Page 108 of Undefined Terms

I won’t.

The flat’s clean. One mug, one toothbrush, one pillow with no dent in it. Built in an evening. I’m good at making a thing look like nobody’s touched it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been ashamed of being good at.

Saturday, the train gets in at eleven.

Mum’s smaller than I remember. Every time. I saw her six weeks ago and she’s smaller. The coat, the bag. The big one, the one she takes everywhere, the one Dad bought her before Dad was someone we don’t talk about. The hug at the platform. She smells like the kitchen in Lewisham. Stock cubes and the soap she’s used since I was eight.

‘You look well, love. Bit thin.’

‘I’m not thin, Mum. I’m fourteen stone.’

‘Thin for you.’

The flat. She walks in, stands, looks.

Her look, like Dave checking a site: the slow sweep, the eyes that stop on what matters.

‘It’s small.’

‘It’s a studio.’

‘It’s small for you. You’re a big lad.’ She puts the bag down. Opens it. Tupperware. Three of them. The stew, probably. The cake. Something else. Something wrapped in foil. ‘I’ve brought food.’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘You’ve got half a loaf and a tin of beans in that kitchen. I checked.’

She checked. She’s been here forty seconds and she’s checked the kitchen.

‘There’s a Tesco round the corner.’

‘I saw it. I saw the pub too. And the barber’s. And the bar on the corner with the nice sign.’

The bar on the corner with the nice sign. The bar where Celyn sits every night with the laptop and the tea and the chipped nail polish and the thing the mouth does before a smile. The bar I’m not going to mention.

‘Good area,’ I say.

‘It is.’ She’s in the kitchen now. The cupboard. ‘You’ve got two types of tea.’

Bollocks.

‘The PG Tips and something. What is this?’ The tin. The Welsh writing. The loose leaf.

‘Mate from work. Left it.’

‘Your mate from work drinks loose leaf from a tin with Welsh writing on it.’

‘Welsh mate.’

She puts it back, doesn’t say anything, the look, the Mum look, the one that stores and doesn’t comment. Same as Dave.

Saturday is normal. We walk the NQ streets, different through Mum’s eyes. She looks up at the buildings how I did when I first arrived: the warehouses, the brick, the graffiti that she calls ‘art’ and I call ‘spray paint’ and we both know neither of us is right.

She buys a scarf she doesn’t need from a stall on Oldham Street. Purple. The woman selling it has tattoos up both arms and a shaved head, and Mum gets her going about the wool and where she sources it and whether it’s machine washable because ‘you can’t put everything in the machine, can you, I’ve ruined three of Terry’s jumpers that way.’ The woman laughs. Mum makes friends in ten minutes flat. Always has, anywhere, with anyone. I stand behind with the bag and wait.

We walk past the bar. I don’t look. Mum looks. The sign, the tables inside.

‘That’s the one,’ she says. Already knowing.