Chapter 1 #2
I put the phone face down on the mattress.
The screen glows through the sheet for a second then goes dark.
That’s the thing about Ewan. He reads the silences, always has.
He’s reading me through a text message and getting it right and I haven’t even said what there is to get right.
Because there’s nothing. A stranger at a bar.
Hands on a keyboard. A wrist that held the cold of a teacup.
The phone buzzes again.
I’m here when you’re ready to say it
I’m not ready. I don’t even know what it is.
On my back, my wrist, just there. The shape of where it happened, still on the skin.
I got hard in a pub.
I’m twenty-seven, not a teenager.
I should say ‘I have no idea why it happened’. Except I know exactly when it did.
‘Night, Ronan’ and the soft R. The collarbone and the chain and the freckle near the chain. Celyn looking at me when I talked about concrete like I was making something out of the words too.
I close my eyes. The pillow smells of industrial detergent, not quite clean.
I turn onto my stomach. My hips push, once, into the mattress. Behind my eyes it’s the wrist and the freckle and—
I stop.
I stop because if I do this, if I let the body finish, it’s not the beer and it’s not the new city. It’s a person. A name I’ve been saying in my head for three nights. If I come thinking about that person then it’s real. Can’t undo real.
I don’t do it.
On my back, ceiling, white. Hands flat on the mattress, not touching anything. Waiting for it to pass.
Doesn’t pass, not for a while.
The wrist. The red on thin skin. The R that nobody else says like that.
I count the list again. Three things, same as the train.
Feels like there should be a fourth.
Seven o’clock, the gate. Sign in, hard hat, hi-vis, the site smells of diesel and wet concrete and the particular cold of a Manchester morning that gets into your boots before you’ve crossed the yard.
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, steel columns, scaffolding, the lower floors taking shape while the upper ones are still air. I walk the perimeter, check the barriers, check the set.
My hands on the concrete. The palm flat, 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 hand knows before the eye, I said.
The phrase sits wrong, didn’t yesterday. Sat fine for twelve years. Now it’s got a voice on it. Welsh, low, the accent soft on the consonants.
That’s his line.
I wipe my palm on the jeans. For a second I wonder if my cock knows before my brain.
Focus.
Check the rebar. Twelve-mil, tied in grids, the cage holding the pour. Every tie, every overlap. This is what I do.
My fingers work the wire, test the tension. The hands know what they’re doing. 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 Marcus 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.
Marcus is already on the east side. Big, silent, does twice the work, says nothing. Nods when I pass, I nod back, the conversation is complete.
Jay’s got the radio on. A woman singing about a man who doesn’t call her back. It’s always a woman, always a man who’s done something wrong.
Tommo’s late, Tommo’s always late. Comes through the gate at half seven with a bacon roll and an excuse. Dave shouts, Tommo shouts back. The banter starts and the morning opens up and I’m in it, the noise, the steel, the concrete, the smell of diesel and sugar from the portacabin.
Marcus appears with the coffee. Keeps the portacabin stocked, brings his own thermos, the decent stuff, none of the Builder’s from the van. Nods at me, I take the cup, Black, right temperature, he knows without asking.
‘Cheers, mate.’
He grunts. Marcus’s way of saying ‘you’re welcome’ is a grunt and a brief nod that nearly knocks me sideways. Seventeen stone, built like he was poured and never set wrong. Marcus doesn’t write things down. Carries the whole site in his head, never drops a detail.
Gaz bounces past, late as always, already on about the girl in Stockport. ‘Boss, you ever text someone and then just wait. Stare at your phone.’
‘No.’
‘Yeah you do. You’re staring at yours now.’
I’m not staring, I’m holding it, different thing.
The phone’s in my pocket, where it stays.
Doesn’t matter that the text from Celyn came through at six forty-five while I was already on the site, already in the hard hat, already trying to pour concrete instead of thinking about the bar and the chair and his fingers stilling on the keyboard yesterday when I sat down.
Dave comes out of the cabin. ‘Team meeting, five minutes.’
Marcus grunts again, Drains the coffee. The five-minute meeting’s usually two minutes. Dave hates meetings. Hates chairs, hates small talk, loves the pour.
I’m the same.
My hands 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. The fingers stopped, the hand came up, pushed the hair back, the neck, the chain.
Concrete on the trowel. Dripping. 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, portacabin, tea from the thermos. Mum’s thermos, the one she gave me, 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 Jess, or Tess, or something that ends in a sound I’ve stopped hearing. 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?’
‘A voice note is not a date, Gaz.’
‘It’s intimate though. She chose to use her voice. Her actual voice.’
I think about a voice. Welsh, the vowels. The R in Ronan that nobody else says like that.
‘Ask her out,’ I say. ‘With your actual mouth. Not a voice note.’
‘What if she says no?’
‘Then she says no and you stop boring me about it.’
Jay laughs. Marcus doesn’t but I think the sandwich pauses for a second, which is Marcus laughing.
I close my eyes, the portacabin’s warm, the chair’s plastic. The radio’s on low, another woman, another man.
Behind my eyes: Celyn stretching after typing. The shirt riding up. A strip of pale skin above the jeans. The dip of the hip.
Open my eyes, drink the tea. It’s gone cold, drink it anyway.
Doesn’t help.
Jay catches me staring at the clock. ‘You going somewhere, boss?’
‘Just. Dinner.’
‘With who.’
‘Someone.’
Jay grins. Tommo comes in late with another excuse and Jay catches my eye like I’m in on it, but I’m not in on anything. I’m out of my depth. I’ve been out of my depth since the first night at that table and I didn’t know it.
Built things for twelve years. Concrete, steel, everything that stands up because the hands know what to do.
This doesn’t have a plan. This is just: sitting across from a person and finding out that your hand wants to reach across the table and the sound of Welsh vowels makes your brain stop and you’re twenty-seven years old and you’ve never felt anything like—
stop—
Five o’clock, clock off. The walk to the Airbnb, five minutes, the NQ streets, the graffiti and the vintage shops. The barber’s sign, the window, dark.
I go up, drop the bag.
Shower. The water hot on the back of my neck where the concrete dust settles.
I wash my hair, the curls take the dust worst, hold it in the coils like rebar holds aggregate.
Don’t usually wash my hair on a weekday.
Shave, not all of it. The beard stays, trim the edges.
Short, dark, fills in whether you want it to or not. Mum says it makes me look like Dad.
I put on the clean polo, the one without the concrete line. Jeans that aren’t the site jeans.
I’m looking at myself in the mirror. Trimmed, clean, the polo stretched across the shoulders because I bought a medium and the fit’s all wrong.
The arms, tanned from the forearms down, pale above.
The chest and the stomach, hard from carrying, not from the gym.
My face, the Carrick face. Same as Ewan’s but wider, heavier.
The dark eyes, Mum’s, that look better on Ewan.
I put on cologne.
What the fuck am I doing.
Going for a pint after work. Normal. Blokes go for pints after work in clean polos. With shaved faces. At bars where I get a hard-on looking at someone who sits at a corner table with red nails and a pencil between their teeth.
Normal.
I go.
Celyn’s there, same spot, Laptop, mug, tea.
But.
Today is different. The hoodie, oversize, dark green, the sleeves past the hands. The fingers stick out holding the mug. The hair’s up, clip, silver, small, holding it off the face. And the face is—
Smooth, clean, the jaw is bare. Smooth and the cheeks are soft and there’s colour around the eyes. Softer, smudged now. Colour that makes the grey-green bigger, warmer.
Same person, same hands, but different. The face without the stubble. The eyes with the dark around them. Yesterday I couldn’t file the combination and today there’s a new combination and I still can’t file it and the thing is, the thing in my stomach and my chest and lower is the same.
Same.
I sit down, the chair, my chair now. When did it become my chair.
Celyn looks up. The eyes, the darker eyes, the smudged edges. The look drops. The forearms, bare below the polo sleeves. Clean, but the site’s still there, the tan, the scratches, the concrete not washing off no matter what. It stays a second too long.
‘Long day?’
‘Yeah.’
Celyn leans forward, Closer, and Celyn breathes in, a centimetre. Not touching, the warmth of the breath on my skin and the closeness and the smell of the tea and a perfume, fruity, sweet, that doesn’t match the oversize hoodie.
‘You smell like work.’ The half-smile. ‘I like a man who works with his hands.’
The voice is lower than usual.
Celyn sits back, picks up the mug, drinks, like nothing happened.
The pint’s in front of me. The barman brought it. When? Don’t know, I pick it up, drink it, all of it. The whole glass, the throat working, the beer cold and fast and I put the empty glass down and I’ve been in this bar for four minutes.
Celyn watches me finish.
‘Another?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Cheers.’
I drink three pints. Don’t feel any of them.