Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DAN7CN0JMVBXVKVKWJ2S9S

The rain had turned the pavement on Old Compton Street into a dark mirror, and the green neon above the Raven's Nest stuttered as Rory ducked under the awning. She shook water from her hair, lifted the delivery bag off her shoulder, and pushed through the door before the damp could settle into her bones. Silas glanced up from the taps. He nodded toward the back wall, where the old maps had yellowed to the colour of weak tea, and said nothing. He didn't need to. She knew the rhythm of the place: the clink of glassware, the low murmur of Thursday regulars, the faint smell of woodsmoke that never quite left the upholstery. "Half a pint of whatever's cheapest," she said, sliding onto a stool. "I've got three more drops before I can call it a night." "Cheapest is the Staropramen," Silas said, reaching for a glass. He favoured his left leg as he turned, the way he always did after standing too long. "You look like you've been run through a car wash." "Feels like it." She reached for her phone to check the next order, and that was when the voice reached her from the far end of the bar. It was low and certain, the kind of voice that had once argued with her over the last bag of crisps on a school trip to Barry Island. "Still can't sit with your back to the room, I see." Rory turned slowly. A woman in a camel coat sat three stools down, one hand curled around a glass of sparkling water with a wedge of lime. Her hair had been cropped short and expensive, tucked behind one ear. A thin gold band caught the neon. "Eva." "Hello, Rory." Rory didn't move. She had imagined this moment a dozen times over the years, always in the wrong places: a supermarket queue, a train platform, a hospital corridor. Never in a bar she had chosen partly because nobody from Cardiff would ever think to look for her in Soho. "You cut your hair," Rory said. "You cut contact." Eva's smile was thin, controlled. "I think we're even on the haircut." Silas set the pint down in front of Rory without a word, but his gaze moved between the two women with the careful attention of a man who had spent decades reading rooms. He drifted to the other end of the bar and found something to polish. Rory picked up the glass and didn't drink. "You look well." "I look like someone who sells software to people who don't read the contracts. Which is what I do, now. Four years in Canary Wharf, a flat with a view of a bin lorry, and a husband called Tom who thinks Welsh rugby is a personality." Eva turned her glass in a slow circle. "He's at home. I told him I was getting a drink with an old friend. He asked which one. I said you'd know." "Did you tell him about Evan?" The name landed on the bar between them like something dropped from a height. Eva's shoulders tightened, just slightly, and then she set her glass down with deliberate care. "Yes," she said. "Once I'd stopped being sick about it." Rory stared at the foam slowly collapsing on her beer. "I'm sorry." "You're sorry." Eva laughed, but there was no warmth in it. "He came round to my mum's house twice after you left. Did you know that? Stood on the step at two in the morning shouting through the letterbox. Said you'd taken something of his. Mum called the police, and he had the nerve to look wounded when they walked him to the car." "I didn't know." "No. You didn't ask." Eva's voice didn't rise. It sharpened. "You sent me one postcard. A picture of Big Ben. 'Made it, don't worry about me, love you.' I read it about four hundred times trying to work out what you meant by 'don't worry.'" Rory's throat tightened. She pressed her left wrist against the edge of the bar, feeling the thin ridge of the crescent scar beneath her sleeve, the old reminder she had never bothered to hide. "I thought if I stopped talking to anyone from home, he'd lose interest. I thought I was protecting you." "Protecting me." Eva shook her head slowly. "You know what I did while you were protecting me? I learned to check the locks twice. I changed my route home. I stopped answering the door after dark. And when I finally stopped being afraid to leave the house, I got a job in London so I could be close to the one person who'd made me feel safe, and found out she'd changed her number." The Staropramen had gone flat. Rory pushed it an inch away, as if distance could make it cheaper. Along the wall, a black-and-white photograph of a fishing boat in some forgotten harbour seemed to lean closer to the light. "I should have called," Rory said. "Yes." "I should have come back." "Yes." Eva picked up her water again, but didn't drink. "Are you going to tell me why you didn't?" Rory opened her mouth. Nothing came out. The truth had too many edges. It involved a flat above a bar, a delivery van full of Golden Empress takeaway, and a life she had built out of nothing and was still afraid to lose. It involved a version of herself she hadn't wanted Eva to see. Eva watched her for a long moment, then nodded, as though Rory had answered after all. "Right," Eva said quietly. "Right."