Chapter 2 #2
It runs. Celyn at the table, looking at me, the half-smile.
Then the hand across the table, the fingers on my wrist again, but longer this time.
Moving, up. Past the wrist, the forearm, the crook of the elbow where the polo sleeve ends and the skin starts.
And Celyn’s face is closer now, the tea and the perfume and the clean skin or the rough jaw, it switches, both, doesn’t matter.
The mouth on mine, soft and then not soft. The tongue, tea on it. Celyn makes a sound, small, in the back of the throat, and the mouth moves. Off mine, down. Jaw. Neck. Chest.
I open my eyes, the ceiling.
Hard. The third night in a row. Same ceiling. The duvet’s got a ridge where my body’s pushing up and I can see it in the dark. The shape of the thing I’m pretending isn’t happening.
I don’t do anything, I lie there. Flat on the mattress. Eyes open.
The sequence plays again. The mouth on the neck. Lower, the sound Celyn makes.
I press my face into the pillow. Turn onto my side. My hips push, once, against the mattress.
Stop.
Stop it, go to sleep, you’ve got work Monday. You’ve got footings to check and a pour at noon and there’s no space in this for anything else.
Mouth. Sound. A hand going lower.
I roll onto my back. The clock on the phone: 1:14 a.m.
Doesn’t pass tonight.
Takes a long time to not pass.
I don’t do anything about it. But tonight not doing it is louder than doing it would be. I lie there, ceiling dark. And I think about Ewan’s kitchen and the wine and the hand under the table and Celyn’s mouth saying my name with the soft R and the circle on my wrist that I can still feel and.
I don’t have a phone number.
I have their face behind my eyelids every time I close them. Ewan knows that. Ewan saw it three months ago in London before I’d said a word. Ewan knows I moved to Manchester for a fourth reason that isn’t on the list.
Three things, good money, good project, close to Ewan.
And a corner table. And a name I keep saying in my head with an R that doesn’t sound like mine.
The ceiling, white.
1:47 a.m.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The week has a shape now.
Seven o’clock: gate, hard hat, hi-vis, the site. Check, pour, set, repeat. Dave’s briefings in the portacabin, Gaz talking about the Stockport girl, Dean not talking about anything. Radio on, Capital, a woman, a man.
Five o’clock: clock off, the walk, the shower. The polo that isn’t the site polo.
Seven o’clock: the bar.
I know Celyn’s schedule. Didn’t try to learn it, the body learnt it.
Monday, late, half eight: coat damp, laptop out, mug.
Tuesday and Wednesday, early, already there when I arrive, laptop open, one earphone in, the mug.
Thursday, sometimes not there, a shift at the restaurant, the NQ place, thai, weekends and Thursdays. Friday, there, always there on Friday.
The body learnt it.
I didn’t.
Dave catches me Tuesday at the portacabin.
‘You’re still in that Airbnb.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Eighty a night?’
‘About that.’
‘About that.’ He leans back, the plastic chair creaks. ‘You’re burning money, lad. Get a flat. SpareRoom. Twenty minutes. Done.’
He’s right. Eighty a night times fourteen is, a number I don’t want to do in my head. Ewan said the same thing; Mum said the same thing on the phone last Sunday. The flat was in there between are you eating and your father says hello which means Dad’s alive and that’s the full extent of the update.
Tuesday night, the Airbnb. The laptop I brought for invoices and site logs. SpareRoom. Northern Quarter, because the site’s here and the—because the site’s here.
Filter: studio, ￡600-800, NQ or Ancoats.
I scroll: studio on Lever Street, studio on Thomas Street, studio on Tib Street, second floor, above a barber’s, furnished, six hundred and fifty a month.
The photos are small but clean: a window onto the backyard, a galley kitchen narrow enough to touch both walls at once, a sofa that looks like a real one.
Contract length, the dropdown. Month by month, six months, twelve months. Terms and conditions. None of mine are defined.
The cursor sits on six. Six is sensible. Six is what a man on a two-year contract does when the project might pivot, when Dave might pull the team, when Ewan might decide Manchester’s not for him after the MA. Six lets you go.
The finger doesn’t click six. It hovers. The trackpad’s a small black square and I’m flat on it and not pressing.
Twelve. Twelve months means a calendar year of this flat, this street, the bar five minutes away, the corner table. Twelve months means turning Tib Street into a postcode my mum can write on a Christmas card. Twelve means I’m not just here for the build, I’m. Here.
The cursor moves up. Twelve.
I click twelve.
Twelve months. Twelve, the body picked it.
I fill in the form: name, phone, employment. References: Dave at the site, Ewan’s address for the personal. Send.
Thursday I sign: a letting agent on Dale Street, a bloke called Neil who calls me mate fourteen times in twenty minutes. Standard AST, break clause at six, so the out exists.
The paper’s got my name printed on it. Ronan Sean Carrick. The full thing always looks like someone else. I sign anyway, the R tall and the rest a scrawl. Neil slides the keys across, two on a metal ring: one for the front door, one for a postbox I’ve got nothing to deliver to yet.
The keys are warm from his pocket. Tib Street. Five minutes from the site. Also five minutes from—
Five minutes from the site. That’s the reason.
I tell Dave at lunch. ‘Sorted the flat, Tib Street.’
‘How long?’
‘Twelve months.’
He nods. ‘Settling in then.’
Settling in, sure, that’s what this is.
The flat’s bigger than the Airbnb. A proper bed that doesn’t fold into the wall, a sofa, a kitchen with a hob and an oven and counter space.
The ceiling’s still white but the walls are brick, exposed, the old kind, the sort I’d usually check for load bearing but now I’m just looking at them. There’s a nail in the wall.
Don’t hang anything, not yet.
I bring the two bags from the Airbnb, holdall and rucksack and Mum’s thermos, and put the clothes in the wardrobe, the boots by the door, the thermos on the counter.
Home.
Apparently. Twelve months of home. Five minutes from the site and five minutes from a bar where someone sits at a corner table every night and types with fingers that have.
Don’t.
Friday, the bar. I walk in and Celyn’s at the table and the brain stops.
Not because of the skirt. Not yet. Because for a second, before Celyn clocks me, the laptop’s closed.
Both hands flat on the lid, pressing. The face isn’t the half-smile or the reading face or any version I’ve filed.
The mouth tight, the eyes fixed on the far wall.
The jaw works once. Like holding something down with the table and the will.
Then the head turns. The face rearranges, not fast enough to hide it, but fast. The mouth lifts on one side. The version I know slots in.
The skirt’s dark, midi. Heavy Dr Martens under it, the laces loose. The nails are orange, hi-vis orange. The eyeliner’s sharp tonight, the lips some dark wine colour I don’t know the name of.
Two days of stubble under the lipstick. The shadow on the chin and the cheeks is dark, visible, and above it the dark mouth and the lined eyes.
It’s all of it. The skirt says one thing. The lips say another. The lips say look at me and the boots say I’ll kick your teeth in and it’s all the same person, sat at the same table, drinking the same garden-tea.
I sit down, my chair.
‘New boots?’ Celyn says. Looking at my feet.
‘New flat.’
The eyebrows go up. ‘Where?’
‘Tib Street.’
‘That’s.’ A beat. ‘That’s round the corner.’
‘Five minutes from the site.’
‘And from here.’
I pick up the menu I don’t need. ‘And from here.’
Celyn watches me pretend to read the menu. ‘How long’s the contract?’
‘Twelve months.’
Stops tapping. Eyes on me, eyeliner sharp. The look lasts, three seconds? Four, not the half-smile.
‘Twelve months,’ Celyn says, measuring it. Like weighing something.
Then the laptop turns. Celyn’s face changes, the writer face.
‘I want to read you something.’
‘Yeah?’
‘A chapter. From the novel. First draft, so. Rough.’ A pause over the trackpad. ‘There’s a woman. Elin. She inherits a house in north Wales. Snowdonia. Under the mountains.’
‘Alright.’
‘The house changes.’
‘Changes how?’
‘Depends who’s inside.’
The voice drops. Not volume, but register, lower. The Welsh comes out, the vowels round and slow, the consonants soften, and it’s a different voice. A reading voice.
‘Elin opens the kitchen door and the kitchen is on the wrong side. Tuesday it was left. Wednesday it was left. Thursday. Right. The window’s moved.
The light falls differently. She puts her hand on the counter and the counter is warm, and soft, and gives under her palm like something breathing in its sleep, and when she lifts it the surface closes slowly back over the shape it left.
She should pull away. She knows she should.
The hand stays. Some part of her wants to feel it wake. ’
The bar noise fades. It’s just the voice and the table and the warm counter in a Welsh house, visible behind my eyes.
Celyn looks up, waiting.
‘The hand stays,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘That bit. The hand stays.’ I don’t know what I’m saying. ‘It’s. I know that.’
The face changes. The eyes go wider, the eyeliner making it more visible.
‘What do you mean?’
I mean the hand on the warm thing you shouldn’t be touching. My hand on this table, in this bar, every night this week. The twelve-month contract. The chair. And Celyn’s looking at me, and I.
‘Dunno. Just. Sounded real. That bit.’
Celyn smiles. The full smile, the teeth slightly crooked. The eyes crinkle, the mouth moves, the stubble shifts with the mouth, and my chest drops, like a footing settling. Weight going down, finding ground.
‘Read me more,’ I say. Then: ‘If you want.’
‘I want.’