Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HQNA4X8Y2HEG7WZHFKR31

Rain had soaked through the paper bag before Aurora Carter got the takeaway boxes onto the counter. A dark patch spread across the bar top beneath them. “Yu-Fei packed you dumplings,” she told Silas. “And a warning about the state of your lunch habits.” Silas eased himself off the stool, favouring his left leg. His silver signet ring caught the light as he lifted the bag by its damp handles. “Which cost more?” “The warning. She gave it for free.” The door opened behind Rory. Rain rattled against the glass, and someone stepped in under the green wash of the Raven’s Nest sign. Rory heard the door shut, then the sound of a coat being shaken out. “Are you open?” Rory knew the voice before she turned. Eva stood beside the rack of umbrellas with a folded newspaper over her head. Water ran off its corners and spotted the floor. Her hair, once a copper tangle she cut with kitchen scissors, lay close against her skull. A black coat hung open over a grey shirt and a white clerical collar. Neither woman moved. Silas looked from one to the other. “We’re open. Coffee?” Eva lowered the newspaper. “Please.” Rory’s delivery jacket still had a strip of packing tape stuck to one sleeve. She peeled it off and wound it around her finger. “Eva.” Eva’s mouth opened, then closed. “Rory.” Silas set a cup beneath the machine. Steam hissed between them. Rory watched Eva look past her, taking in the maps, the photographs, the brass rail at the foot of the bar. She had never seen the place before. That much showed. “I came in because of the rain.” Eva held up the ruined newspaper, as if it could account for the years between them. “I was heading for the station.” “You missed it.” “I know.” “You always did.” Eva gave a small laugh. It stopped when Rory looked at the collar. “That’s new,” Rory said. “It’s been three years.” Rory thought of Eva at seventeen, standing outside a chapel in Cardiff with a cigarette behind her ear, arguing with the priest who had refused to let them shelter from a storm. Eva had called him a man guarding an empty building from wet children. She had been pleased with that line for a week. “Three years,” Rory repeated. Silas brought the coffee over. He set it near Eva but stayed within reach of the cup. “Rory lives upstairs,” he told her. Eva glanced at Rory. “Do you?” “Four years.” Silas took his food to the far end of the counter. He opened a box, found a fork and turned his attention to a black-and-white photograph on the wall. Eva wrapped both hands around the cup. “I didn’t know you were still in London.” “I didn’t know you weren’t.” “I moved back to Cardiff. Then Bristol. I’m here for a course.” “What sort?” “Hospital chaplaincy.” Rory pulled out the stool beside Eva but did not sit. Her legs ached from the delivery rounds. On the other side of the counter, the coffee machine clicked as it cooled. “You told me I was mad to study law,” she said. “You hated law.” “You told me anybody with a job title had given up thinking.” “I had plenty of opinions.” “You had a leaflet about breaking into vacant houses.” “It was about the housing crisis.” “It had instructions for opening a window.” Eva looked down at her coffee. Her fingernails were cut short and clean. Rory remembered them stained blue with paint, the skin around them split from turpentine. Eva had filled the margins of every schoolbook with drawings of strangers on buses. Now she wore a small watch with a cracked face and kept turning the cup until its handle faced squarely towards her. “What happened to painting?” Rory asked. “I still do some.” “You mean you own paints.” “I painted the kitchen last month.” Rory let the tape fall from her finger. It stuck to the bar. Eva pushed the cup away by an inch. “That sounded like a joke when I thought it.” “It was one.” “I know you remember it differently.” “Painting?” “Me.” Silas shut one of the takeaway boxes. He carried it into the back room without a word. The old photographs kept their places on the wall. Rory stayed standing. “I remember a phone call,” she said. “You told me to get on a train. You told me your sofa was mine for as long as I needed it.” “It was.” “For one night.” Eva pressed her thumb into a wet ring beneath the cup. “I should have come back.” Rory looked at the windows. A bus passed outside, its lit upper deck sliding across the glass. She had arrived in London at twenty with a backpack and a holdall whose wheel had broken before she got off the platform. Eva had met her there. They had bought chips on the walk home, and Rory had eaten hers with her fingers because her hands shook too much to manage the wooden fork. On the second morning, Eva had gone out and left a note beside the kettle. “I read that note so many times,” Rory said. “‘Dad’s ill. Back soon.’ Not even your number.” “I had the same number.” “You turned your phone off.” Eva pulled her hands away from the cup. “He was in surgery.” “I know that now.” “I couldn’t talk in the ward.” “You could have talked outside it. You could have sent six words from a corridor.” Eva’s eyes went to the strip of tape on the bar. She lifted one end with her nail, folded the sticky sides together and left it in front of Rory. “My father died that week,” she said. Rory took the stool at last. “I know that too.” “I went straight from the hospital to my mum’s. I kept thinking I’d call you after I’d sorted the next thing.” “There was always a next thing.” “There was.” “I was in your flat. I didn’t know anybody else in London. Evan kept calling, and every time someone came up the stairs I stood behind your front door with a chair in my hands.” Eva looked at her then. Rory had not planned to tell her about the chair. She could still feel its cheap wooden legs biting into her palms. “I’m sorry,” Eva said. Rory picked up the folded tape and pressed it against the counter. “You told me I could come.” “Yes.” “You knew why I came.” “Yes.” Outside, the rain thinned. Water dripped from the newspaper at Eva’s feet onto the tiles. Eva touched her collar, then dropped her hand. “You don’t have to forgive me.” “I wasn’t going to ask for permission.” “No. You wouldn’t.” “You sound surprised.” “I remember you asking permission to use your own money.” Rory felt the small crescent scar on her wrist rub against the edge of her sleeve. At university she had once asked Evan whether he thought she should buy a winter coat. She had owned the money, and he had never liked the coat she chose. Eva knew about that day. Rory had told her on the train out of Cardiff. “People learn,” Rory said. Eva nodded. “I can see that.” “Don’t make it sound like one of your hospital talks.” “I wasn’t.” “Then tell me something true. Why did you stop answering after the funeral?” Eva drew the cup towards her, but she didn’t drink. At the far end of the bar, Silas came out of the back room and put a clean glass on the shelf. Rory heard its base touch the wood. “I saw your messages,” Eva said. “The first few, I thought I’d answer when I got home.” “And the rest?” “I knew you were angry. I was ashamed of leaving you there, and each day I let pass made it harder to pick up the phone.” Rory looked at the coffee going cold between Eva’s hands. “I gave you a new number in March,” she said. “I know. I saved it.”