Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DA7ZSAABKTPPPAQKXKF9WF

The green neon above the door buzzed its tired hum, the R in RAVEN stuttering like it had something to hide. Rory ducked beneath it with the cold clinging to her shoulders and the Golden Empress delivery bag still slung across her chest. The noodles inside had gone lukewarm twenty minutes ago. She should have climbed the stairs to the flat above the bar. Instead she took the stool at the far end of the counter, where the wood had been worn pale by a thousand elbows. Silas glanced up from the glass he was drying. He said nothing. He tilted his head toward the taps, the way he always did, and she shook hers. He went back to polishing, the silver signet ring catching the light on his right hand as he worked. She heard the laugh before she saw who it belonged to. It rose from the booth beneath the faded maps of the Western Front, starting low and climbing until it cracked at the top. Rory knew that laugh. She had heard it through a bedroom wall in Canton, across a playing field in Ely, and over the crackle of a phone line at two in the morning, years ago, when it had been the only sound she trusted. She turned on the stool. Eva sat with her back to the wall, a glass of something clear in front of her and a camel coat folded on the seat beside her like a second guest. The hair that used to hang past her shoulders in tangled ropes had been cropped close to her jaw and dyed a shade of dark honey. The freckles across her nose had been covered by something expensive. Only the mouth remained the same, wide and ready to say the thing nobody else would. Rory considered leaving. Her body had already made the decision, shifting toward the door, but her feet refused to follow. Eva looked up. The laugh died mid-climb. "Well," Eva said. "Bloody hell." "Eva." "Rory Carter. In a delivery jacket." Her eyes dropped to the bag, then travelled back up with a slow, deliberate care. "Please tell me that's not for Yu-Fei." "Part-time." "Part-time." Eva laughed again, shorter this time, and tapped the rim of her glass with one nail. "Of course it is. Still too clever to be content and too proud to ask anyone for a loan." Rory crossed the room. The floorboards creaked under her boots in the same spot they always had. She stopped at the edge of the booth and found she had no idea what to do with her hands, so she gripped the strap of the bag. "You look—" She didn't finish. The word she wanted was not one she could say in a bar where Silas was within earshot, and the word she had ready was too kind to be honest. "Older?" Eva lifted her left hand. A thin gold band caught the green glow from the window. "Sober, which you'll note I'm drinking water to prove. Married, to a man who owns three dentists in Surrey and calls me *darling* in front of his mother. Don't look so horrified. You're allowed to be happy for me." "I'm not horrified." "You've got the face. The one you pulled when Mrs. Pritchard caught us on the chapel wall with a bottle of her brother's Bell's." "You pushed me off the wall." "I pushed you off the wall because you were laughing so hard you were going to fall anyway." Eva's voice softened by a degree, just one. "Sit down, Rory. You're making the place look untidy." Rory sat. The vinyl of the booth gave under her weight with a sigh. Up close, Eva's face held lines Rory had never seen, faint grooves beside her mouth and between her brows, the marks of someone who had spent a long time keeping her expression level. "I should have rung," Rory said. "You should have." Eva turned her glass in a slow circle on the table. "I rang you on your birthday. I rang the week after the wedding that didn't happen. I rang the night your mum's card arrived with that pressed daffodil in it, the one you never answered. Four years, Rory." "Three and a half." "Oh, well, if we're counting in halves." The sharpness returned, but it came without heat now, like something tired of its own edge. "I'm not doing this to make you feel guilty. I'm doing it because I'm the only one in this city who knows the exact shade of your voice when you're lying, and you're doing it right now." Rory opened her mouth. Nothing useful came out. Across the room, Silas set a tumbler of sparkling water on the bar, moved it toward the booth with two fingers, and turned away without comment. His left leg dragged a fraction on the way back to the taps, the old injury showing in the hitch of his stride. He didn't look at them. He didn't need to. "He's still here, then," Eva said. "Your Silas. Still looks like he's about to arrest someone for parking badly." "He's my landlord." "He's your something." Eva's gaze settled on Rory's face with the same unhurried attention she used to give a crossword clue. "You're living above a bar, carrying takeaway across Soho in the rain, and you won't even tell me what's wrong with your hands." Rory looked down. Her fingers were clenched around the strap so hard the knuckles had gone white. She made them open, one at a time, and laid her palms flat on the table between the two glasses. "It's nothing," she said. Eva said nothing at all, and the silence stretched between them, filled with the hiss of the radiator and the murmur of a couple arguing quietly by the door.