Run: 2026-10-27-01M5YFSXK6XB54P91AQVW6BZ8P

The delivery bag had left a red groove across Rory’s shoulder. She set it beneath the bar at the Raven’s Nest and rolled the joint once, watching Silas count coins into a tray. “Golden Empress fed you?” “A spring roll with a hole in it.” “Yu-Fei’s generosity has ruined her.” He slid a bowl of peanuts towards her. His silver signet ring knocked against the wood, and Rory caught the bowl before it reached the damp patch beside her elbow. The door opened, letting in a strip of green light from the neon sign. A woman stepped inside and paused beneath the old map of London, one hand still on the door. Her coat was the colour of wet pavement. She wore her dark hair cropped close to her head, and a leather case hung from her shoulder. Rory knew her mouth first. The lower lip had a small notch where a tooth had gone through it during a school netball match. “Nia?” The woman’s hand fell from the door. For a moment she looked at Rory as though she had been asked a question in a language she used to speak. “Rory Carter?” Rory stood. Her knee struck the underside of the bar. “That’s still me.” Nia crossed the room. Rory opened her arms, then Nia offered a hand. They shook, both of them looking down at it. “You cut your hair.” “You got straight to the important business.” Nia touched the short dark fur above her ear. She had worn her hair in a dense cloud at seventeen, with pencils and bus tickets tucked into it. Once, during a maths exam, a paper clip had fallen out and landed on her desk. “I did it four years ago,” she continued. “I’d had enough of pulling it out of the shower drain.” “You used to threaten anyone who came near it with scissors.” “I used to threaten a lot of people.” Silas lifted the bowl of peanuts out of their way. “What can I get you?” Nia glanced at the chalkboard behind him. The prices had been rubbed out and rewritten so often that white dust haloed the numbers. “A gin and tonic, please. Whatever gin costs the least.” “Sound policy.” He took a glass from the shelf. Rory moved her delivery bag from the stool beside her, and Nia sat with her case against her knees. “What are you doing here?” Rory asked. “I could ask you the same thing.” “I live upstairs. I deliver for a Chinese restaurant around the corner.” Nia looked at the bag, then back at her. “You live above a bar?” “It’s less glamorous than it sounds. The pipes make a noise like someone dragging a wardrobe up the stairs.” “You always wanted to live above something. Wasn’t it a bakery?” “A bookshop.” “A bookshop with a bakery next door.” “That was your contribution.” Silas set down the gin and tonic. Nia paid with a card, and Rory noticed the neat square watch on her wrist, the pale stripe where a ring had once sat on her finger. “And you?” Rory asked. “I’m here for a course. Housing law. I came out of the station and walked until I found a place that wasn’t full.” “You’re a lawyer?” “A solicitor. At the council.” Rory took a peanut from the bowl. Six years had passed since she had last seen Nia, outside the university library in Cardiff. Nia had been wearing a red coat with one button missing, shouting into her phone about a landlord who had kept her deposit. “You said you’d never work for a council.” “I said I’d never work for Cardiff council. They’d just sent me a letter threatening to take me to court over thirty-eight pounds.” “You pinned it to your wall.” “Beside my exam timetable, as an incentive.” Rory smiled, but Nia had turned her glass by its base and was watching the ice shift. “What happened to the hair?” Nia asked. Rory touched the ends of her black hair. It brushed her shoulders now. “I cut it.” “I meant the rest of it. You used to dye the front blue.” “Yu-Fei called me her little kingfisher. Then I got tired of bleaching the bath.” “And law?” “I left.” “In second year?” “Near the end.” Nia set down her glass. “Your dad must have loved that.” “He sent me a list of courses I could transfer to. There were twelve.” “Were they all law?” “Two were politics.” “That was generous.” Silas moved along the bar, giving Rory a small nod before he took an empty glass to the sink. The tap ran. Someone at a table near the window laughed, and a chair scraped across the floor. Nia took off her coat and folded it over the back of the stool. Underneath, she wore a dark jacket with narrow shoulders. Her nails were short and bare. “You look different too,” Rory told her. “I should hope so. I was nineteen.” “You used to wear those enormous earrings.” “The ones shaped like lightning bolts?” “You caught one in my jumper and we had to cut the thread.” “My ear hurt for a week.” “You told everyone I’d attacked you.” “You had. You’d worn a jumper with holes in it.” Rory laughed. Nia’s mouth opened on a laugh too, but she pressed her thumb into the condensation on her glass and rubbed it away. “I saw your mother last year,” Nia continued. “In Cardiff?” “At the market. She was buying leeks from a man who kept calling her love. She made him stop.” “That sounds like Mum.” “She asked if I’d heard from you. I told her no.” Rory rubbed the crescent scar on her left wrist with her thumb. “She didn’t tell me she’d seen you.” “I asked her not to.” “Why?” Nia lifted one shoulder. “I didn’t know what she’d say to you.” Rory waited. Nia had always filled silences at school, tapping a pen against her teeth or inventing stories about the teachers. Now she sat with her hands on either side of her glass. “You could have called me,” Rory offered. “I did.” The tap stopped behind the bar. Silas dried his hands on a cloth and went through the door to the back. Rory looked at Nia. “I meant last year.” “I know what you meant.” Nia picked up her drink, took a mouthful, and put it down. “I called you from the hospital. Three times.” The peanuts sat between them. Rory pushed the bowl away. “I remember.” “I thought you might have changed your number. Then I saw you’d posted a picture of your dinner.” “I remember that too.” “It was a plate of chips.” “Evan took the picture. He had my phone.” Nia’s fingers tightened around the glass. “All right.” “He used to answer messages for me. He’d say it was easier if people thought I was busy.” “You could have told me.” “I should have.” Nia looked at her, waiting. Rory had imagined explaining it before: the phone, the arguments, the mornings spent making Evan breakfast because he had stayed awake all night and blamed her for it. She had imagined Nia accepting each piece and setting it in its proper place. “I saw the calls,” Rory continued. “He’d left my phone on the kitchen table. I saw your name, and I saw your message about your mum.” Nia’s face changed. She drew her hand away from the glass. “You never opened it.” “I read it on the screen.” “I sat in that corridor for eleven hours. I kept checking whether you’d opened it.” Rory looked down at the bar. A crack ran through the varnish near her hand, filled with dark crumbs. “I’m sorry.” “I sent another one after she died.” “I know.” “You sent me a card.” “I bought it at the station.” “It had a photograph of a boat on it.” “There wasn’t much choice.” “There were flowers. There were trees. You chose a boat.” Rory remembered standing in front of the rack, turning cards over to read the words inside. The boat had been empty, its paint peeling at the bow. She had thought an empty boat might leave Nia room for whatever she felt. “I didn’t know what to write.” “You wrote, ‘Thinking of you.’” “I was.” Nia leaned back on the stool. “I wanted you there. Not on a card. I wanted you to bring me something disgusting from the vending machine and tell me the nurses hated my shoes.” “I should have come.” “Yes.” Rory folded her hands. Her delivery bag had tipped onto its side, and one strap lay across the floor. She bent to pick it up. “Leave it,” Nia told her. “It’s in the way.” “There’s nobody walking there.” Rory lifted the strap anyway and tucked it beneath the bag. “When my dad phoned about the funeral, Evan stood beside me,” she continued. “He kept asking who I was speaking to. I said it was my dad, and he wanted to know why my dad was calling me instead of him.” Nia stared at her. “Did your dad know?” “No. I told him I had an exam.” “Did you?” “No.” Nia turned towards the room. A couple at the far table were dividing the last of a packet of crisps, placing them in two small piles on a napkin. “I hated you for not coming,” she told Rory. “I know.” “No, you don’t. I told people you were ill because I couldn’t bear them asking. My aunt kept saying, ‘Where’s that nice Carter girl?’ She’d bought an extra place at the lunch because she thought you’d be there.” Rory pressed her palms against her knees. “I’m sorry your aunt paid for me.” Nia gave a short laugh. “That’s what you picked out?” “I didn’t know about the lunch.” “It cost her sixteen pounds. I paid her back.” “I can give it to you.” “Don’t.” Rory closed her mouth. Nia rubbed at the pale line on her ring finger. “I got married,” she offered. “Since we’re catching up.” Rory looked at her hand. “To whom?” “Gareth. You didn’t know him. He worked at the library for a bit, after you left.” “And now?” “He moved to Bristol. We divorced last spring.” “Did your mum meet him?” “No.” Nia took a piece of ice from her drink and held it between her teeth until it cracked. “She would have liked him. Which was irritating, because towards the end I didn’t.” Rory let out a breath. Nia’s gaze returned to her. “I used to think you had everything arranged,” Nia continued. “Your parents, that house with the garden. Your dad knew every judge in Cardiff, or that was what we said at school.” “He knew four.” “Four was a lot to us.” “He didn’t know what to do with me.” “You did things. That was the point. You filled in my university forms because I kept putting them off. You marched into the letting agent and asked why the damp was growing mushrooms.” “There was a mushroom.” “A tiny one. You made it sound like a forest.” Rory picked at a loose thread on her cuff. “I thought if I could find the right words, people would have to listen.” “And now?” “Now I know some people will listen to every word and do what they want anyway.” Nia turned her glass once more. The ice had melted to a thin crescent. “At work, I read files before we send them to court. Rent arrears, possession orders. I check the notices, make sure we’ve followed the rules.” “You wanted to do legal aid.” “I did. The firm lost its funding. Then the council offered me a job with a pension and a salary that covered my rent.” “Do you like it?” “Some days. We keep people housed where we can. Some days I tell a family we’ve run out of places and watch them work out where their children will sleep.” She flattened her palm on the bar. “I used to think there’d be one person in the room who could fix it. Someone with a folder and a pen. Now I’m the person with the folder.” Rory glanced at the leather case against Nia’s knees. “You still carry a pen behind your ear?” “No. It fell into a toilet at court.” “That would do it.” “I had to fish it out because it belonged to a barrister.” “Did you give it back?” “I washed it first.” Silas returned and collected Nia’s empty glass. “Another?” Nia looked at Rory. “Are you staying?” “I’ve finished my deliveries.” “Then yes, please.” Silas took the glass. Rory reached into her pocket for her purse, but Nia caught her wrist. “I’ve got this one.” The contact exposed the crescent scar. Nia ran a finger just above it. “You got that climbing your garden wall.” “I got it falling off.” “You said you’d made it over.” “I was lying.” “I knew you were lying. I could see your legs through the fence.” Rory turned her wrist, and Nia moved her hand away. From beneath the bar, Rory pulled out her purse and found a crumpled note. “The peanuts were free,” she told Nia. “Let me at least buy you something that costs more than sixteen pounds.” Nia took the note from her hand and flattened it against the bar. “A gin and tonic costs more than sixteen pounds?” “Not here.” “Then you owe me two.”