Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HH75N24EHCW8S1KHB6MS7

Rory knew the woman at the end of the bar by the way she folded a paper napkin. She had her back to the door. Her dark coat was damp at the shoulders, and a short, tidy haircut exposed the nape of her neck. None of that was familiar. But she pressed each crease flat with the side of her thumb, then turned the napkin and folded it again. At fourteen, Eva had made paper boats out of every receipt her mother left on the kitchen table. Rory stopped beneath the green neon sign, halfway through pulling off her gloves. Rain slipped from the delivery bag on her shoulder and darkened the floorboards. Silas looked up from behind the bar. His gaze went from Rory to the woman on the stool and back. He set down the glass he was polishing. “Rory?” the woman said. Eva’s face was thinner than Rory remembered. The freckles were still there, though, and so was the small nick in her eyebrow from the time they’d tried to climb through the window of a locked swimming pool. She wore a charcoal suit beneath her coat. There was no ring on her fingers, no colour on her nails. Rory had imagined meeting her often enough to have grown tired of the imaginary conversations. Now she could think only of the rain dripping off her bag. “Hi, Eva.” “I didn’t know you worked here.” “I don’t.” Rory shifted the bag higher. “I live upstairs.” Eva glanced at the ceiling, as if the flat might show through it. “Oh.” Silas came out from behind the bar to take Rory’s bag. He favoured his left leg, more noticeably at the end of a long evening. His silver signet ring flashed as he caught the strap. “You can leave it in the office,” he said. “I’ll do it.” “Floor’s wet enough already.” He took the bag without waiting for an answer. Rory watched him carry it towards the back of the bar, past the old maps and the shelf of battered books. When she turned back, Eva had unfolded the napkin. Four white squares lay open beneath her hand. “You’re still in London,” Eva said. “So are you.” “I’ve just moved back. My train was early, and I was walking until the rain let up.” She looked towards the front windows. “I saw the sign.” Outside, the green raven trembled in the reflection of a passing taxi. Rory had lived above it for two years. She had never considered what it might look like to someone searching for somewhere to get dry. Silas returned and lifted a clean glass from the rack. “Another ginger beer?” “Please,” Eva said. There had been a time when Eva would have ordered whatever looked strongest and complained that a single measure was an insult. She used to sing on the night bus, badly and at full volume, until Rory hid her face against the window. Eva’s voice now scarcely carried past the bottles. Rory took the stool beside her, leaving one between them. “You look different.” Eva gave a brief smile. “You don’t.” Rory knew that wasn’t true. She tucked her left hand under the bar, the little crescent scar at her wrist pale against her skin. She had cut it falling through a greenhouse pane at eleven; Eva had held a towel around it all the way to the hospital and cried harder than Rory had. “Sorry,” Eva said. “That came out wrong.” “It’s all right.” Silas set down the ginger beer and a glass of tap water for Rory. She hadn’t asked for one. He went to the other end of the bar to attend to a man with a newspaper, leaving them beneath a black-and-white photograph of a street neither of them recognised. “How long has it been?” Eva asked. “Since we saw each other? Four years. Nearly five.” Eva nodded. “Your dad’s birthday party.” Rory remembered that party: Brendan Carter holding court in the kitchen, Eva dancing with Jennifer after too much wine, Rory already afraid to check the messages on her phone. She hadn’t known how frightened she looked until she caught Eva watching her across the room. “You called later,” Rory said. “I did.” It had been Eva who told her to come to London. She’d made it sound simple from the other end of the phone: get the coach, bring your passport, leave the books. Rory had packed a rucksack while Evan was at work and sat with it in the station toilets for forty minutes, waiting to be sure he hadn’t followed her. She took a sip of water. “You said I could stay with you.” “I know.” “But when I got here, I couldn’t reach you.” Eva kept her eyes on the open napkin. “I saw your calls the next morning.” Rory had wanted to hear that for years. It was worse than she’d expected. “I waited at Victoria until they closed the café,” she said. “I kept thinking your phone was dead.” “I’m sorry.” “You texted at eleven the next day.” “I know what I did.” A glass struck the bar farther down, and Silas murmured something to the man with the newspaper. Rory put her hand around her water glass. For a moment she was back under the station’s bright lights with her rucksack between her feet, watching each face that came through the doors. She had been afraid Eva wouldn’t arrive. She had been afraid Evan would. “Where were you?” she asked. “At home.” Rory turned to look at her. Eva’s cheeks coloured. “I’d been drinking. I started before I was meant to leave. Then I kept thinking I could still get up and go, and by the time I tried to stand—” She stopped. “I stayed on the floor until morning.” Rory had prepared herself for an explanation involving someone else. An accident, a family emergency, a phone stolen on the Tube. She had not prepared for Eva at home, only a few miles away. “You could have told me.” “Yes.” “I might have called someone else.” “Yes,” Eva said again. Her voice held steady, but her hands were gripping the edge of the napkin. “I was ashamed. Then every hour I left it, it got harder to say. I kept trying to write you a message that would make it better.” “You sent, ‘Hope you found somewhere.’” “I remember.” Rory looked away. Silas had found her somewhere. She’d come into the Nest the following afternoon to ask if he knew of any rooms to let. She could barely afford a drink and had ordered tea so she could sit down. He’d brought her a sandwich she hadn’t asked for. He had never pressed her to explain the suitcase or the way she’d flinched when the door opened. “I found Silas,” she said. “Eventually.” Eva glanced towards him. “I’m glad.” Rory almost asked whether she had wondered what happened in the hours before that. She suspected Eva had wondered plenty. It hadn’t brought her to Victoria. They sat without speaking while the rain thickened against the windows. Rory could hear a bus easing through the junction outside. “I stopped drinking,” Eva said at last. “Two years and eight months ago.” Rory looked at the ginger beer. “Is that why you look so serious?” “That, and the haircut.” Eva touched the back of her head. “I work for the railway now. In a signalling centre. They like you to mean what you say.” Rory tried to picture her there, among screens and timetables. She could. That startled her most. Eva had once announced she would never have a job that required her to be anywhere before noon. Now she sat with both feet planted on the floor, an hour after she could easily have gone home, answering a question she had spent years avoiding. “Do you like it?” Rory asked. “Most days. I’m good at it.” “You always knew how to read a map.” “Not a useful qualification for signalling, apparently.” Rory smiled before she could stop herself. Eva saw it and smiled too, then let her hand fall from her hair. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you still doing law?” “No. I deliver for a restaurant. The Golden Empress, over on Wardour Street.” “I thought you wanted to finish your degree.” “I thought so too.” Rory ran a finger through the condensation on her glass. “I might go back. I haven’t decided.” Eva waited. She didn’t say Rory would be good at it, or that her father would be pleased. Five years ago she would have said both, determined to cheer Rory up, and Rory would have resented her for it. “I’m glad I came here,” Rory said. “Even with that first night.” “I hoped you were.” Eva folded the napkin once along its old crease. “After you stopped replying, I asked your mum once. She said you were safe. She wouldn’t give me your number.” “She asked me first.” “Good.” Rory remembered Jennifer standing in the narrow kitchen of the flat upstairs, phone in hand, waiting while Rory decided. At the time, she couldn’t bear to hear Eva apologise. Later, she couldn’t work out how to ask her to. “You could have come looking,” Rory said. “I could have.” Eva didn’t add anything. Rory was grateful for that, though she still felt the old anger sitting between them. Silas came past to collect the empty ginger-beer bottle. Eva thanked him. He gave Rory a glance, checking whether she needed anything, then carried the bottle away. “I have to get up early,” Eva said. “First shift at the new centre.” “All right.” Eva reached into her coat and took out her phone. “Could I give you my number? You don’t have to use it.” Rory read the number from Eva’s screen and put it into her own phone. She stopped before saving the contact. The old entry was still there, an unfamiliar number beneath Eva’s name. For years Rory had carried it from one phone to the next without calling it. She deleted the old number and saved the new one. “There,” she said. Eva’s phone lit up a moment later. She looked at Rory’s name on the screen but didn’t put the phone away. “I can walk with you to the station,” Rory said. “I need some air.” “You’ve just come in.” “My shift ended an hour ago. Silas can keep the bag.” They rose. Rory went to the hook by the door for her coat, and Eva waited while she put it on. Outside, the rain had eased to a fine mist. The street smelled of wet pavement and food from the kitchens closing nearby. For the first half a block they walked in silence. Eva shortened her stride for Rory without seeming to notice she’d done it, just as she had on the walk to school when Rory was eleven and her wrist was bandaged. Rory slipped her hands into her pockets and kept pace beside her.