Page 153 of Undefined Terms

After that the grin goes out. Celyn at fourteen, school uniform, blazer too big, hair cut to a boy’s, and the face only manages the half-thing, the thing before a smile that never lands. A boy in every frame, and not one of them fits. Shoulders up at the ears. Eyes gone somewhere the camera can’t follow. Loved, though, that’s what gets me. The family photo, Christmas crackers, paper crowns, Rhys mid-laugh, the brother who must be Owain, Catrin’s hand on Celyn’s shoulder gripping like she’ll never let go. They loved this child to the bone. They just had the wrong one, and the right one was in there with the lights off, waiting it out.

I know the lights on. That’s the thing I can’t shake, stood in this hallway. I know what Celyn looks like lit, the laugh that takes a whole pub, sitting on counters like gravity’s optional, both hands going when the idea’s good. Same face as these walls, mains switched off. Something in me sets hard, the way a slab sets. Not again. Not while I’m here. I’m not having that face back on a wall.

Different from the Carrick table. Different. The wrong names, the Wikipedia page, the ‘he’ that keeps coming, but the bara brith. The boots by the door. The coat rack with six hooks. The whistle kettle that Catrin puts on before anyone asks.

The boots are all different sizes. Three pairs, worn work boots. The ones that know ground. The ones that carry weight on the tarmac and in the snow and through streams when it’s raining in February and nobody cares about wet feet because the work matters more than comfort.

I know these boots. Mine are Rotherhithe leather, bought where my father bought his. These are Welsh boots, local, the kind that know ground that isn’t London.

The coat rack, six hooks. Two people live here. The hooks stay up for the ones who come back.

Catrin’s in the kitchen, the whistle kettle already going. The routine that doesn’t need asking. The tea happens because you’re here.

Different from Mum’s kitchen. The same underneath. The extra cup set down without asking, like it’s already decided you’ll stay. No trial, no looking you over. You came with one of theirs, so you’re one of theirs.

Celyn came from this. It shows. Celyn doesn’t fidget, doesn’t prove anything.

Ewan’s right about the Carrick table. No crooked tiles, no unsaid things. The wrong names are here, the he Celyn doesn’t turn for, but they’re surface. The underneath is solid.

‘Ron, cariad.’ Catrin. The kitchen doorway. Shorter than Rhys. Round face. Warm. She comes straight at me, arms open, no hesitation. The hug is, I wasn’t ready. She smells like butter and flour and something sweet and the arms go round me and squeeze and she’s strong for her size.

‘You’re taller than I expected.’

Pulls back. The assessing look, the same look Mum gives people. The what-are-you-doing-with-my-child look. ‘Tea?’

‘Yeah, cheers.’

Celyn’s already in the kitchen. Sat on the counter, the only person in the world who sits on counters at twenty-five. A cat has materialised on Celyn’s lap. ‘Yr hen gath,’ Celyn says, low, to the fur. The cat purrs like a small engine.

Catrin crosses to the counter and takes Celyn’s face in both hands. Doesn’t say a name, not the wrong one, not any. Just holds the face, thumbs on the cheekbones, kisses the forehead, and Celyn lets her, eyes shut, the cat sliding off forgotten. Whatever this house gets wrong, it doesn’t get this wrong.

The kettle’s old, the whistling kind. The kitchen’s old. Everything’s old, the tiles, the Aga, the cloth on the table with the faded flowers.

‘Gethin says you’re in construction.’

The name, in the air, Celyn doesn’t move, doesn’t look up. The fingers in the cat’s fur. Still.

The gap, the one Celyn described. Catrin says it how you say a word you’ve been saying for twenty-five years. The groove in the floorboard that the door has worn by opening the same way a thousand times.

I watch Celyn not move. Celyn told me about it once, two in the morning, face in the pillow, flat as a bus timetable: not mine, never was, a name they gave to someone who didn’t exist. The flatness was the thing.

‘Celyn did,’ I say. Into the gap. ‘Site manager. Victoria North, the big restoration in Ancoats.’

‘Lovely,’ Catrin says. She pours the tea. Doesn’t notice the gap. Or notices and can’t cross it. ‘Milk?’

The gap’s still there. The name in the air like a bridge nobody’s walked across. Catrin pours the tea, the practiced pour, muscle memory, the normality of it sitting right next to the break in the conversation.

I don’t flinch when Catrin says the name. Flinching would agree with it.

I find Celyn’s hand. I press, one second, two. You’re not alone in the gap.

Celyn presses back, barely. The fingers closed around mine.

‘Please.’

The kitchen, the tea. The bara brith on the plate, dark, dense, the butter melting. I eat a piece because Catrin’s watching. It’s good, proper good.

Celyn hasn’t spoken.