Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DAKPREAC1SR6F4PA90A6FG

The green neon above the door buzzed its half-second stutter before Rory pushed through. The Nest smelled the way it always did, of wet wool, bitter orange, and old paper. She had come in for one drink and a cigarette she had promised herself she would not light. Silas lifted two fingers off the bar without looking up, which meant the usual was coming. She'd barely settled onto her stool when the woman beside her said, "You still take it with too much ice." Rory didn't turn straight away. She knew the voice the way she knew the crescent scar on her wrist, by touch before sight. When she did turn, Eva Morgan looked back at her from under a cropped crown of hair the colour of wet sand. The long braid was gone. So were the freckles, or someone had taught her to hide them. A wedding band sat on her left hand, and a visitor's lanyard hung from the pocket of a charcoal coat. "Christ," Rory said. "Eva." "Hello, Rory." Silas set a glass down in front of her, ice knocking against the sides. His hazel eyes moved from one woman to the other and back again. He said nothing. He rarely did when he was listening, which was most of the time. "You're in London," Rory said. "Eleven years. You've been very good at not noticing." Eva took the stool beside her without asking and folded her hands on the wood. Her knuckles were pale and perfectly still. "Your mum rang me at Christmas. Said you were riding a bike around Soho for a Chinese restaurant and sleeping over a bar. She didn't say which bar." "She wouldn't know which bar." "She knew the postcode." That stopped Rory. She turned her glass a quarter turn on its mat, then another. "How is she?" "Well enough. She asks after you every time I speak to her." Eva's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "I told her you were busy becoming someone important." "And what did she say?" "That you'd always do things the hard way round, and that's why she loved you." Silas drifted down the bar, wiping a patch of wood that did not need wiping. He stayed close enough to hear and far enough to pretend otherwise. Rory had seen him do it a hundred times with clients and never once with her. "You look like a copper," Rory said. "Close enough." Eva tapped the badge without lifting it. "Hospital liaison. Mostly forms and angry relatives. I've got a daughter. Nell. She's six and she bites." "You've got a kid." "I've got a kid, a husband who thinks I'm the sensible one, and a mortgage in Walthamstow." She paused. "You missed the wedding, Rory." "I know." "I didn't ask if you knew. I said you missed it." Rory drank, and the gin burned all the way down. She could still see the hallway of the flat on Crwys Road the night Eva had rung her in tears, the phone cord stretched taut across the kitchen, Evan's shouting audible even through the receiver. *Come to London. Get out. I'll find you a room.* Rory had gone. She had packed one bag and left the door unlocked, and she had told herself that leaving was the brave part, the part that counted. She had never gone back to see what it cost the person who stayed to explain her absence to everyone who asked. "Did he ever come looking?" Rory said. "Evan?" Eva's gaze went flat and steady, the same look she'd given the boys on the school field when they had called Rory names. "Once. I told him you'd moved to Dublin and had married a surgeon. He believed me because he wanted to. Then he stopped looking." "Eva—" "Don't." She lifted her palm off the bar. "I'm not here to make you feel anything. I wanted to see if you still looked like you were waiting for someone to tell you what you'd done wrong." Rory laughed, short and ugly. "And?" "You do." Eva slid off the stool and pulled her coat tight at the collar. "Nell's got a birthday party Saturday. There's a school hall in Walthamstow with terrible sandwiches and a bouncy castle that smells like feet. You could come. You don't have to bring a present." She didn't wait for an answer. She set a crumpled five-pound note beside the glass, the way she used to pay for chips when they were sixteen and skint, and walked toward the door. The neon flickered as she passed under it, throwing green across her shoulders until the street swallowed her. Silas came back down the bar and looked at the note for a long moment. He picked it up, folded it once, and slid it into the pocket of his waistcoat. "Same again?" he asked. Rory pushed the empty glass toward him and didn't say yes.