Page 70 of Undefined Terms

I make tea instead.

The third evening, Celyn says: ‘Come to the bar. I’m going mental in the flat.’

Celyn’s flat, not mine: the shared one, three housemates, the kitchen that smells like someone else’s curry, the room with the desk and the notebooks and the narrow bed we’ve used exactly once, for sleeping, because mine’s closer to the bar and doesn’t have housemates who can hear through walls.

Celyn’s in the skirt tonight, the dark one, Dr Martens, the stubble a shadow under the sharp eyeliner.

Our table, two pints, the laptop already open. The foot finds mine under the table and stays.

Celyn reads me the new chapter, the one about the house on the hill. The Welsh accent gets thicker when they read, the vowels rounder. I stop hearing the bar.

The chapter’s about the door, the one that opens by itself at three in the morning. The woman hears it and doesn’t move. She lies in bed and listens to the door open and she doesn’t move because she knows that whatever’s on the other side is hers. The thing she built, the house she chose. The door that opens because she let it in.

‘That’s terrifying,’ I say.

‘Good. That’s the point.’

‘The woman doesn’t run?’

‘The woman never runs. That’s the other point.’

Celyn types. Then: ‘The department showcase is in November. Full chapter. In front of the whole cohort and two external assessors.’ The fingers slow on the keys. ‘Pritchard wants a draft by October.’

‘Pritchard.’

‘My tutor.’ The eyes still on the screen. ‘He thinks the protagonist’s too passive. Circles the house instead of entering it.’

Grey hair, navy blazer, the hand on Celyn’s elbow at the reading that stayed too long. So that’s Pritchard.

I drink the pint. I think about the door to this bar that I walked through when the body decided and the head hadn’t caught up. About the door to my flat that had a key under the mat.

The foot under the table. Celyn’s foot against mine.

I put my hand on the table. Celyn’s hand comes over it. The orange nails on my knuckles. The fingers cold from the pint glass. The weight, light, deliberate, not going anywhere.

‘That last bit,’ I say. ‘Where she opens the door and the house is. Wrong. That’s good.’

Celyn smiles. The full one, the rare one, the one that’s teeth and the lines by the eyes and the whole face doing a thing that my chest doesn’t⁠—

The door opens, cold air, someone coming in.

Gaz.

He’s in the jacket, the bomber one he wears off-site, the one Steph bought him. He’s scanning the bar like a person looking for a mate and then his eyes land on our table and on Celyn’s hand on mine.

I feel it. Like a footing that takes weight, you can hear it in the concrete, the fractional sound before it holds or cracks. This sound. And my stomach does the—something. Drops. Tightens. Both.

Celyn hasn’t noticed yet, still looking at me, the smile still there.

Gaz walks to the bar. Orders. Doesn’t come to the table. I watch his back, the bomber jacket, the shoulders, how he leans on the counter and nods at the bartender and takes the pint and turns and then, briefly, two seconds. Looks at our table again.

At Celyn’s hand. At the skirt.

I feel Celyn feel it. The fingers on my hand change, not tighter, not a pull-away. A pause. What a hand does before it pulls away. Or doesn’t.

‘Friend of yours,’ Celyn says.

‘Gaz. From site.’