Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BASBB42JNAS95K8H2SNCM

Rory carried the empty delivery bags into the Raven’s Nest with their handles looped around her left wrist. Rain had darkened the shoulders of her jacket. Behind her, the green neon sign threw its colour across the wet pavement and the shoes of a woman sheltering in the doorway. “Are they still serving?” “The kitchen shut at nine. Silas might have crisps.” “I meant drinks.” Rory pushed the door with her hip. “Those he’s got.” The woman followed her inside. Rory heard the click of heels, then a pause as the door swung shut. At the bar, Silas looked up from a ledger. His silver signet ring held down one corner of the page. “You’re dripping on my floor, Carter.” “Invoice Yu-Fei. She sent me out.” Rory lifted the bags onto a stool. Water slid from her cuff over the crescent scar on her wrist. Behind her, the woman drew in a breath. “Rory?” She knew the voice before she turned. The second syllable lifted, as though her name came with a question attached. Six years before, that voice had travelled through thin bedroom walls, shouted over boiling kettles, demanded a second verse from musicians who had begun packing away their instruments. “Nia?” Nia Price stood beside a table beneath a framed map of the Baltic. Her hair, once a red tangle she cut herself over their kitchen bin, stopped in a brown line at her jaw. She wore a charcoal suit beneath an open coat. A pale band marked the place where she had taken off a ring. Rory looked at her shoes. Nia followed her glance. “Yes. I know.” “You used to say heels were a tax on women’s ankles.” “They were. I paid it.” Her mouth made the old shape of a smile, but she dropped it before Rory could return one. Silas closed the ledger. “What can I get you?” “White wine.” “Which?” Nia looked at the bottles behind him. “The cheapest dry one.” “And you, Rory?” “Tap water.” He took down two glasses. His left knee caught as he turned towards the sink; he shifted his weight without touching the counter. Rory moved the delivery bags to the floor. “I thought you were in Manchester.” “I was.” Nia pulled off her coat. The lining caught on her watch, and she worked it free with the precision of someone undoing a knot she could not afford to cut. “And I thought you were in Cardiff.” “I was.” They stood with the empty stool between them. Silas set down the drinks. “Take the table. You’re blocking the till.” “There’s nobody here.” “There’s me.” Rory picked up her water. Nia followed her to the table under the map. They chose opposite chairs, as they had in the university library when each needed the other to prevent her from leaving. Nia placed her phone facedown beside her glass. “You work here?” “I live upstairs. I deliver for a restaurant round the corner.” “The bags.” “The bags.” “What happened to law?” Rory drank. The water tasted of the metal tap. “Nothing. That was the problem.” Nia ran her thumb along the stem of her glass. “Sorry. I’ve been answering that question all day. I shouldn’t have brought it in here.” “What happened to music?” “There it is.” “You started.” “I deserved it.” At nineteen, Nia had kept a violin beneath her bed in a case with one broken catch. She had wrapped a belt around it for the walk to rehearsals. Rory remembered the mark the buckle left on her palm, and Nia insisting that a proper case would cost more than the violin deserved. “Do you still have it?” “The violin? Yes.” “Do you play?” “My downstairs neighbour has a baby.” “That wasn’t what I asked.” “No.” Nia lifted her wine but did not drink. Silas switched off the lamp above the till. A wall light remained on beside an old photograph of three men in summer shirts. Rory had lived upstairs for fourteen months without asking who they were. “What brought you to Soho?” “A client dinner. I left before pudding.” “That sounds serious.” “They were discussing how much they hated lawyers.” “Were you the only one?” “Six of us. We all laughed.” Rory watched Nia’s hand tighten around the glass. “What sort of law?” “Commercial property.” “You used to chain yourself to things to stop commercial property.” “A railing. Once.” “And the gates outside the vice-chancellor’s house.” “That was a bicycle lock. It hardly counted.” “It counted when I had to find bolt cutters.” Nia laughed. The sound came out too large for the room. She pressed her lips together, and Rory felt the impulse to apologise for having caused it. “I’d forgotten the bolt cutters.” “You paid me back in pasta.” “We were both grateful for the pasta.” “You put marmalade in the sauce.” “We’d run out of tomatoes.” “We lived above a shop.” Nia took a mouthful of wine. Some colour returned to her face. “You remember everything.” “No. Bits.” Rory moved her glass away from a groove in the table where it rocked. She remembered sitting on their kitchen floor, eating from the saucepan. Nia had balanced her feet on the cupboard doors because the lino felt cold through her socks. Evan had rung four times. On the fifth, Rory had gone into her bedroom. Nia touched the base of her glass. “I went back to the house.” “Which house?” “Ours. After you left.” “You still had your room.” “I mean after the tenancy ended. About a year later. Someone had painted the front door blue.” “It needed painting.” “I stood across the road like an idiot. A woman came out with a little boy. He had your bedroom.” Rory drew her wet sleeve away from her skin. “How did you know?” “He was at the window. He’d stuck those glow-in-the-dark stars all over the glass.” “I left mine on the ceiling.” “I know.” A bus passed outside, its windows filling the bar with a moving strip of light. Nia watched it disappear. “I took your things to your mother.” “Not all of them.” “What did I miss?” “My blue mug.” “The handle broke.” “You could have sent the pieces.” Nia looked down at the table. “I could have.” Rory had meant it as a joke. She could hear where the joke should have been, a space after the words. “Eva took me to London in her brother’s car. There wasn’t room for much.” “I remember.” “She said we could come back.” “You didn’t.” “No.” Nia’s phone lit up. A name appeared on the screen, then vanished beneath her hand. “Do you need to get that?” “Not yet.” “You can.” “I know.” Rory pulled at the seam inside her cuff. The thread had loosened during her shift, and she wound it around one finger until the tip went white. Nia leaned across the table. “Don’t.” Rory let go. For a moment they both looked at her hand. “You used to do that in seminars.” “I still have fingers to spare.” “Rory.” “What?” Nia sat back. Her coat slid from the chair and she caught it before it reached the floor. “I wrote you an email.” “When?” “After you left.” “I changed my address.” “I sent it to Eva.” “Then I saw it.” “You never answered.” “You asked me whether I was sure.” Nia opened her mouth. Rory waited. “I did.” “You wrote that he’d been under pressure.” “I know what I wrote.” “Then why bring it up?” “Because I kept it.” Rory glanced towards the bar. Silas had taken a crate of clean glasses from beneath the counter. He set each one on the shelf without looking at them. Nia folded her coat across her knees. “I used to open it to see whether I’d remembered it worse than it was.” “And?” “It was worse than I remembered.” The rain tapped against the front window. Rory put both hands around her glass, though the water offered no warmth. “You were there that night.” “Yes.” “You heard him.” “Yes.” “You told me in the morning that you’d had your headphones on.” Nia’s fingers stopped smoothing the coat. “I heard him.” Rory nodded once. She had rehearsed arguments for this admission while walking to lectures, while washing plates, while sitting beside Evan on the bus with his hand gripping her knee. None of those arguments had included the noise of Silas stacking glasses. “Why?” “I thought if I knocked, he’d open the door.” “He would have.” “And I didn’t know what I’d do after that.” “You could have stayed.” “I know.” “You went to breakfast.” Nia pressed her palm against her mouth, then lowered it. “I went to breakfast.” Rory looked at the woman opposite her: the clipped hair, the good coat with a frayed buttonhole, the hands that had once hauled a violin case and now lay flat on folded wool. She wanted some visible remnant of that morning. A stain Nia had failed to wash out. “Did you eat?” Nia’s brow creased. “What?” “At breakfast.” “I don’t remember.” “I remember thinking you couldn’t have heard. Because you’d gone downstairs and made toast.” Nia pushed the wine away. “I made toast.” Rory sat back. Her jacket stuck to the chair. “Eva knocked.” “I know.” “No, you don’t. She knocked, and he opened the door, and she asked him to move his car. She said someone needed the space. There wasn’t anyone. She got him outside.” Nia rubbed the pale strip on her finger. “That sounds like Eva.” “She didn’t know what to do either.” Nia dropped her hand into her lap. “No.” Neither touched a drink. Beyond the window, a man wrestled with an umbrella that had turned inside out. He gave up and carried it by the ribs. Nia’s phone lit again. “Who’s calling?” “My sister.” “Answer her.” “She’ll ask where I am.” “Tell her.” Nia picked up the phone, typed with both thumbs, then put it away. “I told her I was having a drink with you.” “Does she remember me?” “She still calls you the girl who fixed her bike.” “I changed an inner tube.” “She was eleven. You might as well have built it.” Rory reached for her water. This time the glass stayed level. “Are you married?” “Not now.” “Was it the job?” “No. It was him. And me. The job was somewhere to go after we’d stopped speaking.” “Any children?” “No.” Nia glanced towards the old maps on the wall. “Do you?” “No.” “Anyone?” Rory shook her head. Nia nodded, then looked at the delivery bags beneath Rory’s chair. “Are you happy here?” “Some days.” “That’s a better answer than mine.” “I didn’t ask for yours.” “No.” Rory picked at a patch of dried flour on one bag handle. Yu-Fei had packed the last order herself, pressing an extra carton into Rory’s hand for supper. Upstairs, rice and aubergine waited on the kitchen counter. “You can ask for things, Nia. You don’t have to wait until I’ve asked first.” Nia gripped the edge of her coat. “I’d like another glass of wine.” Rory turned towards the bar. “Silas?” He lifted the bottle. “I heard.” “And a packet of crisps.” “Salted?” Rory looked across the table. Nia wiped beneath one eye with her knuckle. “Salt and vinegar. If he’s got them.” “He’s got them.” Silas brought the wine and set the crisps between their glasses. Rory pulled the packet open, splitting it down the seam so they could both reach. Nia took one from the edge. “You used to hate these.” “I still do.” Rory brushed salt from her fingers onto the open packet. “Tell me about Manchester.”