Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BNZG1VW431NVDCX152H9K

Rory had carried three empty glasses to the bar when the woman beside the brass beer tap turned towards her. “Laila?” One glass slipped against another. Rory caught it by the rim. Nobody in London called her that. At school, Nia had invented the name for the girl Rory meant to become: a woman who smoked on balconies, spoke four languages and never had to ask her father for money. They had been fourteen. Neither of them had seen a balcony outside a hotel. “Nia?” The woman put down her bag. Her hair ended at her jaw in a cut that would have required appointments. She wore a charcoal coat over a cream blouse, and a small gold rectangle hung from each ear. Rory remembered hair secured with a pencil, sleeves chewed through at the cuffs, a school tie Nia had shortened with kitchen scissors because the narrow end irritated her. “I thought you were in Bristol.” “I was.” Rory set the glasses on the rubber mat. “For seven years?” “Six. London since September.” Nia looked at Rory’s apron, then at the glasses. Her gaze stayed there a fraction too long. “Do you work here?” “I live upstairs. I carry things down when Silas threatens to start charging me for the electricity.” Behind the bar, Silas glanced up from a ledger. “I’ve never threatened. I’ve presented figures.” His silver ring clicked against the cover as he closed it. He came towards them with the hitch in his left step that Rory had learned to hear before she learned to see. “Nia, this is Silas. Silas, we went to school together.” “Then I’ll spare you the school photograph she keeps threatening to burn.” “You found that?” “You used it as a bookmark in my atlas.” Nia’s mouth opened. For a moment Rory saw the old gap between her front teeth, the one braces had closed during sixth form. “You kept it?” “It had a good picture of the geography department’s radiator.” Silas lifted a glass. “What can I get you?” “White wine. Whatever’s dry.” “You used to say wine tasted like a cupboard.” Nia slid her coat off one shoulder. “It still does. I’ve learnt which cupboards to order.” Rory laughed, and the sound came out larger than she had intended. A man at the far end of the bar looked over. Nia smiled at him without apology. That, more than the coat, caught Rory. At seventeen, Nia would have stopped laughing. There were two stools beneath the photograph of a flooded street. Rory pulled one out. Nia checked her phone before sitting. “Someone waiting?” “Colleagues. They chose somewhere on Dean Street. I took the wrong turn.” “The green sign got you?” “The green sign suggested a place where I could sit down.” Silas placed the wine in front of her and a glass of water in front of Rory. He moved away before either woman thanked him. On Nia’s left hand, a wedding band sat beneath a square-cut diamond. Rory drank her water. “How’s Tom?” “Fine. He’s in Manchester tonight.” “Still making films?” “He runs production budgets now.” “Ah.” “Yes. That particular ‘ah’ sums it up.” Nia touched the stem of her glass but didn’t lift it. “He’s good at it.” “I didn’t mean—” “I know.” A woman pushed between their stools to order a round. Rory tucked her knees beneath the bar. Nia shifted her bag out of the way, its leather making a soft, expensive sound against her coat. “What do you do?” Rory asked. “Commercial property.” “Drawing it?” “No. Arguing about it.” “You became a solicitor?” Nia nodded. Rory looked at her hands. No ink in the cuticles. No crescent of blue paint beside a thumbnail. Nia had once drawn on every surface that stayed still long enough: exercise books, bus tickets, the backs of Rory’s revision cards. She had drawn Rory’s father as a heron in a barrister’s wig. Rory had kept that one until Evan found it and asked why she needed souvenirs from people who mocked her family. “You got out of law before I got into it,” Nia added. “Mine was only pre-law.” “Your dad had the next twenty years scheduled.” “He probably still has the calendar.” Nia took a drink. “Does he know you’re here?” “He has my address.” “That wasn’t what I asked.” “No.” The woman beside them collected her round. One pint slopped over her fingers. She swore, grinned at Silas and carried the glasses away, leaving a wet circle where her elbow had rested. Rory dragged a cloth across it. “I thought you’d be painting.” “I thought you’d be cross-examining cabinet ministers.” “I deliver food.” Nia’s eyes rose to hers. “For a restaurant. The Golden Empress.” “Do you like it?” “Some of the doorbells play songs.” “Rory.” “I like getting paid. I like knowing when my shift ends.” Nia nodded, but Rory felt the nod as something she had been given. “And property law?” “The buildings don’t cry.” “Do you?” Nia turned her glass half a circle. “Only over the leases.” They smiled without looking at each other. Above the optics, a clock ticked with an uneven second hand. Rory had complained about it during her first month upstairs. Now she noticed it only when someone stopped speaking. “Your mum still in Canton?” she asked. Nia’s thumb came off the glass. “No.” “Did she move?” “She died.” Rory’s hand tightened around the cloth. “When?” “Four years ago. February.” The clock clicked twice before Rory found anything to put into the space. “I didn’t know.” “I sent you a message.” “I didn’t get it.” Nia looked down at the wine. “I sent a few.” Rory laid the cloth flat. A seam in it had split, and she pushed one finger into the gap. “I’m sorry.” “It was a long time ago.” “What happened?” “Her heart. She’d been complaining about indigestion for three days. She kept taking those chalk tablets from the corner shop.” Nia rubbed the place beneath her nose with the side of her finger. “The kitchen smelled of mint when I got there.” Rory remembered Nia’s mother standing at the stove in slippers, tearing bread into a pan because two hungry girls had arrived without warning. She had always pretended there wasn’t enough, then filled their plates before her own. “She used to put butter on the bread before she fried it.” “She said it sealed it.” “It didn’t.” “No.” Nia’s mouth twitched. She pressed her lips together. Rory reached towards her, stopped at the wine glass and moved it aside. “I would have come.” Nia watched the space between their hands. “You didn’t come to the wedding either.” “I know.” “You sent a lovely message.” Rory looked up. “What message?” “About wishing us every happiness. Tom read it out while we opened the cards.” “That wasn’t me.” Nia’s face changed without any one part of it moving much. “It came from your number.” “Evan had my phone.” “Right.” “Not all the time. Enough.” Nia drew her hand into her lap. Rory hated how neat the explanation sounded. Four years reduced to a phone in somebody else’s pocket. It left out the questions at midnight, the names she learned not to mention, the sick little relief when a conversation ended without anything breaking. “He told me you’d said I wasn’t welcome.” “At my wedding?” “He said you thought I’d make it about myself.” Nia stared at her. “We put you beside my brother. Because you were the only person he knew apart from us.” Rory rubbed her left wrist. The crescent scar there disappeared beneath her thumb. “I believed him.” “Why?” The word landed without accusation, which made it harder. Rory pulled her apron loose and folded it across her knees. “Because by then I believed most things he said about me.” Nia sat back. Her heel slipped off the stool’s brass rail and struck the floor. “I hated you for not coming.” “You could have rung.” “I did.” Rory swallowed. “Yes.” “I could have got on a train.” “You didn’t know.” “I knew he answered your phone.” Neither touched her drink. From a table near the window came a burst of laughter. Silas took two clean glasses from the shelf and inspected them against the light. Rory could feel him keeping his attention elsewhere. Nia opened her bag. She moved a card case, a packet of tissues and a white cable, then shut it again. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.” Rory pulled a paper napkin from the holder and put it beside her. Nia shook her head, but she kept the napkin. She folded it once, pressing the crease with her thumbnail. “Are you still with him?” “No. Nearly two years.” “Good.” The word had an edge Rory recognised. Nia had used that voice on boys who stole her pencils, on teachers who called her quiet as though she ought to thank them. “Eva helped me leave.” “I’m glad someone did.” Rory watched Nia flatten the napkin. “What happened to art school?” “I went.” “And?” “And I could draw, and so could everyone else. Mum got ill the first time. I came home. After that I wanted a job with a salary attached to it.” “You were good.” “I know.” Rory smiled despite the ache in her throat. “You never used to say that.” “I paid enough tuition to earn the sentence.” Nia’s phone lit up on the bar. A name, three question marks. She turned it face down. “I still draw.” “What?” “People on trains. Tom asleep with his mouth open. The ugly bits of buildings nobody puts in the brochure.” “Have you got any?” “Not on me.” “You used to have six pencils and no bus fare.” “I’ve got bus fare now.” “And no pencils?” Nia opened her bag again. This time she found a short yellow pencil beneath the tissues. Rory held out her hand. Nia kept it. “Turn the napkin over.” Rory smoothed it against the bar, avoiding the damp patch. Nia rolled the pencil between her fingers, checked its point and glanced up at the photographs. “That one,” Rory offered, pointing to a stiff-backed man beside a rowing boat. “No. Keep your hand there.” Rory left her palm on the paper. Nia bent over it and began with the curve of her thumb.