Page 120 of Undefined Terms

I sit on the bed. The bed I’ve slept in without sleeping properly because the mattress is too big now which doesn’t make sense. It’s the same double it was last month, it hasn’t grown, it can’t be too big. But it is, the bed is too big and the flat is too small and both of those things are true at the same time and I can’t fix the maths.

I can’t fix the maths.

The heating clicks on, off, on.

Everything in the flat is Celyn. Celyn’s not in it.

I open my email. Scroll past the site notifications. Stop.

Henderson & Roe. Subject: Rotherhithe Riverside. Expression of Interest.

My mate Kev must have passed the name. The email’s polite, professional. We understand you’re currently based in Manchester. The position offers… I read the salary, read it again.

Rotherhithe, twenty minutes from Mum, the river. The pubs I know by smell. The London Ron who doesn’t have a green toothbrush in his cup.

I close the email, don’t delete it.

Friday, the site. The last day of the week.

I pour. Block D, east section, the one I’ve been building towards all week. The concrete goes down clean, smooth. The trowel work is mine, the finishing, the levelling, the surface that nobody else gets as flat because nobody else has the patience for the last pass. The pass where you hold the float at a low angle and barely touch the surface and the concrete does the rest. It’s not strength, it’s stillness.

The float in my hand is the only thing that’s right today. The only place the head and the body agree. The concrete takes the float and the float takes the pressure and the pressure becomes smoothness. The hand knows the angle. The wrist knows when to stop. The body’s been doing this since the first pour on this site and the body knows how to build things that hold.

What I don’t know is how to say I’m scared to a person who sees you. Sees you seeing them. Sees the job you’re doing on yourself to not cry in front of the mixer.

Gaz knows, he’s not asking. That’s the favour he’s doing, the silence. The work. The normal briefing that isn’t normal because everything’s beneath a weight. Dean knows. He nods at me like he does when a site’s been bad and everyone’s tired and we’re still here. Jay doesn’t look at me. That’s different, that’s new. The silence is bigger when someone’s choosing it.

The concrete sets fast in this cold. Twenty hours and it’ll be hard enough to walk on. The formwork comes off tomorrow and the surface is what it is, clean, flat, the thing I built.

Celyn’s at the bar right now. Or at the flat. Or somewhere in Manchester that isn’t here, that isn’t next to me, that isn’t what it was, the spreadsheet in my head keeps running, the days, the hours, the specific words. I just want it simple. The drawer. The chair too small for me. The silence, the door.

I don’t know how to say sorry with concrete. I know how to say it with steel and levels and the right measurement. I don’t know how to say it with words because words are Celyn’s thing and I don’t have them. I have the float, the level, the hammer. The language of how things fit together.

But Celyn’s not concrete. Celyn’s the thing I didn’t know I was looking for until the table and the pencil and the painted nails. The one that made Manchester not feel like waiting. What made the flat feel like arrival instead of a place I rented for two years.

Dave walks past, looks at the pour, nods. That’s Dave’s way, the approval, the silence about everything else. The nod that says: you did this right, at least you did this right.

The surface is perfect, glass-smooth, the kind that photographs well and lasts. Matters to no one except the people who know what it costs. The patience, the early mornings, the steady hand when the head’s somewhere else.

Tomorrow the formwork comes off and it’s real. The thing I built holds.

I don’t know if Celyn’s going to hold. And I can’t pour concrete on that. Can’t make it smooth, can’t make it right.

After the shift I walk home. Past the barber’s, past the Turkish place, past the bar.

The window, the table, empty, Wednesday it was empty, Thursday it was empty, Friday, empty. Three days and the table’s got nobody at it. I wonder if Celyn’s been there on the days I haven’t walked past.

Their flat. The room with the post-its and the laptop and the novel that’s stuck.

I stand on the pavement. The cold. The smell of lamb from the Turkish place. The bar light through the glass.

I could go in, sit in my chair, order a pint, wait.

I don’t.

I walk home. Their mug still on the counter. Ham. Ceiling.

My phone buzzes. Ewan.