Page 46 of Undefined Terms

‘Go to work.’

I put the mug down. The clothes: jeans from last night, the hi-vis on the hook by the door. I dress with my back to the bed because if I look again I’m not going and the site won’t pour itself.

At the door I stop. Go back. The key, the spare one, the one the landlord gave me with the 4B fob, I put it on the counter next to the kettle. Don’t say anything. Don’t look at the bed.

‘There’s bread. If you want toast. The toaster does one side only, you have to flip it.’

‘Noted,’ Celyn says.

I close the door, run down the stairs and out into the street. The cold hits the face like a slap and my body’s still warm from the bed and the contrast is the same contrast.

The site’s loud. Block C, the formwork going up on the third floor, the crane at it since six, Dave already livid about the concrete supplier. I step into it like stepping into water. The noise closes over me, the rhythm of boots on boards, shouts across the slab, the radio from the portacabin playing football transfer news.

Good, this is good, the body knows this.

I check the rebar on the east wall, ties clean, spacing right. Run my hand along the face of the shuttering, smooth, no blow-outs from yesterday’s pour. The fingers move along the surface and the surface is plywood and the fingers remember a different surface and I pull my hand back and pick up the clipboard.

Noon, the portacabin, lunch. Dave’s doing the crossword, Thomas’s asleep with his mouth open. Gaz sits across from me, unwrapping a sandwich his girlfriend made, she writes messages on the clingfilm in Sharpie, hearts, little notes. Gaz shows everyone every day. Nobody cares anymore.

Gaz looks at me. Doesn’t say anything for a minute. This is unusual. Gaz says something every second of every day. It’s the only thing about him that could be considered a skill.

‘Still seeing the mystery person, then,’ Gaz says.

I eat my sandwich. ‘Eat your sandwich.’

‘That’s a yes. You’ve had the face all week. Like a man who knows where his next cup of tea’s coming from.’

‘Gaz.’

‘Fair play, boss.’ The grin. He goes back to the sandwich. The clingfilm with the hearts. Then: ‘What’s she like?’

The question, right there. Between the portacabin and the clingfilm and the crossword Dave’s getting wrong. What’s she like.

I could say. I could open my mouth and say, what. They. The word’s right there. I use it in my head now without thinking, use it out loud with Celyn, with Ewan. It’s the right word. But the right word in this portacabin with Gaz and his sandwich and Dave’s crossword and Thomas’s open mouth, the right word opens a door I don’t know how to walk through. Not here, not at noon on a Thursday.

‘She’s alright,’ I say.

‘Alright,’ Gaz says. ‘High praise from you. I’ll tell Steph you’ve met someone. She’ll be proper buzzing. She’s been saying you need.’

‘Don’t tell Steph.’

‘She’ll find out. She always finds out.’

‘Don’t tell Steph, Gaz.’

He puts his hands up. ‘Fine, fine. Not a word.’

I finish the sandwich, the bread’s dry. Could’ve had toast with Celyn. The toaster that only does one side, the white mug with the chip on the rim. Instead I’m here with Dave’s crossword and Thomas’s breathing and the she that isn’t a she.

Barely there.

Afternoon, the pour. I’m stood on the edge of the slab, the concrete coming down the chute, the vibrator going in, the mix settling to level. Beautiful thing, a pour. Ugly work, the noise, the wet, the grey, but when it sets, when the forms come off tomorrow, the surface will be clean, solid. You’ll walk on it and not know what it took.

The concrete, the settling.

She. Gaz said she. I didn’t correct. I said it back, she’s alright, and it came out easy, which is worse. Everyone says she or her because I haven’t given them the other word and the other word is, four letters. Four letters and I can’t get them past my throat in a portacabin with Dave and a crossword and a sandwich wrapped in clingfilm.

The concrete finds level, the vibrator hums. The air bubbles rise and burst and the pour settles into the shape the formwork gives it because that’s what concrete does: takes the shape of whatever holds it.