Page 122 of Undefined Terms

‘What did you do.’

It’s not a question either.

I drink. Can. Metal. Cold.

‘When mum came up to Manchester.’ The ceiling. The bare ceiling. ‘I cleared the flat of Celyn before she was off the train. I said I just wanted it simple. To walk into a room and not feel it turn.’

‘Simple,’ he says. Flat. Repeating it like a measurement that doesn’t add up. ‘You said that.’

‘Yeah.’

‘To their face,’ Ewan says. Not a question.

‘Yeah.’

Ewan drinks, puts the can down, picks it up, puts it down again. The hands, the Ewan hands, the quick ones, the ones that are always doing something because the brain behind them runs faster than the room.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Right.’

And then nothing, for a minute, the telly.

‘I wanted it simple,’ I say. ‘A room where nobody turns round. Then I went to Lewisham for Christmas and got exactly that. The pub, Mum, Robbie, nobody asking. And it was nothing. Empty. An empty room I’d been calling simple. I worked that out three weeks too late.’

‘To what.’

‘To not do the maths. Every word, every pronoun, every look, the thing where someone sees us and I don’t know what they see. I just wanted one room where I didn’t have to.’

Ewan turns his head, looks at me, he’s lived it first.

‘You know what I lost,’ he says. Quiet. ‘For this.’

‘Ewan.’

‘I lost Dad and I gained everything else. Laurence. My work. The thing where I wake up and don’t lie about who I’m lying next to. And there wasn’t a day I could have both.’ His voice drops. Lower. The register that means the words are costing something. ‘Not a single day where I got to be Dad’s good boy and Laurence’s partner. Not one.’

The telly. My throat doing a thing I don’t want it to do.

Ewan picks up the can. Puts it down. The metal on the counter, the clink. He’s looking at his hands. The same hands as mine but smaller. Sharper. Hands that write and hold pens. Hands that don’t carry steel.

‘Some mornings I pick up the phone to ring him.’ Quiet. The other one. ‘The hand does it. Muscle memory. Two years of not ringing him and the hand still goes there. I look at the screen and his name’s there and my thumb’s on the button and then the brain catches up and the brain says: he won’t answer. Because he won’t.’

The can on the counter.

‘And I put the phone down. And I make the tea. And Laurence is there and the flat’s there and the life is there and it’s a good life, Ron. It’s the best life I’ve ever had. And the hand still goes to the phone.’

I don’t answer. Carrick boys don’t lie to each other. We just sit.

Ewan picks up his can. Drinks, the vulnerability closes. The surgical face comes back.

‘And you.’ Ewan puts the can down. Hands. Gesture that has nothing to hold. ‘You spent a year staring at someone through a window. A year, Ron. Before you moved up here. Bar. Table. Person with the laptop. You couldn’t say hello. Couldn’t cross a room. Couldn’t do the simplest thing a person can do which is walk to a table and open your mouth.’

He’s right.

‘I know,’ I say. Because denial’s gone. Because Ewan’s laid it out like a job drawing and I can’t unsee the lines.

‘A year,’ Ewan says again. ‘And then you moved. And you moved, Ron. You physically got on a train and came here and picked a flat and signed a contract because some deep part of you knew. Knew before the head knew. The body was like: this person. This place. Go.’

The can. The metal going warm.