Page 160 of Undefined Terms

‘Lovely. I went once. It rained for six days and your dad, Sean, fell in a stream.’ She drinks. ‘He deserved it.’

Celyn laughs, the real one. The one that uses the face, the eyes, the hand that comes up to the mouth.

And Mum, Mum watching Celyn laugh. What happens on her face. Not surprise, not adjustment.

‘Ron says you write,’ Mum says. ‘Horror.’

‘Yeah. Well. Literary horror. The kind where nobody believes the house is alive but the sentence structure tells you it is.’

Mum blinks. ‘Right.’

‘Sorry. That’s. I do that. Get technical.’ The mouth tilts. ‘Scary stories. I write scary stories.’

‘He watches scary films,’ Mum says. Meaning me. ‘Has done since he was twelve. Wouldn’t sleep without the landing light on but he wouldn’t stop watching them. Stubborn.’ She looks at me. ‘Gets it from his dad.’

The word, Dad, in the kitchen. Between the mugs and the biscuits. I feel it land, not heavy. Just, there. A stone in a pocket.

‘He told me,’ Celyn says. Quiet. ‘About Sean.’

Mum puts the mug down. The hands, Mum’s hands, the hands that did the tins and the roasts and the tiles and the bills and the ironing, flat on the table.

‘Sean’s not a bad man,’ she says. Factual. The way you’d say the boiler needs fixing. ‘He’s, he grew up a certain way. His dad was worse.’ She stops. ‘He’s trying, love. In his way.’

‘I know,’ Celyn says.

Mum looks at Celyn, really looks, the skirt.

‘She. They.’ The correction. Fast. A gear shift. ‘They’re lovely, Ron.’

Lovely. In Mum’s mouth.

My chest tightens, higher, behind the ribs.

Celyn takes Mum to the Northern Quarter, the bar, the one, the table. Mum has a half of Guinness because ‘I’m not drinking that Northern Soul nonsense’ and Celyn has the cider and they talk. They talk for an hour. I sit between them and I don’t say much. Mum asks about the writing, Celyn asks about Lewisham. Mum tells the story about Dad and the tiles, the crooked ones, the ones that never got fixed. Celyn says ‘Ron told me about the tiles’ and Mum says ‘of course he did, he tells everyone about the tiles.’ They both look at me and I’m sat there with the pint going warm in my hand.

Mum with Celyn. How Mum’s body changes, the shoulders come down, the laugh that comes more easily after the second half of Guinness. Her presence with Ewan, with the neighbours, with the woman at the cheese stall.

And Celyn, Celyn’s different with Mum. Softer. The mouth quicker to give the smile away. The stories flowing, the restaurant, Catrin, the novel. Celyn tells Mum about the time the risotto got sent back four times and Mum laughs until the Guinness goes up her nose and Celyn hands her a napkin and says ‘careful, Mrs Carrick’ and Mum says ‘oh call me Eileen, none of this Mrs Carrick nonsense’ and I’m falling deeper.

I’m sat at the table where everything started. The corner table, the laptop table. The table where I sat and watched a stranger type for thirty minutes and didn’t know what was happening. Mum’s here, Celyn’s here, the bar’s the bar. The beer’s the same beer.

The toilet. Mum pulls me aside on the way back, the corridor by the loos, the sticky carpet and the hand dryer that doesn’t work.

‘She-they’ Mum waves the hand. The Eileen wave, the one that means: you know what I mean. ‘They’re not what I expected.’

‘What’d you expect?’

‘I don’t know, love. Something. Difficult. You sounded so scared on the phone. I thought something was wrong.’ She stops. The hands on my arms. The grip. Strong. ‘I thought you were in trouble.’

‘I’m not in trouble.’

‘I can see that.’ The eyes. Wet. Mum doesn’t cry in corridors. But wet. ‘I can see that, Ron.’

She pulls me, the hug, the arms. The coat that’s too warm for May. The smell, the Eileen smell, the washing powder and the kitchen and what’s underneath, just her, just Mum, the first smell I ever knew.

‘I’m ok,’ I say. Into the coat.

‘I know, love.’ The arms tighter. The voice in my hair. ‘Both of you.’