Page 118 of Undefined Terms

He doesn’t look back. But at the gate he pauses. One hand on the latch. The hand stays there two seconds longer than it needs to. Then he goes.

I close the door. Stand in the hallway. The hallway with the shoe rack and the paint he chose and the ghost of a man who still calls me good lad and asks about the site and loads his records into a car parked outside a house he built and left.

Nobody tells you about fathers. The cost isn’t the silence. It’s the almost. The hand on the gate. The good lad that still works. The version of Dad that talks to me because I’m the son who hasn’t said the thing yet.

When I say it, and I will, I know I will. I lose this, the site questions. The full name at the door. The hand that paused at the gate. I lose the almost.

Mum’s in the kitchen, she doesn’t ask. She already knows what just happened because she’s lived thirty years reading the shape of that man leaving rooms.

I sit at the table. The eggs are cold. Two plates. Tea.

The 16:42 from Euston: two hours twelve, the same train in reverse, the same coffee from the trolley.

I open the thread on the way through Stoke.

It’s you.

I type three words, delete them. Type two, delete them. The cursor blinks at me the way the laptop blinked at Celyn the night I sat in the chair too small for me and said nothing. I put the phone face down on the tray table.

Piccadilly. Manchester air, wet, sharper than London. No cab to Oldham Street tonight. The flat the other way, the one with the blue mug and the bare ceiling and the bed that’s somehow too big. I walk to it. The body that always moves first doesn’t even try for the other direction. It knows it hasn’t earned the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The alarm goes at five forty-five. I hit it, get up, kettle. Tea, the mug with the blue rim, not the other one. The other one’s Celyn’s. The other one’s got the chip on the rim and the tea stain inside that won’t scrub out because Celyn lets the tea sit too long, always, every time, the leaves in for six minutes minimum which is insane and I’ve told them it’s insane and they said ‘strong tea is the only tea, everything else is warm water with ambition’ and I understand now.

The mug’s on the counter. Where it was Saturday. Where it was Sunday. Where it is now.

The blue mug fits in my hands better. Get dressed.

Site by six fifteen.

Frost got in. I can see it in the surface, how the concrete’s gone chalky at the edges. Run my hand along the joint, feel for the crack that the eye misses. Nothing, solid. The one good thing about winter pours, if it sets right, it holds.

I mark it off. Move to the next section.

Gaz is on the mixer, radio going. Something from the nineties, the Verve, the one about the drugs. He nods when I pass. Normal nod. The Gaz nod that means: we’re here.

‘Alright,’ I say.

‘Alright.’

That’s it, that’s Monday.

Jay’s on the scaffold with Thomas. I don’t look up, they don’t call down. Things are different after, after Thomas and the ‘keep it separate’ at the block stack. And now the distance is the distance, distance is fine.

Dean is on the steel, cutting, the grinder screaming. He sees me, lifts a hand. Doesn’t say anything. Puts the hand back on the grinder. The sparks going, the noise that fills everything.

Good, the noise.

Tuesday, same. The alarm goes and the body knows. Five forty-five. Body gets up, boots go on, hands pick up the tools. Brain can do what it likes. Body works.

I measure the formwork on the east wall. Take the levels. Write the numbers in the book, the small book, the one that fits in the chest pocket of the hi-vis, the one with the pencil tucked in the spine. The numbers are clean, always clean. Numbers don’t have opinions.

Lunchtime I sit in the portakabin and eat the sandwich I made at six this morning. Ham, bread, nothing else. I used to put cheese on: Celyn said once that ham without cheese is a cry for help and I said that ham without cheese is a sandwich and Celyn said ‘a sad sandwich’ and I put cheese on after that.

No cheese. Forgot to get any.

I eat the sandwich, it’s fine.