Page 79 of Undefined Terms

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The banter changes.

Don’t notice at first. The morning’s normal: briefing, the east wall, the new agency lad who talks too much and works too slow and’ll be gone by Friday.

Lunch, portacabin. Halfway through the sandwich, I do the normal thing, the Gaz thing, the thing you say about a person you go home to.

‘Celyn wants me to cook something that isn’t toast.’

Said to the table. Easy. The way Gaz goes on about his bird.

Quiet. Jay finds his phone. Thomas lifts his sarnie and his tea and shifts to the fold-out by the window, the one we use for spare hard hats. Jay goes with him, backs half-turned.

They’d seen us. The bar’s got a window, I’ve sat at it with Celyn enough times, and the city’s smaller than it looks. Nobody grassed. The name was never the news. Me saying it at the table is.

Gaz doesn’t look up. Dean opens the thermos, slides me the biscuit tin.

After lunch, the site. Thomas comes up to me at the block stack, normal enough. Needs the measurement for the east elevation return. I give him the number. He writes it on his hand, stands there.

‘No offence, Ron, but I don’t want to hear about it.’ He’s not looking at me. Looking at the number on his hand. ‘Whatever you do at home, just keep it separate, yeah?’

My hands on the block. The rough surface, the grit.

‘Right. So when Gaz talks about his bird for twenty minutes straight.’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Why.’

Thomas doesn’t have the answer. The mouth working, the eyes on the ground, the hand with the number closing into a fist and opening again. The answer’s not there.

He walks off, the block stack, the east elevation. The measurement he’ll forget by tea break and ask me again.

Dean appears, doesn’t say anything. Gets his tea from the portacabin. Comes back. Sits on the block pallet next to where I’m standing. Drinks the tea, looks at the scaffolding.

We stand there. Sit there. Tea. Scaffolding. Drill.

He finishes the tea, gets up. Nods once. Goes back to work.

Evening. I walk home.

The usual route, five minutes: the turn past the barber’s, the alley with the bins, the street with the Turkish place that always smells like lamb. It’s dark, proper dark, the winter kind where five o’clock looks like nine and the streetlights make everything orange.

Two lads ahead of me, young, twenty, twenty-one. One’s tall, skinny, a jacket that costs more than my weekly shop. The other’s shorter, a beanie, trainers. They’re holding hands.

Fast, automatic. Dad watched the football, Mum made the tea. Ewan learnt to hide. I learnt to not see.

The two lads turn the corner, the held hands disappearing around the wall. And the second thought arrives: I’m walking home to a person with painted nails. I’ve had this person’s mouth on mine.

The first thought was my father’s. Twenty-seven years of rent, paid on time. The second’s mine. I keep walking.

The flat, the key.

Celyn’s on the bed.

I stop, in the doorway, the boots half-off, the jacket on.

Celyn tonight is, the word doesn’t come. The dark green dress, short, bare feet, toes painted emerald to match the fingers. Full makeup. Lipstick so deep it’s almost brown. The jaw smooth, shaved clean. Earrings catching the lamplight.