Page 5 of Undefined Terms

I know this, this I know.

Dave’s at the portacabin. Fiftyish, loud, three sentences max before he’s onto the next thing. ‘Ronan, Block C footings, check the overnight set, report by nine, go.’

Go. I go: the boots on the mud, the clipboard, the level in my hand. The site’s a skeleton of steel columns and scaffolding, the lower floors taking shape while the upper ones are still air. I walk the perimeter, check the barriers, check the set.

My palm flat on the concrete, fingers spread. You feel it, the texture, the give. Good concrete sets smooth. Bad concrete has air in it, bubbles under the surface, a fault you won’t see until it cracks under load. The hand knows.

The phrase sits wrong, didn’t yesterday. Sat fine for ten years. Now it’s got a voice on it. Welsh, low, the accent soft on the consonants. That’s a line. I wipe my palm on the jeans.

Focus. Check the rebar: twelve-mil, tied in grids, the cage holding the pour. Every tie, every overlap. This is what I do. The fingers work the wire, test the tension. They always have.

Except last night they held an empty glass for forty minutes and didn’t notice.

‘Alright, boss?’ Gaz. Twenty-two, apprentice, talks like his mouth is running late for something his brain hasn’t started yet. ‘Block C’s looking clean. Dave says the pour’s at eleven.’

‘Yeah. Tell Dean to check the east ties. I’ll do west.’

‘Cheers.’ He doesn’t leave. ‘You good?’

‘I’m good.’

‘You look tired.’

‘I’m always tired, Gaz.’

‘Nah, you’re always knackered. Today you’re tired. Different thing.’

He’s right, knackered is the body, tired is the head. The head didn’t sleep last night. The head was on a ceiling, white, blank, and a wrist still warm.

Gaz goes. I do the west ties.

The text from Celyn came through at six forty-five. I haven’t looked. The phone stays in the pocket while I try to pour concrete instead of thinking about the bar, the chair, the way the typing stopped when I sat down.

Dave comes out of the cabin. ‘Team meeting, five minutes.’ The five-minute meeting’s usually two. Dave hates meetings, loves the pour.

I’m the same.

In it, the concrete warm on the trowel. The rhythm: pour, spread, vibrate, smooth. The body knows. The body is good at this.

The body puts an image where it doesn’t belong.

Celyn’s fingers on the keyboard. They stopped, came up, pushed the hair back, the neck, the chain.

The concrete drips off the trowel. I’ve held it too long and it’s running off the edge onto my boot.

‘Fuck.’

Gaz looks over. ‘You alright?’

‘Fine. Just. Yeah. Fine.’

I scrape the boot, get back to the spread. The pour doesn’t wait. Forty tonnes doesn’t care what’s in your head. I push the image down. It goes, stays down for about six minutes.

Lunch in the portacabin, tea from the thermos. Mum’s thermos, the one I didn’t ask for. Sandwich from the van: ham and cheese, soft bread, the mayonnaise too thick. I eat it, body needs it.

Gaz is talking about the girl in Stockport. Been talking about the girl in Stockport since Monday. She’s called Steph. Took me three goes to keep it; her name lives at the back end of Gaz’s sentences, where I’ve stopped listening. She texted him back last night. This is apparently a life event.

‘She sent a voice note, boss. A voice note. That’s like, that’s basically a date, innit?’