Page 164 of Undefined Terms

I eat the sandwich, I don’t taste it.

Gaz is still looking at me like I’ve grown another head. ‘You sure you’re alright.’

‘Yeah. Just a lot on.’

‘Like what. The pour’s almost done. We’re two weeks out from handover.’

‘Not the site.’

Gaz grins, ‘Oh, them.’

I don’t answer, that’s answering. Gaz knows it, Dean knows it, probably the whole site knows it. You can’t walk around with someone in your head and expect nobody to notice. The hands shake slightly. The eyes go somewhere else for twenty minutes at a time. You smile when nobody’s said anything funny.

Dean passes with a board, nods at me like he’s saying it’s alright, mate. Dean doesn’t do opinions. Dean just does: get the work done, leave the person alone about their life. He’s got kids, I think, a wife, doesn’t talk about them. Shows a photo once a year of a Christmas dinner and that’s it. That’s how you manage it, you don’t talk about it.

Except Celyn isn’t manageable. The brain keeps going: where would Celyn’s desk fit. Which way does the light come in that flat. Would Celyn like it or would Celyn hate London and everything that’s there and everything that’s here that Celyn knows.

‘You’re going back,’ Gaz says. He already knows.

‘Maybe.’

‘You are. You’ve got that face.’

‘I don’t have a face.’

‘You’ve got the face you get when you make a decision. Like when Dave asked if you wanted to stay through the east section and you just said yeah. Like it was already decided before he asked.’

It was. This was, the moment I opened that email I knew. The moment I thought about the writing room, the moment I calculated the light coming through the window, it was already done. The brain catching up to the body how the body’s been ahead of the brain since Celyn asked for a walk home.

I finish the sandwich, don’t taste it.

The site, the last pour, Victoria North’s almost done. Six weeks and the build’s done and Manchester is over. The thing I came for, the two-year thing, the ‘good money, good project, close to Ewan.’ Three reasons. I counted them on the train.

There was a fourth, couldn’t think what.

I know what.

I ring Ewan from the car park, the engine’s off. The site behind me, the cranes still against the sky, the light going orange over Ancoats.

He picks up on the second ring. Background noise. Laurence’s kitchen, a pan, Radio 4.

‘Rotherhithe,’ I say. No preamble. Ewan doesn’t need preamble.

Silence. Two seconds. Three.

‘Project manager?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good money?’

‘Good money.’

Another silence, I hear him breathe, I hear the pan. I hear Laurence, can’t catch the words and Ewan’s hand go over the mic for a second.

‘And Celyn?’ Quiet. How he asks things that matter.

‘I’m looking at flats tonight. Two bedrooms.’