The bar on Colmer Street had no name above the door.
That was the first thing Cora had noticed about it, eight months ago, when she had stumbled across it on one of her long aimless evening walks through Velmoor. Just a black door set into a grey stone wall, a small amber light above it, and the faint sound of something low and jazz-adjacent drifting out from inside. She had gone in on instinct, the way you sometimes follow a feeling before your brain has finished forming the question.
She had ordered a gin and tonic. Fen had made it without asking what she wanted in it, as though he already knew. She had been coming back every Tuesday since.
It was not a Tuesday. It was a Wednesday morning, and the bar didn't open until noon, but she could see a light on inside through the small frosted window beside the door. She knocked.
A pause. Then the sound of a bolt sliding back.
Fen opened the door and looked at her the way he always looked at her ,with a kind of calm, unhurried attention, as though he had been expecting her and was simply confirming the time of her arrival.
He was somewhere in his fifties, lean and deliberate in his movements, with grey at his temples and hands that always looked like they were about to do something useful. He had never asked Cora where she came from or why she had moved to Velmoor or what she did alone on Tuesday evenings. That was the other reason she kept coming back.
"You look like you haven't slept," he said.
"I need to ask you something," Cora said.
He stepped back and let her in.
The bar in the daylight was a different creature entirely. Without the amber evening light and the low music and the other quiet solitary drinkers it served as a kind of sanctuary for, it was just a room , wooden floors, mismatched chairs, bottles arranged with quiet precision behind the counter. Cora sat on her usual stool and put both hands on the bar and tried to look like a person asking a simple question.
"Was I here last night?" she asked.
Fen was wiping down the counter at the far end. He stopped wiping and looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite read not surprise exactly, but something adjacent to it. Something careful.
"Yes," he said.
The word landed in her chest like something loosening. She hadn't been certain. She had hoped, and now it was confirmed, and the relief of it was immediately complicated by everything that came next.
"What time did I arrive?"
"Just after nine." He resumed wiping, slower now. "Later than usual."
"And what time did I leave?"
He set the cloth down. He looked at her properly now, the full weight of his attention, and she understood that he was deciding something. How much to say. How much he already knew or suspected.
"You left around half past ten," he said. "But you didn't leave alone."
The room seemed to contract slightly around her.
"Who was I with?"
"A man," Fen said. "I hadn't seen him before. He came in about twenty minutes after you. Sat two stools down, you spoke, It seemed."
He paused, choosing his words with the same precision he applied to everything. "It seemed like you knew him. Or recognized him, at least. You didn't look pleased to see him."
Cora's hands were very still on the bar.
"What did he look like?"
"Tall,dark coat. Somewhere around forty. He had a way of sitting that took up more space than necessary." Fen's eyes didn't leave hers. "He bought you a drink. You didn't want it but you took it."
You didn't want it but you took it.
Something cold moved through her. Something that had been forming at the edges of her understanding since she had woken up with the gap in her memory and the blood on her scarf.
"Fen," she said, and her voice came out very quiet. "Is there a camera in here?"
He looked at her for a long moment.
"There is," he said. "But Cora." He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice as though someone else might hear, though they were entirely alone. "Before I show you anything ,are you sure you want to know?"
She thought about her kitchen counter. The scarf. The smear on the corridor carpet. The yellow evidence marker outside Daniel's door.
"Yes," she said. "I'm sure."