Page 145 of Undefined Terms

I put the page down. ‘That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read,’ I say. ‘I’m not being kind. I’ve seen every horror going, the nasty ones, the ones that keep you off the landing light for a week. None of them got near it.’ Celyn’s watching my face. From a man who reads a road sign like homework, sat up in bed with two hundred and forty-three pages he went through in a night, telling the person who wrote them they frightened the life out of him. Celyn hears what it is.

‘You never let me off the hook,’ I say. ‘The whole way through I couldn’t tell which one was the monster. The house, or the man, or whether there’s a difference. Both undefined.’ Celyn’s hand finds mine. ‘He doesn’t fit anywhere out there. In there nobody makes him be one thing. He loves the worst place in the world because it’s the only one that ever let him be nothing with edges.’ The flat holds around us, the leak stain, the warm weight, the pages on the floor. ‘Two things you can’t name, holding each other up in the dark. It’s the closest thing to a home the book gives anyone.’

Mum calls on a Saturday. Eleven in the morning. I’m at the flat, the kettle on, Celyn asleep in the bed with the duvet pulled up to the ears and one foot sticking out the end because the foot runs hot. Always the left one, don’t know why.

Mum’s name on the screen. The photo, the paper hat.

Saturday’s not her day, Sunday is, Saturday means nothing.

‘Ron.’

The voice, the tight one. The one she used two years ago.

‘What’s happened.’

The full stop on it. Already reading the answer off my face.

‘Your dad was here last night. For the football. I had it on. He came round with the cans, him and Terry from next door, and they watched the match.’ She stops. The breath. The reset. ‘He asked about you. How you’re doing. And I said you’re good, you’re happy, you’re, I said you’ve got someone, Ron. I didn’t mean to say it like, I said “they’re coming for dinner soon” and he didn’t say anything.’

They.

The word. The little word that did it. Just ‘they.’ Mum’s mouth. The living room with the football on and Terry from next door and the cans.

‘He went silent,’ Mum says. ‘You know.’

I know it. The Sean Carrick withdraw, not anger, not shouting. Worse, the nothing. The face that closes like a door you didn’t see had hinges.

‘Terry left. Your dad stayed. He said, he said it like you were standing there. “Both of you, Eileen.”’

Both of you.

I put the kettle down. The sound of Celyn breathing in the bedroom, the slow rhythm, and Mum’s voice in the phone and the kitchen between them, not this kitchen. The Lewisham kitchen, the crooked tiles.

‘I told him it’s not the same,’ Mum says. ‘I told him Celyn’s not, it’s different from Ewan and Laurence, it’s, but he wasn’t listening, Ron. He’d stopped listening. You know when he stops.’

‘Yeah.’

‘He went home. He didn’t slam anything. He just put his jacket on and went home. Didn’t finish the can.’

Didn’t finish the can, Dad. The man who finishes everything, the plate, the pint, the job. Who taught me that. Walking out with a half-full can on the side table and the football on.

‘Mum.’

‘I’m sorry, love. I should have been more careful. I should have asked.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘I know. I know it’s not. But I’m glad you said it.’

‘Mum. It’s not your fault.’

Silence, the kettle in Lewisham, I can hear it. The click, the steam. She put the kettle on. She always puts the kettle on.

‘He’ll call you,’ she says. ‘Or he won’t. But I think he will.’

‘Mum.’

‘Yeah.’