Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DANWT17P1G87BST5P0S5DC

The green neon above the door of the Raven's Nest threw its colour across the wet pavement, and Aurora stopped under it long enough to read the reflection in the glass. Her hair was shorter than she remembered it, though she had cut it herself. Eleven months had passed since the last time she'd walked through that door, and she still hadn't decided whether coming back was a mistake. Inside, the bar smelled of peat smoke and lemon oil. Silas stood behind the counter, polishing a tumbler with the slow care of a man who had nowhere else to be. He glanced up, his hazel eyes settling on her, and he tilted his head toward the corner booth without a word. She nodded her thanks. Then she saw who was already sitting there. Eva had her back to the room, one hand wrapped around a glass of white wine. Her hair was cropped to the jaw and bleached the colour of old piano keys. A charcoal coat hung over the chair beside her, the cut of it too sharp for anything bought on Oxford Street. Rory stood at the end of the booth for a moment longer than was polite. "You're going to stand there all night," Eva said, without turning around, "or are you going to sit down and pretend you're not shocked?" "I'm not shocked." "Liar. You've got the face. The one you used to make when Mum put broccoli on your plate." Rory slid into the seat opposite. The vinyl was cracked and cold through her jeans. "I didn't know you still came here." "I don't. I came here because I knew you wouldn't." Eva finally looked at her, and the look was not the one Rory remembered. There was no mischief in it, no quick flash of the girl who once talked her into climbing the wall behind the Cardiff bus depot at two in the morning. The eyes were steady and tired and assessing. "Silas said you still come round on Thursdays to drop off the Golden Empress order." "Sometimes." "Sometimes." Eva turned the glass slowly on its coaster. A thin gold band caught the light on her left hand. "You work for a Chinese takeaway and you live above a bar. Your mother must be thrilled." "My mother doesn't know where I live." "That's not what I asked." Rory opened her mouth, then closed it. Across the room, the old brass clock above the bookshelf ticked into the silence. Silas had moved to the far end of the counter and was pretending to rearrange bottles of single malt, though Rory suspected he was listening to every word. "You married?" she asked. "Engaged. Then not engaged. Then engaged again, on a Tuesday, in a registry office in Islington, to a man who sells commercial insurance and cries at documentaries." Eva's mouth twisted. "He's good. He's kind. I'm not sure I'm capable of being kind back, but I'm trying." "You always wanted to be somewhere else." "And you always wanted to be someone else." Eva drank. "We were a pair of bloody idiots, weren't we?" Rory ran her thumb along the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, the one from the broken greenhouse glass when they were eight. It was a habit she had never managed to break. "You called me. The night before the flat in Peckham." Eva's fingers stopped moving on the glass. "I know," Rory said. "I was in the shower. I didn't pick up." "You didn't have to pick up. You just had to call back." "I know." "Do you? Because I sat on the floor of that kitchen for three hours with the phone in my lap waiting for you to ring. Three hours, Rory. And when I finally got up I'd decided I didn't need you anyway." Eva laughed, a short, hard sound with nothing warm in it. "That's the thing about us. We're brilliant at deciding we don't need people." The bass from the jukebox thumped through the floorboards. Somebody at the bar laughed too loudly and then apologised. Rory wanted to reach across the table, to say something that would make the last two years smaller, but her hands stayed flat on the cold wood. "Evan's dead," she said instead. It came out flat, like a receipt. Eva's eyes flicked up sharply. "When?" "March. Heart. He was forty-one." Rory waited for something to rise in her chest and found only a dull, distant ache, like a bruise pressed through layers of clothing. "I read it in a local paper someone had posted online. My name wasn't in it. Mine was never in anything with him." "Oh, Rory." "Don't. I'm not asking you to be sorry for him." "I wasn't going to be sorry for him." Eva set the wine down. "I was going to say I'm sorry you had to find out like that. You should have had someone tell you." "Who would have told me? You were already gone." The words landed between them and neither of them picked them up. Silas stepped out from behind the counter with a fresh glass of water in each hand, his left leg dragging slightly on the worn boards. He set one down in front of Rory without comment, then placed the other at Eva's elbow, where the wine had left a ring on the table. "Thank you, Si," Eva said quietly. "You're welcome." His voice was low and even. He looked at Rory for a moment longer, and in that look she saw a question he would never ask out loud. Then he limped back toward the bottles. Rory picked up the water and held it without drinking. "Why did you come here tonight, Eva?" Eva was quiet for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its edge. "I wanted to see if you'd still look at me the way you used to." Rory set the glass down, and for once she didn't have a clever answer ready.