Page 94 of Undefined Terms

‘She sounds smart.’

‘She sounds like a woman from Beddgelert who’s had thirty years of practice being surprised by nothing.’ Celyn’s feet pull up onto the sofa. The knees tucked. The small version. ‘She’ll ask you seventeen questions when you meet her and you’ll think she’s interrogating you and she’s not. She’s deciding where to put you. In the house. Which chair. Which mug. That’s how she loves. In logistics.’

I think about my mum. The phone call, the kettle. Any nice girls in Manchester? The laugh that came out wrong.

Mum knows, I think Mum knows. Like she knew about Ewan. Somehow, before words. She waited. When Ewan said the words she already had the kettle on.

Dad won’t push because Dad doesn’t push. Dad goes inward. Dad’s been inward since Ewan said the thing he said at the kitchen table a year ago. I was there. Stood in the doorway. Ewan at the table, Dad at the head, Mum by the cooker. The words, I don’t remember the exact words. I remember Dad’s face, the face didn’t change. The face stayed the same, and behind it something closed. Closed. Like a fire door on a hinge.

He stood up. Said ‘right.’ Took his jacket. Left. Mum stood at the cooker. Ewan sat at the table. I stood in the doorway.

That was a year ago and the fire door hasn’t opened.

And if I walk into that kitchen and say I’m with someone, and they’re the sentence breaks. Breaks before it starts. Because of the face my father would make. Same face, same closing, fire door again. And this time I’d be at the table and Sean Carrick would take his jacket and leave and there’d be nobody in the doorway to hold it because both sons would be on the other side of the door.

‘Ron.’

I look at Celyn, the knees, the feet. The t-shirt hem with the pulled thread.

‘You went somewhere,’ Celyn says.

‘Yeah.’

‘Your dad?’

I don’t answer, don’t need to. Celyn knows the shape of this, the outline. Not the inside.

‘It’s different,’ Celyn says. ‘My family and yours. My lot get it wrong in small ways. Pronouns. Questions. The Wikipedia page.’ A pause. ‘Your lot get it wrong in the one way that matters.’

I look at the telly. The darts. A bloke throws a perfect score and the crowd erupts and the sound is huge and stupid and I want to be in that room where the only thing that matters is whether a thing you threw lands where you aimed it.

‘In my house,’ I say. The words slow. ‘Love is. It’s a specific thing. It’s got conditions. You get the shape right, you get the love. You get the shape wrong and you get nothing.’

‘In Celyn’s house,’ Celyn says, the third person, deliberate, ‘love is the wrong shape. Always. But it’s there. Even when it says he. Even when it reads Wikipedia twice and still gets it wrong. It shows up with the wrong word and the right intent and that’s enough.’

‘Enough?’

‘Most days.’

Darts on the telly, crowd noise, Celyn’s feet on the sofa, cushion between us. I close the gap, put my hand on the knee. Celyn’s hand comes over mine: fingers, no polish, bare nails, the ring, the silver one, hand warm.

‘She’ll like you,’ Celyn says. ‘Mam. She likes anyone who’s useful.’

‘I can reach the top shelf.’

‘Exactly.’

The telly, the darts. The hand on the hand. The word, love, in the room. A kitchen in Snowdonia, a kitchen in Lewisham, a flat in Manchester. Two people on a sofa. One knows the word, the other one’s learning.

Rain, against the window, Manchester.

The rain’s heavier now, nobody going home early. Celyn’s still looking at the hand, the ring, the bare nails, like trying to read the skin.

‘You’re thinking about him again,’ Celyn says. Flat. Certain.

Fair. Can’t argue with fair.

‘What would you say to him,’ Celyn says. ‘If you could say anything.’