Chapter 2 #3
Celyn reads for half an hour. I drink two pints and hear every word and don’t remember a single one of them because the voice is the only thing in the room. Welsh house, woman, doors that move. But what I hear is the voice, the places where Celyn pauses, the weight shift between words.
Celyn stops. Stretches. Arms above the head, the back arching, the jumper riding up.
The skin, a strip. Above the waistband of the skirt. Pale, flat, the hip bone a shadow. And the elastic of something, black, thin, lace, pressed against the skin. The edge of whatever Celyn’s wearing under the skirt. One inch of it, maybe less. The lace and the pale skin and the hip bone.
The jumper comes back down. Celyn picks up the mug. ‘Am I boring you?’
‘No.’
‘You looked away.’
Yeah, I looked away. Because if I hadn’t looked away I’d have kept looking and if I’d kept looking Celyn would’ve seen what I was looking at and. I order another pint, something to hold, the glass is cold, good.
‘Give me your phone,’ Celyn says.
‘What?’
‘Your phone. We’ve been sat here four nights running and I haven’t got your number. That’s stupid.’
I pass the phone over. Celyn types. The phone buzzes once with a test message, Celyn passes it back. The contact’s already saved, C-E-L-Y-N.
‘Beynon,’ Celyn says. ‘That’s the rest of it.
You’ve had “Celyn” a while. I watched you get it off the barman, back before you ever moved up here.
Thought I’d give you the surname myself, save you asking twice.
’ The half-smile, already three moves ahead.
‘And I’m Welsh, before you ask that as well. ’
‘I can see that.’
I put the phone in my pocket. It’s heavier. It’s exactly the same weight but it’s heavier.
My phone.
The WhatsApp conversation. One message, the test from Celyn. Just the test, nothing else. But the contact’s there now. The photo, profile picture, small, round. Celyn laughing, head turned half-away, the neck exposed, a chain, a glass caught mid-air. The mouth open mid-laugh, a candid photo.
I tap it. The circle expands, bigger now. The neck, the chin, the earring I can almost see, the hair falling across one eye. The chain sat in the dip of the collarbone. The laugh.
Three centimetres of circle on a phone screen.
A message comes in, 9:51 p.m., from Celyn.
You’re in the novel. I promoted you to structural engineer.
I read it, read it again. The letters on the screen. You’re in the novel. Like it’s normal. Like putting someone in a book is what you do on a Friday night.
I read it a third time. A fourth.
I go back to the photo. Enlarge it again.
I’m sat on the edge of the new bed in the new flat on Tib Street and I’m looking at a three-centimetre circle on my phone and my hand’s in my tracksuit bottoms before I’ve decided to put it there.
And then it’s all one thing, the photo and the voice, the reading voice, Welsh and low, the house that changes, and the strip of skin above the skirt where the jumper rode up and I saw lace pressed against the hip bone and looked away and the looking away was the confession because you only look away from things you want to keep looking at.
In my head the jumper stays up and the skin stays and the dark mouth is saying something about a woman in a Welsh house and Celyn’s hand is on the counter and my hand is on myself and I can’t tell which hand I’m thinking about any more because the voice and the lace and the stubble under the lipstick have all tipped into one thing and it’s moving too fast and I can’t slow it and I don’t want to slow it and.
Done.
Too fast. Over before I caught it. I come looking at a WhatsApp profile photo and the flat absorbs the sound because the flat doesn’t know me yet.
Sheets need washing. First night. Great start.
Twenty-seven years old and I just got off on a profile picture. Three centimetres of someone’s face.
Can’t undo it. Can’t pretend my head didn’t go where it went.
The phone, the screen’s gone dark, I press it. The message is still there. You’re in the novel. I promoted you to structural engineer.
I should reply. Something a normal person says when someone puts them in a book. Cheers or nice one or hope he’s good looking.
I type: Better pay than site manager?
Send.
Three dots, Celyn’s typing.
Marginally. But you get killed by the house in chapter six so it’s short-lived.
I stare at the screen. My hand, thirty seconds ago.
Spoiler, I type.
You’ll survive. I need you for chapter seven.
The dots again, then:
Night, Ronan
The R, the soft R. Even in text I hear it. The Welsh pulling the letter somewhere it doesn’t usually go.
Night, I type, don’t add the name, don’t know why.
The phone goes dark.
I put it on the bedside table, face down. The screen glows through the case, blue, then black.
The flat on Tib Street, twelve-month contract. Close to the site and close to a bar and now I’ve got a phone number and a message thread and a profile photo I just saved.
I pull the duvet up. The sheets need washing already. My fault.
The ceiling, new ceiling, still white. Still nothing to look at.
The message on the phone. I need you for chapter seven.
The nail in the wall with nothing on it.
Twelve months.