Page 152 of Undefined Terms

The landscape changed thirty minutes ago. Fast, like someone pulled a curtain. One minute: the A55, dual carriageway, service stations, lorries, grey Manchester sky. Then the turn, then the road halved, then the mountains.

I’ve never seen mountains. Mountains that make the sky smaller.

Easter weekend. Celyn asked me up weeks ago, careful with it, like the asking might chip. Last Christmas this is where they’d come without me. The year I’d broken it. I spent the day in Lewisham looking at the empty chair. Now it’s my hands on the wheel.

Celyn’s in the passenger seat, feet on the dash, the soft old white trainers. The nails orange today, bright against the moss-green jumper like a traffic cone in a field.

Stubble, two days, dark, no makeup. The hair tucked behind both ears. The earrings catching the grey light through the windscreen.

Celyn’s held it from Betws-y-Coed. The home weight, the shoulders dropping. The hand on the window, fingers on the glass.

‘Left here,’ Celyn says. ‘After the bridge.’

I take the left, the road narrows. Didn’t think that was possible but the road narrows and there’s a stone wall on one side and a river on the other and Celyn’s looking out the window at the mountain. Snowdon, they told me, except it’s not called that, it’s Yr Wyddfa, and I’ve said it wrong three times and Celyn laughed every time and didn’t correct me and that’s worse.

‘There.’ Celyn points. The hand.

A house: stone, grey, slate roof, two windows either side of a green door, gravel. A van, white, dirty, the lettering on the side: O. BEYNON PLUMBING & HEATING.

Celyn hasn’t moved.

The hand. The one that was pointing. It’s on the lap now. The fingers pressing into the knee.

‘All right?’

‘Yeah.’ Celyn breathes. The breath. In. Out. ‘Yeah. It’s just. They’re a lot.’

‘Your family’s a lot.’

‘My family’s a lot.’ The mouth tightens. A smile that doesn’t reach. ‘They’ll call me Gethin.’

The name, I’ve heard it once. A phone call, three months ago, Catrin’s voice through the speaker and the name that isn’t Celyn and how Celyn’s face went flat.

‘I know,’ I say.

‘I don’t respond to it. I haven’t. It’s not a fight. I just don’t respond. And they’ll use it and I won’t turn and there’ll be this gap where the name hangs in the air and nobody says anything and then Mam says it again louder because she thinks I haven’t heard and I hate myself for it.’

The hand, tighter on the knee. The orange nails white at the tips.

My hand finds the hand. The knuckles. The ring, silver, thin, under my thumb.

‘I’m here,’ I say. Don’t have anything better. Don’t have anything else.

Something shifts when eyes meet. A weight I want to carry, somewhere safe to set it.

‘Right,’ Celyn says. ‘Right. Let’s go.’

Rhys opens the door, shorter than I expected. Five seven, maybe five eight. Broad, the face. Lined, kind. Celyn’s eyes, except deeper set. Grey hair, neat. The side parting like it’s been the same since 1985.

‘Croeso, lad.’ He puts his hand out. The grip. Proper. Working hands. I know working hands.

‘Mr Beynon. Cheers for having me.’

‘Rhys.’ Pulls me in. A pull that says: inside, now. ‘Catrin’s made bara brith. If you don’t eat it she’ll be in a mood until Whitsun.’

Then it’s Celyn’s turn, and there’s no handshake for Celyn. Both arms, the lift, Celyn half off the step, and Rhys says something into the hair, Welsh, low, and holds on a beat longer than men round here let themselves. I look at the boots by the door and let them have it.

The hallway, small, boots by the door three pairs, wellingtons, a coat rack with six coats. Photos up the wall, a whole childhood of them. Celyn at eight or nine, holding a fish, and that one’s got the grin in it, the real one, the one I get now across a table. It’s about the last photo that does.