Run: 2026-10-05-01M46B63VXVR4HYJPTPBRF3NAC

Rory came into the Raven’s Nest with a carton of spring rolls balanced on a bag of rice. Rain had softened the paper handles. She held the bag against her chest while she nudged the door shut with her heel. “Your dinner’s leaking.” Silas stood behind the bar with a tea towel tucked through his belt. He pointed at her coat. A dark patch had spread beneath the bag. “That’s weather. Your dinner’s fine.” “Put it down before we find out.” She set the food beside his ledger. Green light from the sign above the entrance caught the crescent scar on her wrist. Silas slipped a plate under the bag, then took a glass from the shelf. “Tea?” “I’ve got another delivery.” “You’ve got wet sleeves.” From the far end of the bar came a laugh Rory knew before she recognised the woman who made it. The laugh had once carried across school corridors and out of bedroom windows. It had interrupted assemblies. Now it stopped after a single breath. “Rory?” The woman sat beside an untouched glass of white wine. Her hair, once a black tangle she cut over the bathroom sink, lay in a smooth chestnut bob against her jaw. She wore a cream coat. Its belt hung in two equal lengths on either side of the stool. Rory kept her hand on the takeaway bag. “Carys.” Carys stood, knocking her knee against the underside of the bar. She caught her wine before it tipped. “Christ. Look at you.” “You’re in London.” “So are you.” Silas reached for the bag beneath Rory’s hand. “I’ll take custody of the spring rolls.” Carys stepped towards her. Rory shifted the empty delivery pouch across her body, then lowered it. They embraced with the pouch caught between them. Carys’s coat smelled of something dry and expensive, nothing like the coconut spray they had shared at sixteen. When they separated, Carys touched Rory’s sleeve. “You’re soaked.” “It’s raining.” “Yes. I’d noticed that.” They both smiled, and for a second Rory could see the girl who had once climbed onto a bus shelter to retrieve her shoe. Carys glanced at the insulated pouch. “Do you work here?” “Above here. I work for the Golden Empress. Among other things.” “Above the bar?” “There’s a flat.” “Right.” Rory watched Carys place the word somewhere. “What brings you?” “A valuation. House in Bloomsbury. The owner’s solicitor wanted to meet somewhere that wasn’t the house.” Carys lifted a leather folder from the next stool. “He picked this place. Then he cancelled.” “You value houses?” “Contents. Furniture, pictures, silver. Whatever the relatives haven’t put in the boot.” “You used to call antiques dead people’s clutter.” “They pay better than living people’s clutter.” Silas set a mug beside Rory and moved down the bar, favouring his left leg. A man beneath a framed map of Trieste raised two fingers. Silas nodded and drew a pint. Carys pulled out the stool beside hers. “Have you got ten minutes?” Rory checked her phone. Yu-Fei’s last message read: No more tonight. Weather bad. Eat something. “I’ve got ten.” She unzipped her coat but kept it on. Carys sat with her knees together and her folder across her lap. At school she had never occupied a chair without hooking a foot through its back or tipping it towards disaster. Rory remembered the teachers arriving at their table and Carys lowering all four legs to the floor with a look of injured innocence. “Six years?” Carys asked. “Near enough.” “I thought I’d see you at graduation.” “I didn’t go.” “Neither did I. Mum bought the photograph package before I told her.” “Did you finish?” “Yes.” “You swore you’d leave after the first term.” “I swore a lot of things.” Her wedding ring tapped against the stem of the wineglass. Rory looked at it. “Who?” “Martin. You don’t know him.” “That saves me guessing.” “He’s an accountant.” Rory lifted her mug. “Of course he is.” “What does that mean?” “You once broke up with a boy because he laminated his revision timetable.” “That wasn’t why.” “You brought the timetable to the common room as evidence.” Carys smiled, then rubbed a thumb over the ring. “Martin doesn’t laminate anything.” “Good.” “He puts things in folders.” Rory laughed. Carys watched her over the rim of the glass. “There you are.” Rory lowered the mug. “I’ve been here.” “I didn’t mean—” “I know.” Behind them, two men argued over whether a photograph showed Lisbon or Porto. Someone fed a coin into the jukebox and failed to select a song. The machine kept its lights to itself. Carys opened the clasp of her folder, closed it, then set it on the vacant stool. “How’s your mum?” “Teaching. Complaining about teaching. Collecting things for lessons she’ll never give.” “Your dad?” “Still believes every conversation needs a closing argument.” “He was good to us.” “He liked you. You disagreed with him in complete sentences.” “I saw your mum last summer. In the market.” Rory turned the mug by its handle. “Did you?” “She was buying runner beans.” “That sounds like her.” “She asked whether I’d heard from you.” “What did you tell her?” “That I hadn’t.” Carys reached for her wine but left it where it stood. “She looked older.” “She is older.” “So are we.” “We’re twenty-five, Carys.” “I know how old we are.” Rory took off her coat. Beneath it, her restaurant shirt bore a small embroidered dragon over the pocket. She folded the wet fabric with the lining out and laid it across her knees. Carys looked at the dragon. “Do you like it?” “Delivery work?” “Yes.” “Some nights. There’s a man in Fitzrovia who orders enough for four and tips me in pound coins he keeps in a tobacco tin. There’s a woman who makes me wait while she finds her cat, because she thinks I’ll let it out.” “Would you?” “The cat has a better life than I do.” Carys smiled without showing her teeth. “You were going to be a barrister.” “My father was going to have a barrister.” “You used to want it too.” Rory pressed a crease into the wet coat. “I wanted to be good at something he understood.” Carys looked away. On the wall above Silas’s shoulder hung a photograph of three men outside a railway station. One had turned his face from the camera. Rory had lived upstairs for eleven months without asking who they were. “What happened with Evan?” There it was. No bridge towards it, no excuse about the weather. Rory loosened her fingers from the coat. “I left.” “Your mum said you weren’t together.” “Then why did you ask?” “Because your mum was standing next to a stall of vegetables. Because she didn’t look as though she wanted me asking there.” “What did you want to ask?” Carys pushed her wine an inch away. “Whether you were all right.” “You could have asked me.” “I didn’t have your number.” “You had it when I needed you.” Carys kept her eyes on the glass. Silas passed behind them carrying a crate of clean tumblers. His signet ring clicked against the plastic handle. He put the crate down beneath the far end of the counter and stayed there. Rory waited. “I know,” Carys answered. “You read it.” “Yes.” “I wondered whether your phone had broken.” “It hadn’t.” The rain ticked against the front window. Rory could hear each small strike above the low conversations. “I only asked for a night.” “I remember.” “Do you?” “You asked if you could come over. You said not to ring.” Rory looked at her. Carys had remembered the words. For years Rory had pictured the message sliding out of sight beneath shopping lists, photographs, plans for Friday. Now it sat between them in the correct order. “I had a bag packed.” Carys drew her hands into her lap. “I didn’t know that.” “I didn’t tell you.” “No.” “I sat on it so the zip wouldn’t show when he came in.” Carys’s mouth opened. She shut it. Rory drank some tea. It had cooled enough to taste the milk. “Don’t ask me what he did.” “I wasn’t going to.” “You look like you’re going to.” “I was going to ask where you went.” “Nowhere that night.” Carys bent her head. Beneath the neat edge of her hair, a patch of skin reddened above her collar. “We were in that little flat on City Road. Martin had moved in. There were boxes everywhere.” “You had a floor.” “Yes.” “You had a chair.” “Yes.” Rory put down the mug harder than she intended. Tea crossed the rim and gathered around its base. Silas placed a cloth beside her without a word. She wiped the counter. Carys watched her hand move. “I thought if I let you come, you’d go back to him in the morning. And then we’d be there again.” “We?” “You and me. Talking about him. You cancelling. Me being angry with you.” Rory folded the cloth. “So you left me there instead.” “Yes.” Carys took the word without looking away this time. Rory slid the cloth towards the inside edge of the bar. “Eva answered.” “I’m glad.” “Don’t.” Carys pressed her lips together. The jukebox began a song neither of them knew. At the table behind them, the argument about Portugal ended when one man took the photograph down and read the writing on its back. Carys picked up her wine, drank, and set it down. “I used to think being your friend meant I could always say what I thought.” “You usually did.” “Except then.” “You didn’t need to say much.” “No.” Her phone lit up beside the folder. A photograph of a brown dog filled the screen beneath Martin’s name. She turned it face down. Rory looked at the cream coat, the good boots, the folder with its small brass clasp. “Are you happy with him?” Carys pulled at a loose thread inside her cuff. “He’s kind. He cuts pears over the sink because I hate the juice on the chopping board. He remembers which days Mum has her appointments.” “What appointments?” “Her hands. Arthritis. She can’t do the buttons on her work blouses.” “Your mum loved those blouses.” “She still does. I go round before work when Dad’s on mornings.” Rory pictured Mrs Hughes in the school office, raising one finger while she finished a telephone call, her cuffs fastened with bright enamel buttons. “Does she still have the blue one with the birds?” “We changed the buttons to Velcro. She pretends not to mind.” Carys rubbed the thread between finger and thumb. “You could have rung about that.” “I know.” Silas brought over the plate of spring rolls. “I ordered too much.” “No, you didn’t.” Rory moved her mug to make room. “No, I didn’t.” He left them the plate. Carys looked at it, then at Rory. “Do you still take the cabbage out?” “It’s a spring roll. That’s most of it.” “You used to leave a little heap on my plate.” “You ate it.” “You told me it was a garnish.” Rory pushed the plate into the space between their stools. Carys took one, caught a flake of pastry against her palm, and held it there. “How did you get the flat?” “Silas had a room. Eva knew someone who knew him.” “Is he good to you?” Rory glanced along the bar. Silas had opened his dinner and was examining a sauce tub as though it contained evidence. “He complains when I use the wrong bin. He leaves books on the stairs and calls them recommendations.” “What sort of books?” “History. Mostly things that went wrong.” Carys bit into the spring roll. A strip of cabbage slipped onto her coat. She picked it off and ate it. Rory reached for one too. “There’s a bin system,” she continued. “He’s drawn me a diagram.” Carys wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. “Laminated?” Rory turned the spring roll in her hand. “Don’t tell him I laughed.”