Run: 2026-10-20-01M5C6CAE14ARFEQ3YF9WAB6TZ

The rain had followed Rory back from the delivery drop on Dean Street, and it was still in her hair when she pushed through the door of the Raven’s Nest. The green neon sign outside turned the wet pavement a sickly, beautiful colour, and inside the bar smelled of lemon polish and old paper. Silas was behind the counter, polishing a glass with a cloth that had gone soft with age. He didn’t look up. “You’re dripping on the floor,” he said. “I’ll mop it before I go up.” Rory peeled off her jacket, the red one with Golden Empress stitched in gold thread across the back, and hung it on the hook by the door. The flat above the bar would be cold. She had left the radiator off again. She slid onto the stool at the far end of the counter, the one nearest the wall of old maps, and Silas set a glass of stout in front of her without asking. “You look like something the river spat out,” he said. “Charming.” She drank. The stout was dark and steady, and she let it sit on her tongue a moment before swallowing. Outside, the rain ticked against the window. The bar was almost empty. Two men in the corner talked quietly over a folded newspaper, and a woman in a grey coat read a book with her finger moving under the words. Then the door opened. The bell above it gave a thin, apologetic ring. A woman stepped in, shaking out a black umbrella, and for a moment Rory only saw the coat—good wool, well cut, the kind of thing you wore when you wanted people to take you seriously. Then the woman turned, and the floor seemed to tilt. “Rory?” It was Nia. But it was not the Nia Rory remembered. The Nia Rory remembered had dyed her hair the colour of plums and had three silver rings in her eyebrow and laughed so loudly in the university library that a librarian had once asked her to leave. This woman’s hair was dark brown, cut to her jaw, and there was no metal in her face at all. Her eyes were the same, though. Wide and quick and always taking everything in. “Nia,” Rory said. Her voice came out flat. She put the glass down. Nia stood just inside the door, holding her umbrella like a walking stick. “I thought—God, I thought I was hallucinating. I only came in because the rain. I’m staying at a hotel round the corner, and I saw the sign.” “It’s a bar,” Rory said. “Yes. I can see that.” Nia laughed, but it was a small, careful sound, nothing like the old laugh. She came forward, and Rory saw her shoes—polished leather, low heels—and the leather satchel over her shoulder. She looked like she had stepped out of a meeting. She looked like she had never in her life been the girl who once stole a traffic cone and put it on the roof of the Students’ Union. “What are you doing in London?” Rory asked. “Work.” Nia stopped at the other end of the counter, a few stools away, as if there were an invisible line between them. “I’m a barrister now. Employment tribunal. I’m here for a hearing.” She paused. “You’re surprised.” “I’m not surprised.” Rory was surprised. Nia had once said she would rather eat glass than wear a suit. But people changed. That was the whole point of leaving. Silas had put down his glass and his cloth. He looked at Nia, then at Rory, and his hazel eyes gave nothing away. “What can I get you?” he asked. Nia glanced at the taps, then at the bottles behind him. “Sparkling water. With lime, if you have it.” Silas nodded and turned away. Rory watched Nia sit down, one stool closer now, and set her satchel on the counter. The silver signet ring on Silas’s right hand caught the light as he reached for a glass. The bar’s old maps hung behind him, their edges curled, and one of the black-and-white photographs—Prague, Rory thought, though she had never asked—showed a bridge in fog. “You’re working at a restaurant,” Nia said. It wasn’t a question. “Delivery.” “Right.” Nia took the sparkling water. “Your mum told mine you were in London. That was years ago. She didn’t say what you were doing.” “She doesn’t know.” Nia’s hand tightened around the glass. “She doesn’t know you deliver food?” “She doesn’t know anything.” Rory drank again. The stout was warm now. “She knows I’m alive.” “That’s a low bar, Rory.” “It’s the one I could clear.” Nia looked at her. The neon from outside bled through the window and laid a green stripe across her cheek. She had changed in more than clothes. There was a stillness to her now, a way of holding her shoulders as if she had been taught to take up less room. Rory remembered her stretched out on the floor of their old flat, smoking out the window, arguing about case law with her feet up on the radiator. She remembered Nia saying, *We’re going to be brilliant, you and me. We’ll be so brilliant they’ll name a building after us.* “I looked for you,” Nia said. “After you left.” “I know.” “No, you don’t.” Nia’s voice was quiet but firm. “You changed your number. You didn’t answer emails. I went to the flat on Richmond Road. The landlord let me in. He said you’d left in a hurry.” She stopped. Her thumb moved along the edge of her glass. “There was a hole in the plaster by the bedroom door. The size of a fist.” Rory didn’t say anything. She could feel the scar on her left wrist, the small crescent, though it had nothing to do with that flat. It was old, childhood, a fall from a bike. But she touched it anyway, her thumb finding the shape through her sleeve. “Evan told everyone you’d gone to Spain with a barman,” Nia said. “He said you’d been unstable. That you’d made things up.” “He would.” “I didn’t believe him.” Nia’s eyes were steady. “But I was angry.” “At me?” “At you. At him. At myself.” She let out a breath. “I brought him to that party. Do you remember? The one at mine. I said he was harmless. I said he was a nice guy with a nice coat.” “He was your friend.” “He was a prick in a nice coat. I should have seen it.” Nia’s voice cracked, just a little. “I kept thinking, if I’d been paying attention. If I hadn’t been so busy being—what was I? A mess. I was a mess, Rory. I drank too much. I laughed too loud. I thought I had time to be a mess and still be brilliant.” Rory looked down at the counter. The wood was scored with old rings from wet glasses. “You weren’t responsible for him.” “I introduced you.” “I made my own choices.” “Did you?” Nia asked. “Did you choose to disappear?” Rory didn’t answer. Silas had moved to the other end of the bar, giving them space. He limped slightly, the old knee injury making itself known in the damp weather. He picked up the folded newspaper the two men had left behind and smoothed it flat. “I stopped drinking,” Nia said. “Three years ago. I hit a wall. Not a dramatic one. I just woke up one morning and couldn’t remember the week before. I was supposed to be in court. I wasn’t.” She smiled, and it was thin. “So I stopped. I started running. I finished my pupillage. I met someone. I have a daughter now. She’s two.” Rory looked up. “A daughter.” “Her name is Elin.” Nia’s face softened. “She has my mum’s laugh. The loud one. So I suppose I haven’t changed that much.” Rory tried to picture Nia with a child, with a partner, with a house maybe, with a life that had edges and routines. She couldn’t. The Nia she remembered had once set fire to a saucepan of pasta and then tried to put it out with a tea towel. But people changed. Rory had changed too, though she didn’t know if it was for the better. She had become quiet. Careful. She had learned to walk home by different routes and to keep her keys between her fingers. She had learned to be invisible. “You were going to be the barrister,” Nia said. “You had it all planned. You had a colour-coded revision timetable. You used to annotate your annotations.” “I dropped out.” “I know. I mean—” Nia shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. That’s the point. You just vanished. And now you’re here, delivering noodles, living above a bar.” “Someone has to deliver the noodles.” Nia flinched. “I didn’t mean it like that.” “You did a bit.” “Maybe.” Nia’s voice was small. “I’m sorry.” Rory ran her finger through the condensation on her glass. The two men in the corner stood up and put on their coats. The woman with the book closed it and tucked it into her bag. Silas started stacking chairs. The bar was closing, or nearly. The green neon sign outside flickered once and held. “What happened?” Nia asked. “I mean, I know what he was. I know what he did. But what happened to you?” Rory thought about the flat on Richmond Road, the hole in the plaster, the way Evan had stood in the doorway with his hands loose at his sides and his voice so calm it was worse than shouting. She thought about the night she left, how she had packed a single bag and taken the train to London because Eva had said, *Come. Just come.* She thought about the months after, when she couldn’t sleep without the light on, when she flinched at the sound of a door. She thought about the way she had not called Nia, not because she didn’t love her, but because she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t explain the shame of it. She couldn’t explain how she had let it happen, how she had stayed longer than she should have, how she had believed him when he said she was the problem. She couldn’t explain how she was still trying to get back to the person she had been before him, and how some days it felt like walking uphill with stones in her shoes. “I ran,” Rory said. “And then I kept running. And then it was too late to call.” “It’s not too late.” “It’s been six years.” “So?” Nia leaned forward. “I’m here. You’re here. We’re not dead.” Rory almost laughed. It was such a Nia thing to say. But the old Nia would have said it with a grin and a raised glass. This Nia said it like she was making a case. Like she was presenting evidence. “I don’t know what to say to you,” Rory said. “I don’t know how to be the person you remember.” Nia was quiet for a moment. Then she reached into her satchel and pulled out a small card. She slid it across the counter. It had her name on it, and a chambers address in Cardiff, and a phone number. “That’s me,” she said. “I’m not the person I was either. I’m trying to be better. I’m trying to pay attention.” Rory picked up the card. It was heavy, the good kind of paper. She put it in the pocket of her delivery jacket. “I should go,” Nia said. “My hotel is that way.” She stood, and for a moment they looked at each other across the counter. There was so much Rory wanted to say—about Evan, about the flat, about the years, about how she had missed Nia more than she had let herself admit. But the words were stuck somewhere behind her ribs. “It was good to see you,” Rory said. It came out wrong. Too polite. Too small. Nia nodded. “You too.” She picked up her umbrella. At the door, she paused. “Rory.” “Yeah?” “You don’t have to be the person I remember. You just have to be someone who calls.” Then she was gone, and the bell gave its thin ring, and the green neon outside painted the wet pavement all over again. Silas came over. He set a glass of water beside Rory’s empty stout glass and didn’t say anything. His signet ring tapped against the wood once, softly. “Old friend?” he asked. “Something like that.” He nodded and began wiping down the counter. Rory sat with the water and the card in her pocket and the rain still ticking against the window. She didn’t know if she would call. She hoped she would. Outside, the pavement shone like something spilled, and the night went on.