Run: 2026-09-23-01M37PB2NKKTVJAXD4R6327SQ7

The green neon above the door had developed a stutter. Every eleven seconds it dropped out and the whole front window went dark, and in that dark Rory caught her own reflection: helmet hair, Golden Empress fleece zipped to the chin, a smear of plum sauce on the cuff she hadn't noticed until now. She pushed through the door. The Nest smelled of lemon polish and spilled stout. Silas stood behind the bar with a tea towel over his shoulder, turning a pint glass against the light as if it owed him money. "Your sign's dying." "It's been dying since 2011. It enjoys the attention." He set the glass down and reached for the whiskey she hadn't asked for. "Busy night?" "Fourteen drops. One bloke in Fitzrovia tipped me in Monopoly money and thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him." "Did you take it?" "I took the Mayfair." The corner of his beard shifted. That counted as a laugh from Silas. He slid the glass across and went back to his polishing, and Rory turned on the stool to let the room settle around her. Tuesday crowd. Two men from the theatre on Greek Street arguing over a crossword. A woman alone under the framed map of pre-war Vienna, reading a paperback with the spine cracked flat. And at the far end, by the bookshelf, a table of four in office clothes, loud in the way of people who'd started drinking at five and had no plans to stop. One of them laughed. It went up high and cracked at the top, a donkey-bray of a thing, and Rory's hand stopped halfway to her glass. She knew that laugh. She had heard it through a bedroom wall in Cathays for two years, had heard it in the back row of Contract Law, had heard it the night they'd climbed the fence into Bute Park at three in the morning with a bottle of Lambrini and a stolen traffic cone. Cerys Pritchard. Hair cut to a sharp bob now, a navy suit that fit her properly, a lanyard tucked into the breast pocket. She had her head thrown back and her hand flat on the table, and she hadn't looked up. Rory turned back to the bar. Silas didn't lift his eyes from the glass. "Friend of yours?" "How do you do that?" "You went still. Most people fidget when they're uncomfortable. You go still." He set the pint glass on the rack. "Back room's free, if you'd like it." She thought about the bookshelf, the click of the catch, the quiet on the other side. She thought about it long enough that the neon outside cut out and came back. "No." "Suit yourself." It took Cerys another ten minutes. Rory watched it happen in the mirror behind the optics: Cerys rising to fetch a round, weaving between tables, pulling her card from a slim leather case. Stopping two stools away. Frowning at the side of Rory's face the way you frown at a word on the tip of your tongue. "Sorry, this is going to sound mad, but—Rory?" Rory turned. "Hiya, Cer." The card case hit the bar. Cerys pressed both hands over her mouth, then dropped them, then reached out and stopped short, hands hovering, as though Rory might shatter or bite. "Oh my God. Oh my *God*. I thought you'd—nobody knew where you'd gone. Your mam said London but she wouldn't say where, and your number was dead, and your Facebook just—" She mimed something vanishing into air. "Poof." "That was the idea." It came out flatter than Rory meant. Cerys blinked, and her smile faltered for half a second before she hauled it back up. "Right. No, course. God, look at you. Your hair." "It grows back." "You used to have it right down to here." Cerys touched her own shoulder blade. "You used to sit on it." "I remember." Silas appeared at Cerys's elbow, silent as a draught. "What can I get you?" "Oh—two Pinot Grigio, a Peroni, and a gin and slim, please. And whatever she's having." She jabbed a thumb at Rory, beaming. "On me." "She's set." Silas took the card and moved off, and Rory saw his eyes travel once over the lanyard, the suit, the scuffed heels, filing it all somewhere behind that hazel stare. Cerys hitched herself onto the stool beside her. Up close she smelled of expensive perfume layered over a long day. Faint shadows sat under her eyes that concealer had given up on. "So what are you doing now? Are you at a firm? I heard Linklaters were taking Cardiff grads, I thought maybe—" "I deliver takeaway." Cerys laughed, then saw Rory's face, then stopped laughing. "Oh. Like—properly?" "Chinese place off Gerrard Street. Moped and everything." Rory tugged the fleece out from her chest so Cerys could read the gold embroidery. "Best crispy duck in Chinatown. Yu-Fei will tell you so herself, loudly, whether you've asked or not." "But you were top of our year in Tort." "And you were bottom. How's that working out?" It landed harder than a joke should. Cerys looked down at the lanyard and turned it over so the logo faced her chest. "Pupillage in Gray's Inn. Finished it last spring. I'm in a set now, junior tenant. Mostly family work." She spun the stem of an empty glass someone had left on the bar. "Your dad would've been proud of me, I reckon. He always said I had the gob for it." "He said you had the gob for the pub quiz." "Same skill set." This time they both laughed, and for a moment the years folded shut and they were nineteen, sharing a single duvet on the floor of Cerys's room because the heating had packed in, whispering about lecturers they fancied. Then it opened again. Silas returned with the drinks on a tray and the card on a saucer. Cerys signed without reading the total. She didn't pick up the tray. "Rory." Her voice dropped. "Is he—are you still with—" "No." "Good. Good. That's—" Cerys pressed her lips together. "I saw him. Evan. About a year after you went. In Tiger Tiger, of all places. He asked if I'd heard from you." Rory's thumb found the crescent of scar on her left wrist and pressed into it. "What did you tell him?" "That I hadn't. Which was true." Cerys hesitated. "He had a new girlfriend with him. Little blonde thing, second year. She kept looking at him before she answered anything. Before she ordered a drink, even. Like she was checking." The neon outside cut out. The window went black and gave Rory back her own face, pale and very still. "You noticed that." "Rory—" "You noticed it in her." Cerys's hand closed round the stem of the empty glass. "I noticed it in you too. That's what I'm trying to say. I noticed it in you and I didn't say anything, because you were so—you were *Rory*, you had an answer for everything, and I thought if it was bad you'd tell me. And then you stopped coming out, and I thought, well, she's loved-up, fair play. And then you were gone." She let go of the glass. "I used to lie awake doing the maths. How many times I'd seen you flinch when your phone went. I got to thirty-something and made myself stop counting." The light came back on. Green washed over the maps on the walls, over the photographs of men in hats who'd been dead for fifty years. Rory picked up her whiskey and didn't drink it. "I didn't tell anyone, Cer. Not you. Not Mam. Eva only found out because she turned up unannounced with a lasagne and saw the door." "What door?" "The bedroom door. He'd taken the handle off the inside." Cerys made a sound, small and wet, and turned her face towards the optics. At the corner table, one of her colleagues stood and craned towards the bar. "Cerys! We're dying of thirst over here, love!" She didn't move. Her knuckles had gone white on the edge of the bar. "I should've come round," she managed. "I should've just knocked on the bloody door." "You'd have got the lasagne treatment. He was very charming to Eva. Offered to carry it in for her." Rory set the glass down. "It wouldn't have been you who fixed it." "That's not the point." "I know it's not." Silas drifted past with a crate of mixers balanced on his hip, his left leg dragging a fraction on the turn. He set the crate down within earshot and began unloading tonic bottles one by one, labels facing out, each placed with the care of a man defusing something. Cerys wiped under her eyes with the side of her finger, careful of the mascara. "You're different. You know that? You used to talk with your hands. You used to fill every silence going. Now you just—sit there and let it happen." "People tell you more if you let it happen." "Is that what the takeaway teaches you?" Rory glanced at Silas. He placed another bottle. Didn't look up. "Something like that." The colleague shouted again. Cerys picked up the tray at last, and the glasses chimed against each other. She stood holding it, not leaving. "Can I have your number? Your actual number. I won't pass it on. I won't tell your mam, even. I just—" Her voice snagged. "I'd like to know where you are." Rory looked at her for a long moment. At the good suit and the tired eyes. At the girl who'd once held her hair back outside Walkabout and then walked her home in the rain, singing Duffy off-key the whole way down Salisbury Road. She reached across the bar, took the pen from beside the till, and pulled a napkin from the stack.