Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BPX8AAE501YMN953ZDN6N

Rory was carrying a bowl of lime wedges through the bar when someone said her name as though it belonged to a person who had died. “Aurora?” She stopped beside the last occupied table. Juice slipped over the rim of the bowl and cooled her thumb. No one called her Aurora here. At the Golden Empress she was Carter when Yu-Fei was annoyed and love when he wanted her to take an extra delivery. Upstairs, on the envelopes she left unopened beside the kettle, she was Miss A. Carter. In the bar she was Rory. The woman by the door wore a long camel coat, still wet across the shoulders. Beneath it, a dark suit. Her hair had been cut close to her head, revealing the small, pointed ears Rory remembered having pierced with a sterilised needle in a university kitchen. “Nia?” The woman smiled, and there she was: a crooked front tooth, a slight narrowing of one eye. Rory had forgotten the smile. Or had remembered it inaccurately, made it broader and more careless. “Christ,” Nia said. “It is you.” Rory set the bowl on the table. The man sitting there looked down at it, then up at her. “Sorry. That’s not yours.” “Shame,” he said. She picked it up again. For a moment neither woman moved. Rory was conscious of her own clothes: black jeans fading at the knees, trainers with a split at the toe, the Golden Empress polo shirt she had meant to change before coming downstairs. There was a faint white mark on its sleeve where she had brushed against a bag of flour in the kitchen. Nia stepped forward and kissed the air beside her cheek. They had once slept in the same narrow bed after parties, feet tangled, breath sour with wine. This careful contact felt more intimate in its discomfort. “What are you doing here?” Nia asked. “I live upstairs.” “Oh.” “And sometimes I carry fruit around. Keeps me grounded.” Nia laughed a second late. Rory took the limes to the bar. Silas looked up from the glass he was polishing. His gaze passed from her to Nia and back, without the bright curiosity most people mistook for friendliness. “Friend?” he asked. “Old one.” “Those are expensive.” His silver signet ring clicked against the glass as he set it down. “Can I get you something?” Rory asked Nia. “Just sparkling water.” Rory turned towards the bottles behind the bar, giving herself a second in which to look surprised without being seen. Nia noticed anyway. “I know,” she said. “A disappointing development.” “No. Sensible.” “Worse.” They smiled at each other. It helped. Silas poured the water and put it on the counter. “On the house.” “Thank you.” He moved away with his familiar uneven step, attending to a customer at the other end. Rory had come to value the precision of his departures. They took the table beneath an old map of London. Nia unbuttoned her coat but kept it on. Rory sat opposite with a half-finished cup of tea she had abandoned earlier. A black-and-white photograph above Nia’s shoulder showed men standing outside a building that no longer existed. One of them had his hand raised, either waving or shielding his eyes. “Six years?” Nia said. “Five, I think.” “Six. It was the summer before my mother got ill.” Rory looked into her tea. “Yes. Six.” Nia rested both hands around her glass. Her nails were short and unpainted. She had worn them bitten to the quick at university, except for the month she decided she was going to become someone who wore red nail varnish. Rory had painted them for her. By morning Nia had peeled it off in little curling skins. “How did you know this place?” “I didn’t. I was early for a thing.” Nia glanced towards the door. “Saw the sign. Thought it looked quiet.” The green neon above the entrance stained the wet pavement outside. Rory had watched it from her upstairs window on her first night in London, too tired to unpack and too frightened to sleep. It had flickered steadily until dawn. “What thing?” “Dinner. Some people from work.” “What work?” “I’m a solicitor.” Rory looked up. Nia lifted her glass. “Go on.” “What?” “Make the face.” “I’m not making a face.” “You are, but politely. That’s new.” Rory laughed then, properly, and Nia’s shoulders loosened. “You said the law was a machine for making injustice look tidy.” “It can be. I spend a lot of time tidying.” “What sort?” “Commercial property.” “God.” “There it is.” Nia used to pin eviction notices to the student union walls with COME AND SEE WHAT WE CALL CIVILISED written across them. She had owned one pair of boots, repaired twice with glue. On the evening Rory confessed that she hated her course, Nia had dragged her to a pub and made her write a list of things she wanted instead. Rory remembered only two: a room no one could enter without knocking, and work that ended when she went home. “What happened to the theatre company?” she asked. Nia looked at the bubbles rising in her water. “Money.” “You were good.” “I was all right.” “You were good.” “Well. Being good turned out not to be a funding model.” A chair scraped behind them. At the bar, someone dropped a coin and chased it with the sole of his shoe. Nia looked briefly towards the sound, then back. “I needed to be nearer Mum. There was a conversion course in Cardiff. A firm took me on. One thing, then another.” Rory nodded. She had disliked that explanation at twenty: one thing, then another. It had sounded like an excuse people made when they had stopped being brave. At twenty-five she knew how quickly one thing could occupy the whole horizon. “How’s your dad?” “Still in the same house. Still says he’ll move.” “And your mum—” She stopped. Nia’s hands tightened around the glass. “You knew,” Nia said. “I knew she’d died. I meant—” There was no useful end to the sentence. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t.” “I am.” “I know.” Rory could see the message again: Mum went last night. Don’t know what to do with myself. Nia had sent it in the middle of an afternoon. Rory had been in Evan’s kitchen, waiting for him to finish telling her why she had embarrassed him in front of his friends. She had read the message when he left the room. She had typed I’m so sorry, then deleted it because it looked inadequate. Later, she had decided to call. Later still, it had become a call she could not bear to make. “I should have come,” she said. Nia rubbed a thumb over the damp glass. “You said you would.” “I know.” “I kept thinking you’d walk in late. You were always late.” Rory nodded once. “At the wake, every time the door opened.” Nia gave a small, embarrassed smile. “Stupid.” “No.” “She liked you. She used to ask whether you’d eaten. As if I’d know.” “I remember.” “And you’d say yes, but she’d make you a sandwich anyway.” “With enough butter to leave teeth marks in.” Nia laughed, then pressed her lips together. Rory watched her swallow. For years she had imagined apologising. In those imaginary conversations she explained everything well enough that Nia’s hurt changed shape. There was always a pause, then forgiveness. Sitting here, she understood how much she had expected from the person she had let down. “I was with Evan,” she said. Nia’s expression altered. “Still?” “Then. Not now.” “I didn’t like him.” “No.” “I thought you’d stopped talking to me because I’d said so.” “That was part of it.” Nia looked away. “Not because you were wrong,” Rory said. “Because you weren’t. And I couldn’t have that conversation with you and then go home.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rory turned her cup by its handle. The tea had developed a thin skin. “I didn’t want you to know.” “You think I’d have judged you?” “Yes.” Nia sat back as if Rory had touched something sore. “You’d have wanted me to leave,” Rory said. “You’d have helped. You’d have been furious when I didn’t.” “I would.” “I know.” For a while they said nothing. Silas came to collect an empty glass from the next table. He did not look at them, and Rory was grateful. “I don’t have a good explanation,” she said. “Not one that makes it all right. I saw your messages.” “All of them?” “Yes.” Nia nodded slowly. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.” Rory put the cup down. “Sorry.” “No. I wanted to know. I just wish I didn’t.” A man entered shaking rain from a folded umbrella. Nia checked her phone, face down beside the glass. The screen lit beneath her fingers. “Your dinner?” “They can wait.” It was a small kindness. Rory resisted making it larger. “Are you happy?” she asked. Nia let out a breath. “That’s a horrible question.” “Sorry. We used to ask it all the time.” “We used to ask it when we meant, ‘Do you want another drink?’” “Do you want another water?” “Not yet.” Nia slipped her phone into her coat pocket. “I like having money,” she said. “That’s the answer no one wants. I like knowing the heating can stay on. When Dad needed his bathroom changed, I paid for it. I didn’t have to apply to a fund or explain why he deserved a shower he could get into.” “That sounds good.” “It is good.” Rory heard the challenge in it and wondered what expression she had let cross her face. “I mean it,” she said. Nia studied her. “I know what you’re thinking.” “I’m not sure you do.” “Probably not. I’ve had years to practise both sides of this conversation.” Rory smiled without pleasure. “Me too.” Beyond Nia, the room softened into its evening murmur. Wet coats steamed on chair backs. Someone was reading a newspaper under a lamp, turning the pages with an irritated snap. “What about you?” Nia asked. “I deliver food.” “I can see that.” “For Yu-Fei. He runs the Golden Empress. He gives me shifts I can manage. Silas lets me rent upstairs.” “And law?” “No.” “Good.” The speed of it startled her. “You think?” “You hated it.” “My father thinks I hated being bad at it.” “You weren’t bad at it. You were miserable.” Rory felt an unexpected sting behind her eyes. There was relief in hearing someone remember her correctly. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me it’s temporary.” “I wasn’t going to.” “Yes, you were.” Perhaps she had been. She touched the small crescent scar on her left wrist, tracing it beneath the table with her thumb. Nia took off her coat at last. Under the suit jacket, her blouse had a loose thread at one cuff. Rory noticed it with unreasonable affection. “I went to see a play last month,” Nia said. “First one in ages.” “Any good?” “Very. Annoyingly good. I spent the interval in the toilets crying.” “Because you missed it?” “Because I hadn’t. Not for months. Then suddenly I did.” Rory waited. “I keep thinking I should do something. An evening class. Some dreadful amateur production. But I get home and put the television on.” “We could go.” “To a dreadful amateur production?” “Or a good one.” Nia smiled. “Let’s not overreach.” Her phone vibrated inside her pocket. This time she took it out. “I have to go.” “Of course.” Neither stood. Rory wanted to ask if she had been forgiven, though she would not have used that word. She might have asked if they were all right. It would have sounded casual, and Nia would have known what she meant, and once again the work would have been hers. Instead Rory said, “Have you got the same number?” “Yes.” “I haven’t.” “I gathered.” Rory winced. Nia pushed her phone across the table, a new contact open. Rory entered her number. Under the name she typed Rory, then hesitated and added Carter. “I know your surname,” Nia said. “Solicitors like things complete.” “Nothing gets past you.” They stood. Nia pulled on her coat, caught the lining at one shoulder, and allowed Rory to straighten it. The familiar gesture brought back a cold morning outside a lecture hall: Nia buttoning Rory’s cardigan wrong on purpose, both of them helpless with laughter. Rory had not thought of that morning once in six years. At the door, Nia turned. “I was angry with you for a long time.” “I know.” “No, you don’t. You weren’t there.” Rory took it. “I’m still a bit angry.” “All right.” “And I can’t do that again. Send things into nowhere.” “You won’t.” She wanted to promise more, but Nia was watching her with a steadiness she had earned. “I’ll answer,” Rory said. Nia nodded. This time, when they embraced, Rory felt the weight of her rather than the edges of her coat. She held on for a moment and let go before either of them had to pull away. Through the window she watched Nia step beneath the green sign, open her umbrella, and stand checking which way to turn. Then she went left, briskly, towards her dinner. Rory returned to the table. There was water beneath Nia’s glass and a shallow dent in the chair cushion. She picked up her phone and typed before she could begin improving the words. I’m glad you came in. Next Thursday? We could find a play. She sent it, then carried the glass to the bar. Silas took it from her. “All right?” “Not entirely.” He nodded, as though this were an answer he respected. Her phone vibrated while she was wiping the table. Thursday works. You choose. Rory read it twice. Then she put the phone in her pocket and finished wiping the ring the glass had left.