AI "Aurora Carter."
Nobody in London called her that. Rory set the crate of tonic bottles on the bar and kept her back to the door. Glass rattled. The voice came again, closer, wrapped in a laugh she knew from school corridors, from shared umbrellas, from the worst night of her life.
"God. It is. Look at you."
She turned.
Eva stood just inside with the green neon at her back, one hand still flat on the door, her mouth open around a smile that had cost money since Cardiff. The black tangle of her hair had become a chestnut gloss that drank the bar lights. Her coat was the colour of clotted cream, and the stone on her left hand threw sparks when she lifted it to her lips.
"Eva."
"You cut your hair." As if that were the thing that had happened.
"Six years ago."
"Six years." Eva crossed the floor in four strides and crushed her into a hug, some French perfume rising off her like heat off a pavement. Over Eva's shoulder, Rory watched Silas pause mid-polish at the till, a pint glass in his fist, one grey eyebrow lifted a few millimetres. Rory shook her head, small. He went back to the glass.
Eva held her at arm's length.
"Let me look at you. You're thin. Are you thin? You're thin. And what's this?" She plucked at the sleeve of Rory's jacket, the red and gold of the Golden Empress stitched over the breast. Under the wool, Rory still carried the smell of Yu-Fei's kitchen, sesame oil and star anise, soaked into her skin like a second pulse . "You deliver food?"
"Hot and on time. There's worse work."
"Rory." A whole sermon in the name. "You were two years into a law degree."
"Pre-law. And I was rubbish at it."
"You were not rubbish. You were bored. There's a difference." Eva's eyes went travelling . The Raven's Nest wore its history on the walls, old maps of cities that had changed their names, black-and-white photographs of men who never smiled at the camera. A raven in a gilt frame watched the room from above the optics, wings half-spread, frozen mid-decision. "So this is yours?"
"Silas's. I live upstairs."
"You live above a bar."
"Above this bar."
"And he is?" The eyebrow again . Different meaning now.
"Not like that."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face did."
Eva laughed and folded herself onto a stool, the cream coat pooling around her. "God, I'm having a drink. It's fate, this. I was at client drinks in Covent Garden, it ran on, I cut through Soho for a taxi, and I saw the sign, the raven, and I thought, didn't Rory send me something once, years back, wasn't there a raven in it?"
"A text. Two years ago."
"A text, yes." Eva waved a hand, as if two years and six were the same animal.
Rory went behind the bar because her hands wanted work. "Two whiskies, Si."
"Whisky." Eva's eyebrows climbed . "You were a rosé girl. Rosé and a packet of crisps for dinner, that was you."
"People change."
"Tidy," Eva said, and the word came out pure Cardiff, and for a second they were eighteen again, sharing a cigarette outside the union, the whole map of their lives still folded in somebody's pocket .
Silas set the glasses down. His signet ring knocked once against the wood, silver on oak, and he limped away without a word. Eva tracked him.
"So," she said. "No husband, no fiancé, no—"
"No."
"Women?"
"Eva."
"I'm asking. Six years, cariad, somebody has to ask." She sipped, winced, sipped again . "I'm married, you know. Bristol. Rhys. He's in insurance, you wouldn't like him, nobody does at first, he's an acquired taste. Like olives."
"You don't like olives."
"I've learned." Eva turned the glass in her hands. "That's what growing up is, isn't it. Learning to like olives."
Rory said nothing. The whisky burned a clean line down her.
"Do you know what I still think about?" Eva's voice dropped, gentler, and Rory's shoulders rose against it. "The doorstep. You on my doorstep with everything you owned in a bin bag."
"A rucksack."
"It was a bin bag, Rory. I was there."
"I was there first."
Eva blinked. Then: "One bag. Four years with that man, and your whole life fit in one bag." She reached across the bar and found Rory's left wrist, her thumb landing on the crescent scar, exact as a key in a lock. "Still there."
"Scars are like that."
"The bike." Eva's thumb moved over the little moon of it. "I always felt rotten about that bike. My stupid idea, that race down the hill."
"It was a long time ago."
It was a good story. It had a hill in it, and a bike, and nobody to blame. Rory let it stand the way you let a wall stand, because of everything behind it.
"Do you remember who introduced you two?" Eva said. "Freshers' week. My kitchen. He was Rhys's friend first, did you know that? No. Course you didn't." She drank. "I keep a list, Rory. An actual list, in a drawer, things I'd do differently. That's top of it."
"Eva."
"You can't blame yourself forever."
"I don't."
"That was meant for me," Eva said quietly.
The till chimed. Somebody laughed two tables over, a bright broken sound, and Silas said something low, and the laugh folded itself away. Rory pressed her thumb into the scar until the skin blanched.
"I saw him," Eva said. "In March. Cardiff."
"Don't."
"He asked about you."
"Eva."
"He's married. A little girl. He coaches her football, the under-sevens, there are photos, Rhys plays golf with him, and Rory, he's settled. He's settled, that's what I'm saying. People do change, that's my whole point."
"It's not a point. It's a prayer."
"You know he never once called you Rory," Eva said. "Always Laila. I never understood where that came from."
"You weren't meant to."
Eva's hand tightened round her glass. The stone on her finger caught the light and threw it against the maps, a small white spark travelling over cities that no longer existed.
"Why are you telling me this?" Rory said.
"Because he asked where you were." Eva's voice came apart at the edges, and underneath the cracks sat something hard and certain, the old Cardiff certainty, the voice that had once said get in the car, you're coming home with me. "And I told him. The bar. The raven. I told him."
The whisky stopped tasting of anything.
"He said he'd love to buy you a drink. Laugh about how young we were. Six years, cariad. You can't live up those stairs forever. At some point you have to stop being the girl in the bin bag."
"Rucksack."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Silas appeared at the edge of them, collecting glasses that weren't empty. His limp deepened when he worried. It was deep now.
"Everything alright, Rory?"
"Fine, Si. Old friend."
"The oldest," Eva said, smiling up at him, performing warmth for a jury of one.
"Two rings," Silas said. Rory nodded. He withdrew, slow, his eyes on her the whole way back to the till.
"What's two rings?"
"Last orders."
The lie came out smooth. Six years ago it would have stammered. Eva glanced at her phone, and the screen lit her face from below, and in that light she looked frightened, finally, underneath the gloss.
"He said he'd be nearby," she said. "Rhys is at his mother's. I thought one drink. A hello. Closure, Rory. Everyone deserves closure."
The door opened. Cold air off the street moved through the bar and found the back of Rory's neck. Eva's face changed, something between delight and terror .
"Oh," Eva said. "That's him. That's actually him."
And from the doorway came a voice Rory had spent six years forgetting.
"Laila."