Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HXTBR7GQKGEN1VYJAMH7E

The green neon sign gave the rain a sickly colour. Aurora saw it reflected in the puddle outside The Raven’s Nest as she came round the corner with a delivery bag cutting into her shoulder. Inside, Silas had taken down the usual photograph above the end of the bar. The pale rectangle it left on the wall looked cleaner than anything else in the room. “What happened to the boxer?” she asked. Silas glanced at the bare patch. “Fell.” “Pictures fall when you take the nail out.” “Then I took the nail out.” He stood behind the counter with a screwdriver beside the till, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the light when he reached for her bag. “Yu-Fei sent food,” Aurora told him. “You ordered enough for a wedding.” “Not mine.” He set the bag on the counter. Aurora slipped off her damp coat and hung it behind the bar. She lived upstairs; the coat hook had become hers through use rather than invitation. The Nest smelled of beer, orange peel and rain-soaked wool. Two men watched football without sound at a table near the door. A woman in a red scarf occupied a stool at the far end, bent over a newspaper. Silas unpacked the cartons. “You eaten?” “A spring roll on the walk.” “That’s theft.” “Tell Yu-Fei. She gave me two.” The woman in the red scarf lowered her newspaper. Aurora knew the movement before she knew the face. The careful fold at the centre, the thumb pressed against the print to keep it from springing open. At fifteen, Eva used to fold exam papers that way while she decided which answer to give first. Eva looked at her across the bar. Her hair had been cut close to her head. A narrow line of white ran through it above one ear. Aurora remembered long brown plaits and the furious way Eva had tugged them out after school. The plaits were gone, along with the roundness in her cheeks. She wore a dark jacket with a loose thread at the cuff and held the paper in hands that had once been covered in blue biro. “Rory.” Aurora gripped the back of an empty stool. “Eva.” Silas looked from one to the other. “You know each other.” “Since we were six,” Eva answered. “Since she stole my pencil case,” Aurora answered at the same time. “I returned it.” “You returned the pencils. You kept the case.” “It had a horse on it. You hated horses.” “I hated that horse.” Silas moved the cartons away from Aurora’s hand. “I’ll get plates.” He crossed to the cupboard beneath the shelves. His left leg dragged a fraction on the turn. Eva watched him, then brought her eyes back to Aurora. “I didn’t know you worked here,” Eva told her. “I don’t. I live upstairs.” Aurora tapped the delivery bag. “I brought Silas his dinner.” Eva glanced at the bag’s gold lettering. “Golden Empress. You still deliver for them?” “Four days a week.” “You used to complain you’d never find your way round London.” “I know the streets now.” Eva nodded and folded the paper once more. The empty stool between them became difficult to ignore. Aurora sat on it. “What are you doing here?” “Having a drink.” “You came across town for this place.” “How do you know where I live?” “I don’t.” Silas set two plates beside the cartons and put a glass of water in front of Aurora. “Food’s there if either of you wants it.” Eva raised her glass. “I’ve paid for my gin.” “I know.” Silas carried a carton to the men by the television, who had begun looking towards the bar. Aurora ran a finger through the water beading on her glass. Eva had written the address of Aurora’s first London room on the back of a petrol receipt. On the train out of Cardiff, Aurora had kept unfolding it to check the street name, though she could have recited every letter. Eva had found the room, spoken to the landlady and sent enough money to cover the deposit. By the time Aurora arrived, Eva had gone. “You didn’t tell me you were back,” Aurora told her. “I got in yesterday.” “From where?” “Bristol.” “You moved to Bristol?” “For a while.” Aurora studied the small glass in Eva’s hand. “You could have called.” Eva touched the rim to her mouth but didn’t drink. “Would you have answered?” “Yes.” “You stopped answering.” “That was years ago.” “I remember.” The television flashed blue against the old maps. One of the men muttered at the match. Aurora had spent whole evenings at that bar with her phone beside her, waiting for a message from Eva, and other evenings with the phone turned face down because she knew one would come. She could remember the cheap plastic cover, split at the corner. She had thrown it out long ago. “I answered when you rang about the room,” Aurora told her. “You answered the first week.” Eva set down the glass. She didn’t sound angry, which made Aurora want to defend herself more. “I was working,” Aurora said. “I know. You told me about Yu-Fei’s place.” “And you kept asking if I’d spoken to Evan.” “You had. He rang me looking for you.” Aurora watched Silas bend to hear one of the men’s order. His grey-streaked head nearly touched the man’s shoulder. He gave them the privacy he could in a room this size. “You could have told me he rang,” she said. “I did.” “You told me three weeks later.” “I told you when he stopped.” “That wasn’t your decision to make.” “No.” Eva took a drink. Aurora had expected an argument and found herself with nowhere to put it. When they were children, Eva had made decisions with a speed that left everybody else scrambling to keep up. At twelve, she had marched Aurora to the head teacher after a boy cut off one of her plaits. At nineteen, she had arrived at the Carter house on Christmas Eve with a suitcase and a bruised forehead, refusing to explain either. Aurora had let her sleep in her room. By morning, Eva had left a note under the kettle and caught a bus to Swansea. They had never spoken about that Christmas. “What happened to your hair?” Aurora asked. Eva put a hand to the white streak. “This bit? Came in last year.” “I meant the rest of it.” “I cut it.” “I can see that.” Eva gave a brief smile. “I was in hospital for a few months. It kept getting caught in things. When I came out, I couldn’t stand it touching my neck.” Aurora sat straighter. “Hospital?” “I’m all right.” “For what?” Eva looked at the newspaper between her hands. A train timetable showed through the page where the ink had rubbed away. “I had an accident at work. Fell from a ladder and broke a few things.” She tapped the back of her head. “Hit this, too.” “What work?” “I restore paintings. Or I did.” Eva picked at the loose thread on her cuff. “Mostly I work on frames now. They’re less likely to mind when I stop halfway.” Aurora remembered Eva at sixteen painting a mural across her bedroom wall while Jennifer Carter called up the stairs to ask whether it would wash off. Eva had drawn a coastline with houses perched along it, each window lit yellow. When Aurora’s parents redecorated, her father sent a photograph of the bare wall with the caption Your friend owes me primer. Aurora still had the picture on her phone. “You painted that enormous shop sign in Cardiff,” she said. “The one with the fish.” “Three fish. The owner insisted they were dolphins.” “They looked like fish.” “They were fish.” Eva rubbed a thumb against the edge of her glass. “I walked past last month. Someone painted over it.” “They’ve had four shops in there since.” “You’ve been back?” “For my mum’s birthday. Dad made everyone wear paper crowns. He wore his through dinner and answered the door in it.” Eva’s mouth tightened around a smile. “Brendan used to tell us to take ours off before pudding. Said the points bent when we leaned over our plates.” “He still says that.” Aurora waited for Eva to ask after her mother. She didn’t. She turned the newspaper face down and exposed an envelope beneath it. Aurora saw her own name, written in Eva’s old sloping hand. Eva put her palm over the envelope. “I was going to leave this with Silas.” “What is it?” “A photograph. I found a box when I moved.” “Why not put it through my door?” “I didn’t know you lived above the bar until he mentioned it.” Eva glanced towards Silas. “I asked if he knew you. He told me to sit down and wait.” Aurora looked at him. He was pulling a pint, shoulders squared to the taps. “He didn’t tell me you were here,” she said. “I asked him not to.” “You thought I’d leave?” “I thought you should choose whether to sit with me.” Aurora held out her hand. Eva slid the envelope across the counter. It had been opened and closed so many times the flap no longer stuck. Inside lay a photograph from a disposable camera: Aurora and Eva at seventeen, seated on the sea wall in Cardiff with their feet above the wet sand. Eva held a paper cone of chips. Aurora had turned towards her, laughing, a strip of black hair across her mouth. Aurora had forgotten the afternoon. She looked at Eva’s hand in the photograph, suspended over the chips as if she were about to offer one. “We missed your bus,” she said. “We missed two. You wouldn’t leave until the tide reached the third step.” “You bet me it wouldn’t.” “You cheated. You counted from the top.” Aurora laid the photograph on the bar. “Why did you keep this?” “It was mine.” “You know what I mean.” Eva looked at her younger face. “There weren’t many pictures of us together.” Silas came back with the empty carton. He saw the photograph, then the untouched food on the counter. “I can warm some up,” he told them. “Leave it,” Aurora said. He took the carton behind the bar. Eva watched his hand close around it, the signet ring bright against the cardboard. “He looks after you,” she said. “He rents me a flat.” “Rory.” “He does both.” Eva nodded. She pressed her fingertips against the folded newspaper as though to keep it flat. Aurora slipped the photograph into its envelope, then stopped before sealing it. “After I got here, you kept ringing to ask if I was safe. Every time I heard my phone, I thought something had happened. I couldn’t bear another call about him.” “I should have told you why he’d rung me.” “Yes.” “I thought if you knew he was still asking, you’d go back to Cardiff and sort it out yourself.” “I might have.” “That frightened me.” Aurora looked at her. Eva’s glass stood between two wet rings on the counter. She had drunk less than half. “I thought you were angry because I didn’t come to stay with you,” Aurora said. “I was. For about an hour.” Eva pulled the loose thread from her cuff and wound it round a finger. “Then I went to the station to see if I could catch you before the train left. I got there after it had gone.” “You never told me.” “You were calling from that room. You had the window open, and I could hear a bus outside. I didn’t want to talk about the station while you were telling me what the room looked like.” “The room was awful.” “You said the ceiling sloped.” “It did. I hit my head getting out of bed.” “You didn’t tell me that part.” “No.” Eva let the thread fall. Aurora put the envelope beside her glass. For a moment neither reached for it. Silas returned with two clean forks and placed them on the counter, close enough for either woman to take. He didn’t linger. Eva picked up a fork. “Is there still a good reason he ordered enough food for a wedding?” Aurora opened the nearest carton. Steam rose between them, carrying ginger and hot oil into the stale warmth of the bar. “He does this when he forgets lunch,” she said. She pushed the carton towards Eva. “Take some before he insists we eat all of it.” Eva set her newspaper aside and drew the plate nearer.