Page 107 of Undefined Terms

Outside the window it starts raining. Proper rain. Manchester rain, sideways, won’t stop until it’s done.

I don’t look for the umbrella. Haven’t got one, don’t need one.

The rain, Celyn at the table, the dress. The mouth doing its thing.

Right.

The hand in mine. Gripping like they’ll lose it. I hold back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘I’m coming Saturday, love. Don’t argue. I’ve got the train booked.’

I wasn’t going to argue. I was going to. Right. I was going to argue.

‘The flat’s a tip, Mum.’

‘I’ve seen tips. I raised two boys.’

‘It’s a studio.’

‘I’ve seen studios. Your brother lived in one for three years with a microwave that didn’t have a door.’

She’s coming. That’s. Right. She’s coming. Mum is coming to Manchester and the flat has,

The flat has Celyn in it.

Friday night, Celyn’s at the bar, I don’t go, I clean the flat.

The tea goes in the cupboard, the back of the cupboard, behind the PG Tips. The mug goes next to the other mugs. Just a mug. Could be anyone’s mug. The hoodie goes in the wardrobe, folded, bottom shelf. The toothbrush, I hold it for a minute. Stand in the bathroom, the toothbrush is green, mine is purple. A green toothbrush in a cup next to a purple toothbrush is, a fact. A fact with a person in it.

The toothbrush goes in the drawer. Quick, the way you pull a splinter, because slow means feeling the wood of it. Green, in the dark next to the spare fuses and the takeaway menus, and I slide it shut, and the slide’s the loudest thing in the flat.

Book, pillow. I punch the indent out. Press it flat. Two pillows, both flat, like nobody sleeps on either one. Hair elastic, pen, nail polish remover.

I change the sheets, wash them, hang them. The dryer’s broken. Been broken for three weeks, can’t be arsed to call the landlord. The sheets on the radiator, detergent and nothing else.

The flat looks like my flat now. One person’s flat. One mug on the counter. One toothbrush in the cup. One pillow with no indent. The lie of a room cleaned for a mother who sees everything.

I stand in the flat and I count the things.

Nine things. Ten if I count the smell on the sheets.

Nine things, and every one came out easy. That’s the part. Months of a person in this flat and I can wipe them out of it in an evening, a drawer and a wardrobe and a wash cycle, and being good at it sits in me like something I’ve done wrong with my hands.

I text Celyn: Mum’s coming tomorrow. Won’t be at the bar.

Celyn: Tell her I say hi. Then, before I’ve put the phone down: Or don’t. Since I’m getting folded away with the good mugs.

The dots come and go. A long time. Then:

There’s the door, then. The one you keep a hand on at the bar. Didn’t take you long to pick which way.

Celyn would usually take the edge off a thing like that. A joke, mostly on the end, a let-out for both of us. Not this time. The dots don’t come back. The hurt just sits there in the blue bubble, no softening after it, and I’ve earned it.

I want to answer it. I want to type come round, stay, I’ll tell her you’re here. I’ve known what you are to me since that bar and I still can’t get the words to the door. So I don’t answer that part, because answering it opens the thing, and tonight I haven’t got the thing in me. Not because I don’t want to. Because I don’t know how.

Will do.