Page 148 of Undefined Terms

The volume, one word, then back down, the thing Dad does. The spike and then the nothing and the nothing’s worse.

‘I just need time,’ he says. ‘I need. It’s a lot, Ron. Both of you. It’s a lot for a man to change.’ He stops. The sentence that doesn’t finish because the vocabulary ran out. The apple. The tree.

‘Their name is Celyn,’ I say. ‘Celyn.’

Silence.

‘Welsh,’ I say. ‘They’re a writer. Horror.’

The details. The name, the job, the origin. Like if I give him enough facts the facts will make a shape he can hold. Like filling a form, Name, Occupation, Nationality.

‘They’re good, Dad. They’re. I’m happy.’

The word Mum asked about. Happy. A breath in the kitchen and a stone here. Monday. The flat. And I can’t sit with it.

‘I need time,’ he says again.

Not: I don’t want to know. Not: I won’t call again, not: choose.

Time.

The door, not shut, not open.

‘Okay,’ I say.

‘Don’t tell your mum I said this.’

‘I won’t.’

‘And Ewan will understand.’

‘I’ll talk to Ewan.’

Silence, the last silence. The one before the phone goes.

‘Right,’ Dad says. ‘Right, then.’

‘Right.’

Phone goes. Screen. Number with no face. Sofa. Ceiling with the stain from the leak that I haven’t fixed because there’s always another week.

Celyn’s at the restaurant. The notebook in the bag. The apron. The hands without nail polish because the restaurant says no. The hands that wrote me into a book.

I sit on the sofa. The silence, the telly off, don’t turn it on.

The door, still ajar. His to push, not mine.

Enough.

The phone, text Celyn.

dad called

Three dots, fast. Celyn’s at the restaurant but the phone’s in the apron pocket. Always in the apron pocket.

And?

he said he needs time. said he doesn’t understand