Page 87 of Undefined Terms

Mum does the pause. The one where she’s working out how much you can carry.

‘You sound like your brother sounded,’ she says. ‘Before.’

The toast, the plate. The telly where the bloke’s knocking through a wall and the dust is everywhere and his wife’s in the garden pretending not to panic.

Before, before what.

‘Mum. I’m fine.’

‘I didn’t say you weren’t fine. I said you sound different.’

‘Same thing.’

‘It’s not the same thing at all, Ronan, and you know it.’

Ronan, full name.

I don’t sit still. I change the road.

‘How’s Dad’s knee?’

‘I told you about his knee five minutes ago.’

‘Tell me again.’

Pause. Mum on the other end. Her kitchen, her tea. The house that changed and one son came back different and the other one’s here now.

‘Alright, love. His knee’s the same. He’s the same. Everything’s the same.’

Everything’s the same.

‘Give my love to Ewan,’ she says.

‘Will do.’

‘And to whoever’s making you sound like that.’

Nothing comes. My thumb on the red button. My mouth open and nothing in it. Phone goes dead. Telly. Wall getting knocked through. Dust.

Mum’s not stupid, never has been.

She’s waiting. Same patience she had with Ewan.

I put the phone on the arm of the sofa. The toast’s gone cold, the crumbs.

The telly’s still on, the bloke knocking through a wall, his wife in the garden pretending not to panic. This is the bit where they find asbestos or a structural fault, because every house has something wrong in it.

Mum heard it in the speed of my laugh. The too-fast one, the one your brain makes when someone asks if there are girls and you’re sat there thinking about a person who isn’t a girl and isn’t quite a bloke and fits the space between like a key that shouldn’t turn but does.

Celyn would know what to do with that. Would ring her back, say you don’t know yet but you will, and the Welsh would pull the vowels and it’d sound like respect. I’m the bloke who says nah and yeah. I’ve got site vocabulary, the words for concrete and steel and how much weight a column carries. I’ve got no words for how Celyn laughs.

The house on the telly’s got load-bearing walls in the right place; the rest is cosmetics, fixable. The family house in Lewisham’s got bones shaped a specific way. Dad at the head. The sons across from each other. The volume turned down when the shape goes wrong, Mum filling every crack with sound. I bring Celyn to that table and the shape cracks completely, and there’s no Christmas dinner big enough to cover it.

And Ewan’s table would do the opposite. Ewan keeps the chair open, says it every time, no score, bring Celyn. Laurence would have the kettle on before our coats were off. That table wouldn’t crack. And I still haven’t gone, because it’s not them I’m scared of. It’s what it makes me, walking Celyn through that door and saying this is who I’m with.

I eat the cold toast anyway.

Like your brother sounded.