Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The alarm goes at five forty-five. I hit it, get up, kettle.
Tea, the mug with the blue rim, not the other one.
The other one’s Celyn’s. The other one’s got the chip on the rim and the tea stain inside that won’t scrub out because Celyn lets the tea sit too long, always, every time, the leaves in for six minutes minimum which is insane and I’ve told them it’s insane and they said ‘strong tea is the only tea, everything else is warm water with ambition’ and I understand now.
The mug’s on the counter. Where it was Saturday. Where it was Sunday. Where it is now.
The blue mug fits in my hands better. Get dressed.
Site by six fifteen.
Frost got in. I can see it in the surface, how the concrete’s gone chalky at the edges. Run my hand along the joint, feel for the crack that the eye misses. Nothing, solid. The one good thing about winter pours, if it sets right, it holds.
I mark it off. Move to the next section.
Gaz is on the mixer, radio going. Something from the nineties, the Verve, the one about the drugs. He nods when I pass. Normal nod. The Gaz nod that means: we’re here.
‘Alright,’ I say.
‘Alright.’
That’s it, that’s Monday.
Jay’s on the scaffold with Thomas. I don’t look up, they don’t call down. Things are different after, after Thomas and the ‘keep it separate’ at the block stack. And now the distance is the distance, distance is fine.
Dean is on the steel, cutting, the grinder screaming. He sees me, lifts a hand. Doesn’t say anything. Puts the hand back on the grinder. The sparks going, the noise that fills everything.
Good, the noise.
Tuesday, same. The alarm goes and the body knows. Five forty-five. Body gets up, boots go on, hands pick up the tools. Brain can do what it likes. Body works.
I measure the formwork on the east wall. Take the levels. Write the numbers in the book, the small book, the one that fits in the chest pocket of the hi-vis, the one with the pencil tucked in the spine. The numbers are clean, always clean. Numbers don’t have opinions.
Lunchtime I sit in the portakabin and eat the sandwich I made at six this morning.
Ham, bread, nothing else. I used to put cheese on: Celyn said once that ham without cheese is a cry for help and I said that ham without cheese is a sandwich and Celyn said ‘a sad sandwich’ and I put cheese on after that.
No cheese. Forgot to get any.
I eat the sandwich, it’s fine.
Gaz’s on the crossword across the table, Dave unscrews the flask.
‘All right?’ Gaz says. Not looking up.
I put the sandwich down.
‘That person I was seeing.’ Site voice. Flat. ‘I fucked it up.’
Gaz doesn’t look up. ‘The one from the bar.’ Not a question.
‘Yeah.’
‘Right.’ He fills in a clue. ‘You’ve been a face on you for a fortnight. That’ll be why.’ Dave screws the lid on the flask. ‘Sort it out. You’re no good to me like this.’
And that’s the site knowing, out loud, with the kettle and the crossword, and nobody fell off the scaffold.
Wednesday, the flat.
The thing about the flat is that it’s small. I knew it was small when I took it. Small is fine for one person with two bags and a thermos and a pair of boots and not much else; small is the right word for a bloke who sleeps and showers and leaves by six.
But small means you can’t not see things.
I put it all back the week after Mum. The mug up on the counter, the toothbrush out of the drawer where I’d folded it away next to the spare fuses.
An evening’s work to hide a person. Ten minutes to undo it.
I spent years getting good at making a room look like nobody’s been in it.
I’m just as good at the opposite, and the opposite’s the one that keeps me up.
A room you’ve put someone back into on purpose, so you walk through them to get to the kettle.
The hoodie on the radiator. Mine. The grey one with the stretched collar.
It was cold and I said ‘take a jumper’ and Celyn said ‘I’ll just wear yours’ and put it on and the sleeves went past the wrists and the hem sat on the thighs and they looked like someone who lived here.
Living. The hoodie stayed when Celyn left that night and I put it on the radiator because the radiator’s where clothes go and now it sits there.
I don’t move it.
The stars, on the bedside table. The packet, glow-in-the-dark, the ones you stick on the ceiling. I bought them. The charity shop under Celyn’s, eighty pence, a month back. Saw them in the window and thought of Celyn. Celyn doesn’t know they exist. They’re still in the packet.
They’re still in the packet.
The toothbrush. In the cup by the sink. The green one. Mine’s purple. The green one appeared in November without a conversation. One morning it was in the cup and Celyn was brushing their teeth in my bathroom and I was making tea and the toothbrush was the most normal thing in the world.
I look at the toothbrush. The green one’s dry now. Dry right through. The bristles still splayed from the last time Celyn used them. I could throw it out. Put it in the bin with the milk carton and the tea bags. Simple.
I don’t throw it out. I brush my teeth. The green one next to the purple one. The cup’s too small for two toothbrushes, they lean against each other. Touching.
I go to bed. The ceiling with no stars. The pillow that smells like detergent and under the detergent, nothing. The nothing where Celyn used to be.
Thursday, the bar.
I don’t go to the bar.
I walk past it. On the way back from the site. It’s on the way, it’s always been on the way, five minutes, the same five minutes I told Dave the first week. ‘Five minutes from the site.’ The bar’s lit up. Warm. The window, I can see the tables. The counter, the taps. The corner where people sit.
Corner table, empty. Or not empty, someone’s there but it’s not Celyn.
It’s a bloke with a pint and a paper and he’s in our spot, in the corner, in the chair where Celyn types and drinks the garden tea.
He’s sat there reading about football and he doesn’t know the chair he’s in is something.
He doesn’t know about Celyn’s mug. The thirty minutes I spent at that counter the first night, watching. The yellow nails.
I stand on the pavement. My boots on the concrete.
I walk past.
I go to the flat. Make tea, blue mug, sit on the bed. The phone on the table. No messages. No photo of the cat.
I pick up the phone. Open the thread. The last message.
I close the thread, put the phone down, pick it up, open the thread. Close it.
The hoodie on the radiator. The stars in the packet.
I sit on the bed. The bed I’ve slept in without sleeping properly because the mattress is too big now which doesn’t make sense.
It’s the same double it was last month, it hasn’t grown, it can’t be too big.
But it is, the bed is too big and the flat is too small and both of those things are true at the same time and I can’t fix the maths.
I can’t fix the maths.
The heating clicks on, off, on.
Everything in the flat is Celyn. Celyn’s not in it.
I open my email. Scroll past the site notifications. Stop.
Henderson & Roe. Subject: Rotherhithe Riverside. Expression of Interest.
My mate Kev must have passed the name. The email’s polite, professional. We understand you’re currently based in Manchester. The position offers… I read the salary, read it again.
Rotherhithe, twenty minutes from Mum, the river. The pubs I know by smell. The London Ron who doesn’t have a green toothbrush in his cup.
I close the email, don’t delete it.
Friday, the site. The last day of the week.
I pour. Block D, east section, the one I’ve been building towards all week.
The concrete goes down clean, smooth. The trowel work is mine, the finishing, the levelling, the surface that nobody else gets as flat because nobody else has the patience for the last pass.
The pass where you hold the float at a low angle and barely touch the surface and the concrete does the rest. It’s not strength, it’s stillness.
The float in my hand is the only thing that’s right today.
The only place the head and the body agree.
The concrete takes the float and the float takes the pressure and the pressure becomes smoothness.
The hand knows the angle. The wrist knows when to stop.
The body’s been doing this since the first pour on this site and the body knows how to build things that hold.
What I don’t know is how to say I’m scared to a person who sees you. Sees you seeing them. Sees the job you’re doing on yourself to not cry in front of the mixer.
Gaz knows, he’s not asking. That’s the favour he’s doing, the silence.
The work. The normal briefing that isn’t normal because everything’s beneath a weight.
Dean knows. He nods at me like he does when a site’s been bad and everyone’s tired and we’re still here.
Jay doesn’t look at me. That’s different, that’s new.
The silence is bigger when someone’s choosing it.
The concrete sets fast in this cold. Twenty hours and it’ll be hard enough to walk on. The formwork comes off tomorrow and the surface is what it is, clean, flat, the thing I built.
Celyn’s at the bar right now. Or at the flat.
Or somewhere in Manchester that isn’t here, that isn’t next to me, that isn’t what it was, the spreadsheet in my head keeps running, the days, the hours, the specific words.
I just want it simple. The drawer. The chair too small for me. The silence, the door.
I don’t know how to say sorry with concrete. I know how to say it with steel and levels and the right measurement. I don’t know how to say it with words because words are Celyn’s thing and I don’t have them. I have the float, the level, the hammer. The language of how things fit together.
But Celyn’s not concrete. Celyn’s the thing I didn’t know I was looking for until the table and the pencil and the painted nails. The one that made Manchester not feel like waiting. What made the flat feel like arrival instead of a place I rented for two years.
Dave walks past, looks at the pour, nods. That’s Dave’s way, the approval, the silence about everything else. The nod that says: you did this right, at least you did this right.
The surface is perfect, glass-smooth, the kind that photographs well and lasts. Matters to no one except the people who know what it costs. The patience, the early mornings, the steady hand when the head’s somewhere else.
Tomorrow the formwork comes off and it’s real. The thing I built holds.
I don’t know if Celyn’s going to hold. And I can’t pour concrete on that. Can’t make it smooth, can’t make it right.
After the shift I walk home. Past the barber’s, past the Turkish place, past the bar.
The window, the table, empty, Wednesday it was empty, Thursday it was empty, Friday, empty. Three days and the table’s got nobody at it. I wonder if Celyn’s been there on the days I haven’t walked past.
Their flat. The room with the post-its and the laptop and the novel that’s stuck.
I stand on the pavement. The cold. The smell of lamb from the Turkish place. The bar light through the glass.
I could go in, sit in my chair, order a pint, wait.
I don’t.
I walk home. Their mug still on the counter. Ham. Ceiling.
My phone buzzes. Ewan.
Tomorrow. Your place. I’m bringing beer.
I look at the message. Tomorrow, beer.
yeah alright
7:30, don’t eat, I’ll bring crisps.
Beer and crisps. The Ewan version of a meal plan.
I put the phone down. The flat, the Friday silence. The hoodie on the radiator.
Every morning the blue mug. Every sandwich without cheese. Every night a ceiling without stars.
Tomorrow Ewan comes with beer.
I sit with it. The sitting’s all I’ve got.