Page 19 of Undefined Terms

‘The one where you check your phone every ten minutes and pretend you haven’t.’

I put the sandwich down. Look at my phone. I didn’t notice picking it up.

‘Bollocks,’ I say. But he’s not wrong.

Jersey Street, nine-fifteen, the light gone, proper dark. Manchester dark in January, streetlights making orange patches and the rest nothing. The warehouse is a shape against the sky, no lights, the windows boarded with plywood that’s warped from rain.

Celyn comes round the corner with the torch already on. The scarf’s wrapped one too many times, the wrap you do when your hands are looking for something to do and the scarf is what’s there.

A grey hoodie, hands shoved in the front pocket. Jeans, trainers. The hair pushed back under the hood. Three days of stubble, maybe four, darker than I expected, covering the line down to the throat. No makeup. The nails, I look, because I always look, bare.

Tonight a stranger would read Celyn as a bloke. The kind you’d see at the pub and not look at twice. The hoodie hides the waist. The jeans are shapeless, the trainers are scuffed. If I’d never met Celyn before, if the first time was right now, this corner, this light, I’d think: lad. That’s it, some lad.

And my stomach does the same thing. The same drop. The same heat below the ribs. The same, because it’s the same person, the same hands coming out of the hoodie pocket to wave, the same voice.

‘You came.’

‘Said I would.’

‘I know. But you came.’

The smell hits when we get close to the warehouse door. Under the hoodie, under the deodorant, something sweet, fruity, warm. Same as the other night. The smell doesn’t match.

Doesn’t need to.

My throat dries.

I look like a bloke, the smell says. But I’m not. The smell is mine and the stubble is mine.

Celyn doesn’t say this. Celyn doesn’t say any of this. Celyn pushes the plywood with both hands and the board swings open and the dark inside is total.

‘Torch,’ Celyn says. ‘You brought one?’

I take it out. The site torch, heavy, metal, the beam cuts the dark. The warehouse opens up.

Inside, I’m alright.

Better than alright, this is mine. Columns, cast iron, Victorian, fluted, the capitals intact. The floor’s gone in places, timber, rotted, the joists exposed. I can see the structure, the bones of it: brick bearing walls, two-course headers, the arches over the windows carrying the load down. Iron tie rods running wall to wall at the first floor, the plates visible on the outside. I know this building. The warehouses they built when Manchester was cotton and money and the canals were motorways.

‘These columns,’ I say, and the torch follows my hand, ‘they’re doing all the work. See how the floor loads transfer through the capitals? The iron’s in compression. Beautiful casting. Look at the fluting. That’s not structural, that’s someone showing off. A hundred and fifty years ago some foundry bloke was proud of his columns.’

Celyn’s writing, the notebook small, leather, the pen moving fast. Looking up at where the torch points, then back down. The hood’s fallen back.

‘And the tie rods. See those? Wall to wall. They’re holding the whole thing together. Without them the walls push outward from the floor loads and the whole lot spreads. Like.’ I stop. ‘They keep it standing.’

‘Mm.’ Celyn’s writing. Then: ‘What happens when one breaks?’

‘Depends which one. Some you can lose and the building compensates. Others, if that one goes.’ I point the torch at a rod running through the centre of the space. ‘This wall moves. Slowly. Might take years. But it moves.’

‘The building changes.’

I look at Celyn. In the dark with the torch and the notebook. ‘Yeah.’

‘Like the house. In the novel.’ Celyn’s voice, the half-voice, the one that’s thinking while speaking. ‘The house changes depending who’s inside it.’

‘Suppose.’

‘The main character’s been in my head for about a year.’ Celyn’s writing, not looking at me. ‘Maybe longer. Before I knew her name I just knew the way she stood in doorways.’