Page 156 of Undefined Terms

‘Catrin’s slower,’ he says, to the wall. ‘She’ll get there. Don’t judge the house by the winter.’ Then, the mug at his mouth: ‘You stay, lad. That’s the whole job.’

‘I know the job.’

‘Aye.’ He puts his hand flat on the top stones, once, the way you’d touch a beast that knows you. ‘I can see that.’

He goes in. I finish the tea at the wall and check the straps in the back of the van that don’t need checking. Working hands. You keep them moving so the rest of you can catch up.

The house wakes the way houses with kids wake, all at once. The back door bangs. Owain’s two come out in wellies over pyjamas, the boy dragging a basket, the girl dragging Celyn out by two fingers, and Owain behind them with a carrier bag held up out of reach.

‘Nobody in the garden till they’re hid,’ he says. ‘That’s the rule. Always been the rule.’

‘You hid them by the dog last year,’ the boy says.

‘The dog’s entitled same as anyone.’

Easter Sunday, frost still in the shadow of the wall. The girl’s got both arms round Celyn’s leg like Celyn might be hidden too and she means to be the one who finds them. I get handed a basket. Didn’t ask for one. The boy decided.

‘You do the high-up ones,’ he tells me, executive, the way Celyn tells me things. ‘You’re tall. Celyn can’t reach. Dad always does one on the lintel.’

They bring every egg to Celyn first, held up to be admired before it drops in the basket, and Celyn admires each one like it’s the first egg in the history of eggs.

She’s said it all morning. Celyn this, Celyn that. Not Gethin. Not he. Just Celyn, the way you say a name you love, and she’s three and she’s never once got it wrong.

The hard part’s the older ones, and even then not all. Catrin still trips on the deadname. Rhys catches himself halfway now and turns it round. But Owain never tripped once, and his kids came out saying Celyn like it was the only word there’d ever been. The kids and me, we just say Celyn.

I find the egg on the lintel and let the little one think she got there first. Celyn catches me at it, over the kids’ heads. The smile. The real one. Twice in two days.

Back in Manchester.

I wanted it at ours. Ewan offered Chorlton, the bigger place, Laurence’s proper kitchen, and I said no, mine. Mine’s too small for four and everyone knows it: elbows, sorry-mate, somebody always up to let somebody past. A year ago I couldn’t keep a person at a table. Now I’m fighting my brother for the right to feed him in a kitchen the size of a van.

Ewan brings the wine. Laurence brings the cake. It’s another Victoria sponge, the third one this month. The cream’s better this time. The jam’s homemade. There’s flour on Laurence’s collar.

‘The flour thing,’ I say. Pointing at the collar.

‘Don’t,’ Laurence says. The face, the professor face, the one I spent three years thinking was cold and is actually just embarrassed. ‘I’ve been told not to discuss the flour situation.’

‘The flour situation,’ Ewan says from behind him, hanging his coat, ‘is that Laurence bought a stand mixer and the stand mixer won. Round one: ceiling. Round two: his hair. Round three: the dog.’

‘You don’t have a dog,’ I say.

‘Exactly. The neighbour’s dog. Through an open window. The dog is fine. Laurence’s dignity is not.’

Celyn laughs. The big one. Head tipping back, throat long, the sound filling the flat.

The flat, ours, not mine. Ours. Celyn’s books on the shelf. The notebook on the coffee table. The mug with the chip. The crooked constellations above the bed.

The table, four plates, four glasses. The pasta’s on the hob. Celyn’s recipe, the one with too much chilli and twice the garlic which is how Celyn makes it and how I eat it now because the tongue rewired at some point and I didn’t notice.

Laurence sits in the corner chair and looks around the flat. Books. Stars. Photo on the fridge: me and Celyn at the building site, hard hats, hi-vis, Celyn holding the notebook like a clipboard and grinning and me behind them not grinning because I don’t grin except I am. Slightly.

‘You’ve read Shirley Jackson,’ Laurence says. To Celyn. He’s spotted the shelf.

‘I’ve read everything Shirley Jackson wrote.’ Celyn sits down, pulls the chair in, and they’re gone. Jackson. Radcliffe. Du Maurier. Names I’ve heard Celyn say. Celyn’s saying ‘the sentence structure IS the horror, the commas are wrong on purpose’ and Laurence is saying ‘exactly, exactly’ and his hands are doing what Ewan’s hands do now. That’s where Ewan got it from.

Laurence’s hand goes to the back of Ewan’s neck. Not for show. He’s listening to Celyn, eyes on Celyn, the hand absent-minded on Ewan, the thumb working a small circle at the hairline. Ewan tilts the half-centimetre into it without breaking sentence. Three years of that hand and Ewan still leans.

Ewan across the table, eating the pasta. Beside him Laurence, the fork in the left hand, left-handed, I always forget. Ewan catches my eye, the look, the Ewan look.