Chapter 1 #2
The R is softer than anyone’s ever said it. The Welsh rounds the consonant and my name sounds different in that mouth.
‘Night.’
The door, cold air, gone.
I sit for three more minutes because standing up right now is a problem I’m not dealing with. The barman wipes the counter. Doesn’t rush me.
Back at the Airbnb I lie on the bed. The ceiling’s white, blank, nothing to look at, so you look at whatever’s already in your head.
The room’s got that Airbnb smell: cleaning products, someone else’s laundry, the smell of a place nobody lives in.
The sheets are white, the towels white, the mug in the kitchenette white.
Everything white and nothing mine. I’ve got the boots by the door, the hi-vis on the chair, the thermos Mum gave me on the counter. Nothing else.
I should shower, should eat something. There’s a Greggs bag from lunch in the bin, empty, the grease stain on the paper. Should call Mum, should text Ewan, should do any of the things a normal person does at eleven on a Thursday.
I don’t do any of those things. Thirteen hours on the screed and the arms are done, shoulders locked, fingers won’t close around the phone properly. I lie on the bed.
The phone buzzes, Ewan.
How’s Manchester
Fine
How’s fine
Fine’s fine
Three dots, typing, then:
You sound different
I’m texting. I don’t sound like anything
You sound different in text too
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.
Thirteen, sat next to me on the roof, told me he was gay and I held it and carried it and never put it down.
Now 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. A wrist that held the cold of a teacup.
The phone buzzes again.
Call me when you’re ready to say it
I’m not ready. I don’t even know what it is.
On my back, I find my wrist, just there. The shape of where it happened sits on the skin still.
I’m hard.
I’m twenty-seven.
Except I know exactly when it started. ‘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. Flat on the mattress, not touching anything. Waiting for it to pass.
Doesn’t pass, not for a while.
My wrist, the circle. 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. 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 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.