Page 131 of Undefined Terms

The flat, the sounds of the flat without Celyn: the fridge humming, the pipe behind the wall that gurgles at eight every night, the neighbours’ telly through the ceiling. My flat. The one I signed twelve months for because the body walked to the letting agent on Tib Street and the hand clicked twelve and the brain didn’t register.

Twelve months, just about up. The landlord asked in December. I said yes to twelve more. We weren’t talking in December, Celyn and I. The I in that sentence wasn’t singular. The I was two people and Celyn’s mug and a shampoo and a hoodie on a chair.

I pick the phone up.

I press call.

Three rings, four, the telly, the volume going down.

‘Ron? Everything alright?’

Because it’s Thursday. Because Thursday means something’s wrong or something’s different and Mum knows the difference between the two before I’ve opened my mouth.

‘Yeah. Everything’s yeah. Good.’

‘You sure? You sound tired.’

‘I’m fine, Mum. Just wanted to hear your voice.’

The sentence. The one I’ve been building. I don’t need a word for what I am. But I need to say a name. To the woman who raised me and Ewan in a three-bed in Lewisham with a husband who stopped talking. She held that family together with sellotape and Sunday roasts and a voice that never once said ‘choose.’

She deserves the name.

‘Mum. I’m seeing someone.’

Silence. Half a second. The kettle, I can hear it, she’s in the kitchen. She put the kettle on before she picked up. She always does.

‘Oh that’s lovely.’ Warm, on instinct, before the questions. ‘What’s his name?’

His. Not her. She watched one son bring home a man, and she’s clocked the shape of the second one too. She’s gone straight to the door marked the same as Ewan’s: a boyfriend, a Laurence. The one I could walk through and she’d never have to learn a thing.

‘Their name’s Celyn.’

The kettle clicks off. The click and then the silence that isn’t silence because the telly’s still on low and there’s traffic outside and the Hendersons’ dog.

‘Celyn.’ She turns it over. ‘Welsh?’

‘Means holly. And it’s they, Mum. Celyn goes by they.’

‘They.’ She takes it across, Lewisham to Manchester, slower than the rest, because it’s new and she’s fifty-four and nobody handed her a leaflet. She’s got the file for Ewan, the gay son, the partner, the Sunday roast with two men at the table. She hasn’t got this one. But she takes it. The vowel lands right by the second go. The word I couldn’t get up for months, and she’s learning it in real time, with the kettle going.

Silence, longer this time, the processing silence. It’s the they she’s turning over now.

The kettle, a cup. The sound of water being poured.

‘Right.’ The processing word. Mum’s ‘right’, the one that buys time. ‘And what do they do, this Celyn?’

‘They write. Novels.’

‘Novels? What kind?’

‘Horror.’

‘Horror!’ The voice lifts, not alarm. Surprise. She expected an accountant. ‘Like your films? The ones you watched when you were twelve and couldn’t sleep for a week?’

‘Yeah, Mum. Like those.’

‘Well.’ A sip. I can hear the mug on the counter. The clink, the Eileen fidget. ‘Is it good? The writing?’