laugh. “I meant—” “I know what you meant.” He lifted his mug. Steam rose between them, and he set it down again. “You were going to be a barrister,” he said. “My father was. I was going to finish Pre-Law.” “What happened?” “I left.” He nodded once, as if she’d given him the date of a train. Aurora found she resented that more than the question. “What happened to the theatre?” she asked. Morgan’s thumb rubbed the burn on his hand. “Which theatre?” “The one you said you’d build out of the old printworks. You made me spend an entire Saturday measuring rooms with a piece of string.” “That building’s flats now.” “I saw.” “There’s a café on the ground floor. Their coffee costs more than we paid for dinner.” “You haven’t answered.” “No.” He took his tea this time. “I worked at a theatre in Bristol. Box office, then lighting. I stopped.” The old Morgan would have told her which manager deserved a punch and which actor couldn’t remember a line. He would have performed the whole business on the table with salt shakers. Aurora looked at the napkins again. The clock tower. A stairwell. The side of a face, drawn with four spare strokes. “What’s on your hand?” “A kettle at work.” “What work?” “Kitchen at a care home. In Bethnal Green.” “You can cook?” “Enough that they pay me.” “That’s new.” “I learned.” There was no sting in his voice. She would have preferred one. The quiet left her with nowhere to put her own. At the bar, Silas changed the music. A trumpet gave way to the low scrape of a cello. Two men near the window argued over a crossword, their pencils tapping out a rhythm against the wood. Aurora picked up the napkin with the stairwell. The steps narrowed towards a dark rectangle. “You remember the old law building?” she asked. “The stairs by the rear exit?” Morgan looked at the drawing. “You sat there after your first moot. You wouldn’t come out.” “You told everyone I’d gone to the library.” “You asked me to.” “I asked you not to tell my father.” “He was in Cardiff that day?” “He was in the audience.” Morgan let go of the beer mat. “I’d forgotten.” “I hadn’t.” She set the napkin back. She had stood at the lectern with her father in the third row, her notes shaking hard enough to make the paper crackle. When she lost her place, he’d lowered his eyes to the programme. Morgan had found her afterwards on those stairs with two packets of crisps and stayed there until the caretaker came to lock up. “I was poor company,” she said. “You ate my crisps.” “I hated that flavour.” “You ate both packets.” “You bought prawn cocktail.” “It was all the machine had.” She felt the start of a smile and drank her tea before it reached her face. Morgan flattened the napkin with the clock tower. “I went past your old place in Roath last Christmas. Someone had painted the door yellow.” “You didn’t go to the house?” “I walked past it.” “You could have knocked.” “On a yellow door? I had no proof you lived there.” “You had my number.” “I had an old number.” “It worked until April.” Morgan’s fingers paused. “I called it in March.” Aurora remembered the phone she’d kept turned off for weeks, tucked into the back of a drawer beneath folded socks. Evan had used other numbers once she blocked his. She had listened to one voicemail from him by accident, then stopped listening to any. “I didn’t get it,” she said. “I didn’t leave a message.” “Then I couldn’t have.” “No.” The cello stopped. Someone near the front door fed coins into the fruit machine, and its bright chimes cut across the room. Morgan gathered the loose napkins into a pile, careful to keep their corners aligned. His hands looked older than his face. Aurora noticed he had left one apart: the three crossed-out phone numbers. “Why call?” she asked. “My mother found a box of my things. Your scarf was in it.” “My scarf?” “Green. You left it in my room during that snow in second year.” “That belonged to Eva.” “I thought she’d lent it to you.” “She did.” Aurora put her mug down. “You kept it all this time?” “It was in a box.” “Did you bring it to London?” “No. My mother wears it when she checks the bees.” “That’ll delight Eva.” “I meant to send you a photograph.” He touched his coat pocket, though no phone appeared. “I thought you’d laugh.” “Probably.” “I saw you once after that. In Cardiff, outside the station.” Aurora fixed her eyes on him. “When?” “End of March. You were getting into a taxi.” “With someone?” “You were alone.” She could place the day. Evan had waited outside her flat the night before and knocked until the neighbour threatened to call the police. She had gone to the station to buy a ticket to London, then turned back because her wages hadn’t come through. At the taxi rank, she’d counted the money in her purse twice before giving the driver her address. “Why didn’t you call out?” she asked. “You had your head down. I thought you might not want to see me.” “You could have found out.” “I could have.” Silas appeared with a plate of chips between them. “Kitchen’s closing. Eat these or watch me do it.” Morgan glanced at him. “Have you been listening?” “Since you started speaking at a volume fit for a library, no.” Silas set down vinegar and limped back towards the bar. Aurora took a chip. It burnt her fingers; she held it above the plate until she could eat it. Morgan reached for one from the other side. “You missed Eva’s wedding,” she said. “I know.” “She asked about you.” “I sent a card.” “She didn’t get one.” Morgan dropped his chip. “I sent it to her old address.” “She’d moved two years before.” “I know that now.” “She thought you were angry with her.” “I wasn’t.” “She’d have liked to hear it from you.” He pressed his palms against the table edge. “I kept the invitation. Thought I’d answer when I knew whether I could get the weekend off. Then I missed the date.” “She got married in June. You had until June to tell her.” “I know.” Aurora pushed the vinegar towards him. He didn’t take it. The same bright chimes sounded from the fruit machine. A man at the window cursed, and his friend laughed without looking up from the crossword. “I wasn’t at my best that year,” Morgan said. “What happened?” He looked towards the photographs on the wall. In one, a woman in a thick coat held a cigarette beneath the awning of a shop that no longer existed. “I got ill. I stayed with my dad for a while. Then I went back to work, and I couldn’t keep up.” Aurora waited. He pulled the plate an inch nearer her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.” “I know you didn’t.” He drew a breath. “I didn’t tell anyone from Cardiff. Not you, not Eva.” “You could have.” “I’d have had to listen to myself explain it.” “You listened to us explain plenty.” “I did.” He picked up his chip. “I should have told her I wasn’t coming.” Aurora took another from the plate. “You can tell her now.” “She still in London?” “North. She’s got a boy who bites the buttons off coats.” “Sounds like Eva’s son.” “He looks just like her until he does that.” Morgan found his phone at last and placed it on the table, face down. A strip of tape held one corner of the case together. He didn’t ask for the number. “You saw me at the station,” Aurora said. “I keep thinking about that.” “I’m sorry.” “I don’t know what you could have done.” “Neither do I.” She looked at his white hair, the careful pile of drawings, the burn he kept touching. For years she had remembered him halfway through a joke, with a room waiting for its end. She had no such picture of the years between that room and this table. “Was the care home kitchen bad?” she asked. “The kettle was. Everything else is all right.” He took a chip. “I make the puddings on Fridays.” “You used to burn toast.” “I’ve told you. I learned.” “What do you make?” “Rice pudding, mostly. One woman asks for jam in hers and then tells me each week that she never liked jam.” “Do you give her any?” “A spoonful. She scrapes it onto the saucer and eats the pudding.” Aurora laughed. Morgan looked down at the plate, but she caught a smile before he hid it. Silas called from behind the bar, “Rory, your bag’s by the till. Yu-Fei rang. She wants you back for the half-ten run.” Aurora checked the clock above the spirits. She had nine minutes. “I have to go,” she told Morgan. “I heard.” She put her jacket on. One sleeve stuck against the wet lining, and she had to work her arm through it. Morgan held the plate steady when her elbow struck the table. At the bar, Silas handed her the delivery bag and a charger cable wound into a neat loop. “For the phone,” he said. “Bring it back.” “I live upstairs.” “That hasn’t brought back my other one.” Aurora slipped the cable into her pocket. Morgan remained at the corner table, the pen beside his hand. She returned to him and held out her phone. “Put your number in.” He picked it up. The screen stayed black. “Dead,” she said. Morgan looked at the crossed-out numbers on the napkin. He found a blank space below them and wrote a new one, pressing hard enough to mark the tabletop through the paper. “Mine,” he said. He tore off the clean strip and held it out. Aurora folded it once and put it in her jacket pocket. “Eva’s number hasn’t changed.” “I still have it.” “Good.” She took hold of the delivery bag. Morgan moved his mug aside and picked up the chip he’d dropped, but didn’t eat it. Aurora left him at the table with his tea and drawings, then went out beneath the green light of the sign.