Page 12 of Undefined Terms

Twelve. Twelve months means a calendar year of this flat, this street, the bar five minutes away, the corner table. Twelve months means turning Tib Street into a postcode my mum can write on a Christmas card. Twelve means I’m not just here for the build, I’m. Here.

The cursor moves up. Twelve.

I click twelve.

Twelve months. Twelve, the body picked it.

I fill in the form: name, phone, employment. References: Dave at the site, Ewan’s address for the personal. Send.

Thursday I sign: a letting agent on Dale Street, a bloke called Neil who calls me mate fourteen times in twenty minutes. Standard AST, break clause at six, so the out exists.

The paper’s got my name printed on it. Ronan Sean Carrick. The full thing always looks like someone else. I sign anyway, the R tall and the rest a scrawl. Neil slides the keys across, two on a metal ring: one for the front door, one for a postbox I’ve got nothing to deliver to yet.

The keys are warm from his pocket. Tib Street. Five minutes from the site. Also five minutes from⁠—

Five minutes from the site. That’s the reason.

I tell Dave at lunch. ‘Sorted the flat, Tib Street.’

‘How long?’

‘Twelve months.’

He nods. ‘Settling in then.’

Settling in, sure, that’s what this is.

The flat’s bigger than the Airbnb. A proper bed that doesn’t fold into the wall, a sofa, a kitchen with a hob and an oven and counter space. The ceiling’s still white but the walls are brick, exposed, the old kind, the sort I’d usually check for load bearing but now I’m just looking at them. There’s a nail in the wall.

Don’t hang anything, not yet.

I bring the two bags from the Airbnb, holdall and rucksack and Mum’s thermos, and put the clothes in the wardrobe, the boots by the door, the thermos on the counter.

Home.

Apparently. Twelve months of home. Five minutes from the site and five minutes from a bar where someone sits at a corner table every night and types with fingers that have.

Don’t.

Friday, the bar. I walk in and Celyn’s at the table and the brain stops.

Not because of the skirt. Not yet. Because for a second, before Celyn clocks me, the laptop’s closed. Both hands flat on the lid, pressing. The face isn’t the half-smile or the reading face or any version I’ve filed. The mouth tight, the eyes fixed on the far wall. The jaw works once. Like holding something down with the table and the will.

Then the head turns. The face rearranges, not fast enough to hide it, but fast. The mouth lifts on one side. The version I know slots in.

The skirt’s dark, midi. Heavy Dr Martens under it, the laces loose. The nails are orange, hi-vis orange. The eyeliner’s sharp tonight, the lips some dark wine colour I don’t know the name of.

Two days of stubble under the lipstick. The shadow on the chin and the cheeks is dark, visible, and above it the dark mouth and the lined eyes.

It’s all of it. The skirt says one thing. The lips say another. The lips say look at me and the boots say I’ll kick your teeth in and it’s all the same person, sat at the same table, drinking the same garden-tea.

I sit down, my chair.

‘New boots?’ Celyn says. Looking at my feet.

‘New flat.’

The eyebrows go up. ‘Where?’