Page 67 of Undefined Terms

‘Come here,’ Celyn says.

I go.

Bed, T-shirt. Hands on the back of my neck. Mouth. Stubble against my chin and the softness under it. I kiss back and the kiss tastes like garlic and chilli and whatever Celyn’s lip balm is. Coconut? Something, the kiss is slow.

This.

I pull back. Celyn’s forehead against mine, the eyes, close. The grey-green.

‘The rest catches up,’ Celyn says again, softer. The accent thick on catches. The breath warm.

I don’t know.

The lamp’s on, Celyn’s wearing my shirt, and everything in here is marked. This is how we live now.

The rest catches up, or it doesn’t.

Celyn’s hand on the nape. The weight on my shoulder.

I stay.

Everything’s right: seven fifteen, the site’s good.

The air cold enough to see my breath, the steel going up on the east elevation, the pour from Friday cured clean. I checked it myself, ran my hand along the edge and felt the set. Solid, no give. The finish tells you: the mix was right, the weather held, no one cut corners.

Bricklayers working the ground floor, scaffolders up top, second level, bolting the next run. Kenny on the left, the Polish lad, Marek, on the right. Radio on. Someone’s brought pastries from the Greggs on Deansgate and the box is on the site office desk, open, the sugar smell mixing with diesel and dust.

I’m in the office doing the weekly when I hear it.

The sound after the fall. The silence that comes first. The radio still playing, a drill still running somewhere, and then the silence underneath those sounds where a voice should be.

Then the shout.

I’m out the door before the shout finishes. Legs moving, brain, the brain does this thing on site, the one they can’t teach you on the SMSTS course. It goes flat. The panic’s in the legs, in the stomach, in the sweat that’s already on my palms. The brain goes somewhere else. Somewhere that’s just steps.

Marek, second level. The board gave, visible from the ground, the bracket slipping, the gap where the board was, the harness catching him halfway and then didn’t. He’s on the rubble pile by the east wall. The leg, the left one. Is at an angle that legs don’t go.

‘Nobody touch him. Gaz, call 999. Kenny, clear the access road. Jay. Shut the site down. Nobody on the scaffold. Nobody.’

My voice. Doesn’t sound like my voice. Sounds like my gaffer from the Rotherhithe job, the one who’d been doing this thirty years and spoke to emergencies the way other people speak to waiters.

I’m on my knees next to Marek. He’s conscious, eyes open, the whites too wide, the breath coming in short bursts that sound wet. Don’t like the wet sound. The leg I don’t look at. The hard hat’s cracked but on. Small mercies. And the feeling in my throat is, not panic. Something flatter. Something that sits there and doesn’t move.

Right. Focus.

‘You’re alright, mate. Ambulance is coming. Don’t move.’

He says something in Polish. Then: ‘My leg, I can feel pain.’

‘I know. Don’t move it. Keep your eyes on me.’

Nine minutes, I count them. I stay on my knees. Gaz brings a blanket, the office one maybe. I put it over Marek without moving the leg. There’s blood, not a lot, the trouser torn and something underneath the wrong colour, but the bleeding’s not pumping. Not the artery. He might be okay.

The paramedics arrive, two of them. The neck brace, the board, the careful hands that make my hands look like shovels. They ask me what happened and I tell them and the words come out in order and make sense and I don’t remember choosing any of them.

They take him, the doors close. The blue lights stay on until the van turns the corner and then it’s just the site. The drill that someone finally turned off.

I stand up. My knees are wet from the ground. My hands are. I look at my hands. They’re not shaking.