Page 109 of Undefined Terms

‘What.’

‘The bar. The one you go to.’

I don’t answer, she walks on. The scarf in the bag. The bar behind us.

We eat at a place in the Northern Quarter, the nice one, not the pub, and she has the fish and I have the pie and she tells me about the neighbours and the leak in the bathroom and Mrs Coulson’s daughter who’s had another baby and Ewan’s last visit and how thin Ewan looked and how she told Ewan to eat more and Ewan said he eats plenty and she said plenty of what and Ewan said, normal. Mum talking, me listening. The rhythm of it, the Lewisham one, the kitchen one, unchanged since I was ten and sat at the table doing homework I didn’t understand while Mum talked about the shop and the neighbours and the price of everything.

Sunday is the same. We go to a market, the one by the canal. She buys cheese from a stall run by a bloke with a waxed moustache and I carry the cheese. She asks about the site. I tell her about the site: the pour, the steel, Block C, Dave. She asks about mates. I tell her about Gaz. She doesn’t ask about the bar, doesn’t mention it.

At the cheese stall she turns to me, the coat, the bag. The purple scarf she bought yesterday already around her neck because it was cold this morning and she said ‘good thing I bought this’ like the weather justified the purchase and not the other way round.

‘And you’re happy? In Manchester?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’

The silence. The question in the silence. The one she’s not asking. The one that’s shaped like Celyn’s mug and a toothbrush in a drawer and a second pillow with an indent.

Lunch we go to Ewan’s, Mum’s idea, booked before she got on the train. Chorlton, the proper houses, the gardens, the bins that stay numbered. The hallway smells of garlic and rosemary, the kind off a plant, not a jar.

Laurence cooks. Sleeves rolled, an apron, an actual apron, dark and clean, the one Ewan bought as a joke and Laurence wears it straight. He tops Ewan’s glass before it’s empty. Ewan leans back when Laurence passes behind the chair, not looking, knowing the hand’ll be there. Mum watches the whole meal. Eats the fish, says it’s lovely, asks Laurence where he learnt. Stores the rest.

Twenty years of Ewan and I never thought he’d land here. A flat that smells of herbs, a man who burns himself on the pan and doesn’t flinch and just pours more wine. Mum sees it too. She doesn’t say much. She stores it with the rest.

Sunday evening, the flat. The Tupperware’s been refilled, she went to Tesco while I was in the shower and made a shepherd’s pie from scratch with a pan I didn’t know I owned. Wine, too. She brought it in the bag, a bottle of the white she likes, the cheap one from Aldi, the one that’s actually decent.

The flat’s warm, the radiator, the sheets on it almost dry. Mum in the chair, the one chair, the one I moved from the desk. Me on the sofa, the wine.

My phone lights up on the arm of the sofa. I don’t reach for it, but the screen’s face-up and the name’s right there. Celyn. Half a line under it before it cuts off: has she found me yet x

I turn it face down. Too late or not, I can’t tell. Mum doesn’t look at the phone. Looks at me, at whatever the face did in the half-second the name was showing.

I don’t say anything. That’s new. I had a lie ready for the tea, the Welsh mate, quick as anything. For this I’ve got nothing, and I don’t go looking.

Mum stores it. Same as the tea. Says nothing.

The silence goes on for a while. A comfortable while. Silence with weight in it.

Only happens when you’re not expecting anyone. The radiator clicks. The street outside, someone’s music, far off, the bass on a word I can’t hear. Mum in the chair like she’s sat in it for twenty years instead of twenty minutes. The wine glass, still half full. She never rushes conversation after a meal. She lets it settle like a sauce.

‘Your brother’s alright, ain’t he.’ Not a question. ‘That Laurence. Good ’un, that one. You can tell by how he is at his own cooker.’

I drink, don’t answer.

‘You got someone like that, love?’ The hand up before my face can do a thing. ‘Don’t answer me. I’m not asking you to. Just let your mum have her say for once.’

The wine, the radiator. I listen.

‘You’ve always been the one that holds things. Even when you was little. Your brother’d go to bits and there’s you, holding it all, never a peep. I used to call that strong.’ She turns the glass on her knee. ‘It’s not, though. It’s just quiet.’

A beat.

‘And if there’s somebody,’ she says, ‘then I’m glad.’

‘I told them about dad,’ I say.

‘What’d they say?’