AI The glass slipped from Rory’s hand, a clean, sharp crack against the polished oak of the bar. It didn't shatter, just chipped, leaving a jagged tooth on the rim.
"Sorry," she muttered, not looking at Silas. The shards tinkled as she swept them into a dustpan. The Monday-night crowd at The Raven’s Nest was a sparse collection of hushed deals and quiet desperation. The air hung thick with the scent of spilled ale and old secrets.
"I'll pretend I didn't see that," Silas said from his usual corner, a fresh glass already polished and waiting for her. He didn’t look up from the ledger he was annotating . "Slippery glass."
"Something like that," Rory said. The lie tasted metallic on her tongue.
She was about to turn back to the sink when the door opened. A gust of cool London air blew in, carrying with it the smell of rain on pavement and a faint, floral perfume she hadn't smelled in five years. A woman stepped in, shaking droplets from a silk headscarf. It was the way she held her handbag that Rory recognised first, a nervous clutch against her chest, as if it contained state secrets.
Then she saw the face. The rounder cheeks, the laugh lines etched deeper, the hair now a sleek, expensive bob of auburn. Her heart performed a single, violent somersault in her chest.
Eva.
Eva caught her eye from across the room. Her perfectly glossed lips parted, a slow, practised smile spreading across her face, the kind meant for a camera or a difficult client. She glided towards the bar, her heels making no sound on the worn floorboards. The silk of her dress whispered against her tights. Everything about her was expensive, from the tailored cut of the fabric to the subtle gleam of the diamonds at her ears. She looked like a woman whose life was a series of deliberate choices, each one flawless .
"Rory," Eva said. "What a surprise."
The name felt like a slap .
"Eva." Rory’s voice was a dry rasp. She felt the grain of the bar top beneath her fingers, a sudden, desperate need for its solid, familiar reality. She was in a plain black t-shirt and jeans, a dishtowel tucked into her back pocket. She felt like a ghost haunting her own life.
"I thought you were still in Cardiff," Eva said, sliding onto a stool. She placed her handbag, a buttery leather thing, on the bar, keeping one hand on it. "Your mother said you were doing law. I saw her at the Christmas market. She said you were getting on wonderfully."
The air in Rory's lungs seemed to turn to sand. Wonderful. She imagined her mother’s hopeful voice, spinning a story of a daughter who hadn't run away to a life of dodging phone calls and doing late-night deliveries of kung pao chicken for Yu-Fei Cheung.
"Things change," Rory said. The words felt flimsy, inadequate.
"Don't they just." Eva's gaze swept the bar, taking in the yellowed maps and the black-and-white photographs of men in uniforms, their faces long forgotten. "This is... atmospheric." She said it the way one might describe a damp basement.
"It's home," Rory replied, a flash of defensive heat rising in her chest . She began wiping down the bar, a furious, methodical rhythm.
Eva’s smile remained fixed. "I'm here for a meeting. A potential client. Turner Holdings, property developers. It's taken me six months to get this appointment."
"Congratulations," Rory said, and meant it. Eva had always been ambitious. That ambition used to be directed at the whole world, including Rory, pulling her along in its wake. Now it was focused, hardened, entirely self-serving.
"Thank you. It's a big deal. If it goes through, it's a permanent move to London." Eva’s fingers drummed once, twice, on the bar. A nervous habit she’d had since school. "I imagine a lot has changed for you too. Are you… still with Evan?"
The name hung in the air , a noxious fume. The crescent scar on Rory’s wrist throbbed , a phantom pain from a thousand years ago. She stopped wiping.
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Eva said, her voice softening with an empathy that felt rehearsed . "He always seemed so… passionate."
Passionate. Rory almost laughed. It was a good word for it. A word for a love that burned so hot it left nothing but ash. For slammed doors and the sudden, terrifying weight of a fist against a wall. It was the word you used when you didn't know the other, uglier ones.
"The passionate ones are always the hardest to leave," Eva continued, her eyes wide and understanding .
Rory looked at her, really looked at her. Eva, who had been at her side in that cramped, awful flat in Cardiff, who had held her hair back while she cried and promised she’d never let her go back to him. Eva, who had bought her the bus ticket to London. The same Eva who, four months later, got engaged to a man just like Evan, a man she was now, presumably, still married to.
"Was that a business meeting you had last month on the fourteenth?" Rory asked. "At the Langham?"
Eva’s smile faltered. A flicker of something, surprise or perhaps annoyance, crossed her features. "How did you-"
"Yu-Fei's kitchen does a lot of deliveries to the Langham. A lot of takeaway. A lot of receipts." Rory leaned on the bar. "A lot of wives. One of them had your name."
The silence that followed was louder than any of the quiet conversations in the room. The colour bled from Eva’s cheeks.
"He's a good man, Christopher," Eva said, her voice tight . "He provides for me. It's a partnership. A successful one."
"Partnership," Rory repeated. The word tasted like chalk. "Is that what they call it now?"
"It's a different world out there, Rory. You can't just run away from everything." Eva leaned forward, her expensive perfume now cloying and heavy. "You can't just hide behind a bar, pretending the fight isn't happening. I had to make a choice. I made mine. The one that didn't involve sleeping above a pub and lying to my parents about my entire life."
The words landed, each one a well-aimed punch. Rory’s knuckles were white on the edge of the bar. "You made your choice. But don't you dare pretend it was the only one. You were right there with me, Eva. You knew what he was like. You bought me that ticket."
"I was young," Eva spat, her composure finally cracking . "We were both young. I was drowning, Rory. I couldn't save you both."
"You let me go," Rory whispered. "You got scared, and you let me go."
The air crackled with the ghosts of their past, the shared trauma warping and reshaping itself into this ugly, present thing. Eva looked at her, and in her eyes, Rory didn't see her childhood friend. She saw a stranger, a woman who had built a fortress of comfort and called it a life.
A loud crack came from the back room. Silas’s voice, low and sharp, cut through the bar’s ambient hum. The bookshelf swung open. Silas appeared, his face drawn. He didn't look at Eva. His eyes found Rory from across the room and his expression was a flat mask of grim purpose. He gestured with his head, a single, sharp motion.
"Rory," he said, his voice carrying an apology . "He's here."
The thick, acrid smell of smoke hit her then. Not cigarette smoke. Not the chimney. The smell of something chemical, something serious. Someone in the bar began coughing, a wet, hacking sound.
"Who's here?" Eva asked, her voice trembling for the first time .
Rory didn't answer her. She grabbed the heavy glass ashtray from the bar, the weight of it familiar in her palm. She looked at Eva, at the perfect stranger sitting in her bar, and a cold calm settled over her.
"Someone from the old world," she said. "Now get out the back. Before he sees you."