Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BERVAHX0X7W6G3YVV3TPS

Rory was peeling the label from a bottle of tonic when she heard someone say her name as it had been said at school: the first syllable lengthened, the second almost lost. “Aurora?” Nobody at the Nest called her that. She turned with a wet scrap of paper stuck to her thumb. The woman standing beneath the map of the Baltic wore a navy coat and held a small leather bag against her ribs. Her hair was cropped close at the sides. There was something familiar about the way she stood, her weight on one foot, the other turned out as if she had stopped in the middle of walking. “Nia?” The woman smiled. That settled it. One front tooth still overlapped the other. “Oh, thank God,” Nia said. “I was about to apologise to a stranger.” Rory put down the bottle. Nia had once possessed enough hair for three people. She used to pin it up with pencils, forks, anything she found, and by lunchtime it would have escaped. She had worn men’s jackets from charity shops and drawn flowers on the rubber toes of her trainers. This woman’s coat fitted cleanly across her shoulders. Her shoes were polished. She looked like someone who knew how much money was in her account. Rory crossed the space between them. They hugged with an awkwardness that neither had time to conceal. The leather bag pressed into Rory’s stomach. Nia smelled of cold air and something faintly woody. “Your hair,” Rory said when they stepped apart. “Yes.” “I like it.” “You look exactly the same.” Rory felt the delivery jacket hanging open on her shoulders, the oil stain beside its zip. Her own hair was tucked behind one ear and coming loose behind the other. She had been upstairs for eleven minutes, long enough to take off her insulated bag and wash her hands, before coming down because the flat was too quiet. “I don’t, really.” “No,” Nia said, looking more carefully. “Not exactly.” Behind the bar, Silas set a glass on a folded cloth. His silver ring caught the light. “Friend of yours?” “From Cardiff.” “Nia,” she said. “Silas.” He did not put out his hand across the bar. Rory liked him for that. He merely inclined his head and waited. “What are you drinking?” Rory asked. “White wine, please. Anything dry.” “You used to hate wine.” “I used to drink things that came in blue bottles.” “You used to steal things that came in blue bottles.” “Only from your parents.” Silas glanced at Rory. “It was a very small crime,” she told him. “Most are, to begin with.” He took down a bottle, and Rory found herself grateful for the ordinary noise of it: foil tearing, cork drawn, wine touching glass. She led Nia to the table under the black-and-white photograph of a tram. The table rocked if anyone leaned on its left edge. Rory folded a beer mat and pushed it beneath the foot. “You know your way around,” Nia said. “I live upstairs.” “Here?” “The flat, not the bar.” “I assumed.” “And I work round the corner. Deliveries. Chinese restaurant.” Nia took off her coat. Underneath she wore a fine grey jumper and a narrow gold chain. No rings. “The law degree?” “Didn’t finish.” “Oh.” Rory waited for the next question. People generally wanted to know whether she would go back, as though she had left an umbrella somewhere. Nia only laid her coat over the chair beside her. “What brings you here?” Rory asked. “An interview. Tomorrow morning.” “In Soho?” “Holborn. The hotel’s nearby. I went out for a walk and saw the sign.” Through the front window, green light trembled on the wet pavement. Rory had followed that same sign home often enough that she hardly saw it now. “What’s the job?” “Practice manager. A solicitors’ firm.” Rory laughed before she could stop herself. Nia lifted her eyebrows. “Sorry. It’s just—you once said you’d rather work in an abattoir than an office.” “I remember.” “You had that whole speech.” “I was sixteen. I had several speeches.” There was no edge to it, which somehow made Rory’s laugh feel worse. Silas brought their drinks. He set a fresh tonic beside Rory and a small bowl of crisps between them, then moved away with the careful unevenness she had come to recognise as neither tiredness nor impatience. At the bar, two men were arguing quietly over whether a photograph showed Lisbon or Porto. Nia lifted her glass. “How long has it been?” “Six years?” “Seven in September.” Rory looked at her. “I saw you outside Boots,” Nia said. “You’d cut your hair. You were buying those expensive vitamins.” Rory remembered the vitamins. Evan had decided she was tired because she ate badly. He had made her hold the bag while he checked the receipt. “I remember.” “You said we’d get coffee.” “Yes.” It had been raining that day as well. Nia had stood under a black umbrella with one spoke sticking out. Rory had watched Evan through the shop window, watched him finish at the till, and said she would text. Nia drank some wine. “Seven years,” Rory said. “Sounds ridiculous when you say it.” “It does.” She wanted to ask what Nia had been doing in those years, but the question was too large. It would require holidays and jobs and kitchens, the names of people whose importance Rory could not guess. She picked a crisp from the bowl instead. “How’s your mum?” Nia’s gaze dropped to the table. Rory knew before the answer. “She died last February.” “Oh, Nia.” “It’s all right.” “No. I’m sorry.” “Thank you.” “How—” “Chest infection. She’d been ill for a while. You probably knew that.” Rory pressed the crisp against her tongue without tasting it. She had known something. There had been a message, a photograph of a hospital corridor. Nia’s mother had fallen, or had tests, or both. Rory had read it while sitting on the edge of a bath with the door locked. She could remember the chipped enamel beneath her bare foot. She could not remember the words. “I knew she was in hospital.” “She was in and out. Then mostly in.” “Your dad?” “Still in the house. Still refuses to buy a smaller kettle.” Rory almost smiled. Nia’s father had always made tea for anyone who crossed the threshold, filling the kettle even if there were only two people. “He’ll put it on,” Nia said, “and get six mugs out. Then he remembers.” The men at the bar laughed. It was not a particularly loud laugh, but it made the silence at their table feel exposed. “I should have got in touch,” Rory said. Nia rubbed a finger along the stem of her glass. “Yes.” Rory had expected a kindness. Don’t be silly. You had your own life. Something she could accept with gratitude and use to pass on to the next subject. Nia looked up. “I’m not saying that to be cruel.” “I know.” “I don’t think you do.” Rory rested her hands beneath the table. Her left thumb found the little crescent scar on her wrist. “I wrote quite a few times,” Nia said. “At first. I kept thinking I’d said something.” “You hadn’t.” “I went through our last conversation. Which sounds pathetic, but I did. I wondered if it was the joke about your degree. Or your dad.” “No.” “Then I thought perhaps we’d just finished.” Rory looked at the crisp bowl. All those small messages, arriving one by one, had become something she could keep postponing. She had told herself she would answer properly when she had something better to say. When she could explain why she had stopped turning up. Later, when she was in London, she had told herself too much time had passed. “I wasn’t doing very well,” she said. Nia’s expression altered, but only slightly. “With Evan?” “Yes.” “I didn’t like him.” “You never said.” “You wouldn’t let me.” Rory remembered a kitchen, Nia leaning against the counter, saying he was a bit much. Rory had defended him with a fluency she could still feel in her mouth. He worried. He had a temper, but he knew it. Other people didn’t understand him. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.” Nia leaned back. “Are you still—” “No. I left. Eva helped me come here.” “Good.” The word was plain and immediate. Rory looked up at her. “He read my messages,” she said. “Sometimes. I started deleting them.” “Oh.” “And then I stopped answering people because answering meant explaining why I hadn’t answered.” She paused. There was more she could have said about him, true things. They would make Nia understand. They might also rescue Rory from having to say the rest. “But after I left, I could have called you. I didn’t.” Nia turned the glass a quarter circle. “No,” she said. Rory let it stand. A couple came in from the rain, bringing a draught and the smell of wet wool. Silas greeted them by name. One had a newspaper tucked inside his coat to keep it dry. Rory watched him pull it free and shake it out, carefully, like something injured. “I didn’t want you to know,” she said at last. “About him?” “About any of it. I thought you’d be out having this enormous life.” Nia gave a short laugh. “I was ordering incontinence pads.” Rory closed her eyes. “Sorry,” Nia said. “That wasn’t—” “No. Don’t.” “When Mum got ill, I moved back. It was meant to be three months. I took an admin job because it was near the house. Then they promoted me.” She shrugged. “Apparently I’m very good at making people fill in forms.” “You always were.” “Was I?” “You did my student finance application.” “That’s right. Your father thought it ought to be self-explanatory.” “He thinks everything ought to be self-explanatory.” For a moment they were both smiling. Rory could see Nia at seventeen, cross-legged on her bedroom carpet, surrounded by Rory’s documents, wearing a red jacket with a lining she had repaired in bright yellow thread. She had wanted to go to Berlin. There had been a band, a man with a van, some proposal involving theatre lighting. Rory had thought her reckless and envied her with an intensity she had mistaken for concern. “Did you ever go?” she asked. “Berlin?” “For four days. With my aunt.” “Right.” “Very cultural. We had cake.” Nia’s smile stayed, but the corner of her mouth tightened. “I’m sorry,” Rory said. “You needn’t be sorry for Berlin.” “I know.” “I might go again.” “Without your aunt?” “She’d be furious.” Rory laughed, and this time it did not catch halfway out. Nia reached for a crisp. “I used to think you’d end up in some enormous office, telling everyone what to do.” “So did my dad.” “And I’d come to visit and embarrass you.” “You could still manage that.” “I’m less embarrassing now.” Rory studied her cropped hair, the neat sleeves pushed a little way up her forearms. There were small pale marks on one hand, ordinary burns perhaps, from an oven or kettle. She wondered how many times Nia had driven to hospital, how many meals she had eaten standing up. None of it showed in a way a stranger could read. “Do you want the job?” Rory asked. Nia looked surprised, as though nobody had yet put the question so simply. “I think I do.” “Not just because it’s here?” “Partly because it’s here.” “That counts.” “Dad says he’ll be fine.” “Will he?” “He’ll have to learn to put two mugs out.” Nia glanced towards the window. A taxi went past slowly, its tyres lifting water from the gutter. “I feel terrible about leaving,” she said. Rory knew better than to offer permission. It would be easy to give, and cost her nothing. “Where’s the interview?” Nia named the street. “The Central line’s a pain at that time,” Rory said. “You can walk. About twenty minutes from here.” “I’ll get lost.” “I can show you.” “You working?” “Not until lunch.” Nia considered her, and Rory resisted the urge to make it smaller: if you like, no pressure, only if it helps. She had made enough offers that came with their own exits. “All right,” Nia said. “Half eight?” “Half eight.” They exchanged numbers. Nia’s was the same. Rory entered it anyway, watching the familiar sequence appear beneath her thumb. When she sent a message, Nia’s phone lit up on the table. There you are, Rory had written. Nia read it. She did not smile or answer, but she left the phone face up beside her glass. “Do they do food here?” she asked. “Not much. But I know somewhere.” “Chinese?” “The best.” “I could eat.” Rory got up to fetch a menu from the stack beneath the till. On her way back she noticed that Nia had taken her coat off the spare chair and hung it on the hook behind her. Her bag was on the floor now, tucked against her shoe. Rory sat down and laid the menu between them. “The aubergine,” she said. “Trust me.” Nia looked at it, then at her. “I’ll have that, then.” Rory reached for her phone to place the order. Across the table, Nia broke a crisp in half and ate one piece, keeping the other between her fingers while she read. There was time to ask about the interview, about her father, about the haircut. Rory began with the haircut, and Nia told her it had been done in her own kitchen, with a towel over her shoulders and a pair of clippers borrowed from next door.