Page 100 of Undefined Terms

‘Three minutes of company. I’ll survive.’

We walk, three minutes, bar behind us. Street cold and Manchester doing Manchester. Celyn’s body touches mine at the turn, doesn’t move away, stays close.

Celyn comes to mine most nights now. The toothbrush, the key, the side of the bed that’s theirs.

Tonight Celyn asks for their own door instead, and I know why. I’ve been a wall all evening, the forty mil behind my eyes, and Celyn doesn’t push at walls. Just clocks where they are and goes round. Gives me the night. It’s the kind thing and it’s the lonely thing, both, and I let it happen because I haven’t got the words for the other one.

At Celyn’s door: ‘Night, Ron.’

‘Night.’

The stairs, the street. The head that’s not on the steel, the head that’s on the lip and the glasses and the cardigan sleeve over the wrist.

Dave doesn’t mention it again. Next morning he checks my numbers before the pour without asking, stands at my shoulder while I mark the forms, says nothing, moves on.

Celyn rings at half nine and the voice is wrong before the words start.

I know the wrong voice. I know all the versions: writing, flirting, the post-shift voice that’s all vowels and no consonants. This one’s different, tight, the vowels pulled in. The Welsh underneath pushing up like a bruise.

‘Can you come over?’

I’m already putting my boots on.

Celyn on the bed, cross-legged. Laptop open but the screen dark, not writing, staring at the screen that isn’t on. One of my t-shirts, the grey one, the one I left last week, comes to mid-thigh: legs bare, feet tucked under, nails yellow, chipped now. Wednesday, the colour’s survived the week badly, one thumb almost bare.

‘Pritchard,’ Celyn says. Flat. ‘Email this morning. Opens “Beynon.” Just the surname, no hello, the way he does, like reading a register. Then the chapter back, red pen. “The protagonist’s indecision reads as the writer’s indecision.” Underlined writer’s.’ The voice flattens. ‘He published two realist novels in the nineties. Thinks horror’s not proper literature. Told me first term that genre fiction is an excuse not to do the real work.’ A breath. ‘The showcase is in three weeks and he’s telling me the main character doesn’t know what she wants. Like I’m writing autobiography and getting it wrong.’

The mattress dips when I sit. Celyn doesn’t move towards me. Doesn’t move away, the gap.

‘Maybe I can’t write.’ The voice steady. ‘Maybe the whole novel’s shit. Maybe I’ve been kidding myself for years and the tutor’s just the first person honest enough to say it.’

‘No.’

The word’s out before I think about it. Hard. Like a block hitting a level.

The eyes are red-rimmed. Past crying or before it.

‘You don’t even know.’

‘You read me two paragraphs about a woman on a hill and my hands were in fists.’ I don’t know where the words come from. They’re just. There. Like the right number in a column. ‘That’s not shit.’

Silence. Celyn’s hand on the laptop edge. The chipped yellow. The thumb picking at the nail, the nervous thing.

‘The problem’s the door,’ Celyn says. Quiet now. The writer voice. ‘She can’t open the door. I’ve tried everything, she pushes, she pulls, she breaks it down. Nothing works. She keeps ending up on the same side.’

I think about doors, with my hands. A door that doesn’t open. A woman on a hill.

‘Has he tried just sitting down and not trying?’

The words come out like the forty millimetres came out wrong. From somewhere that isn’t the brain.

Celyn looks at me, long. The face. I can’t. Eyes, mouth, the gap between them. The eyeliner’s smudged from the rubbing. The stubble. The t-shirt that’s mine and too big and the collar that shows the collarbone and the collarbone that catches the light from the lamp.

‘You’ve been solving my novel since before you knew you were in it.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ The voice cracks on the nothing. A hairline thing.