Page 47 of Undefined Terms

She is one shape, they is another, the concrete doesn’t care.

I do.

My phone buzzes. On the edge of the slab. I don’t look, you don’t check your phone during a pour.

After, the screen, one message.

Key’s under the mat. Your toaster is an act of violence. The bread survived, barely, C.

I read it twice. Three times. The key’s under the mat. The key I put on the counter without thinking, without deciding, the hand just did it, like making two teas, like knowing the sugar. I’m stood on a building site in Manchester and someone I’ve known for—how many weeks. Has the key to my flat under the mat.

My thumb on the screen. The portacabin behind me, Gaz and Thomas and Dave and the world hearing me say she’s alright and the phone saying C.

I type: Told you about the toaster

Send.

I don’t ask for the key back.

Then I type: Lock’s a bit dodgy pull the door hard

Send.

Then I put the phone away and go back to the slab and the slab is setting and the slab is solid and the slab doesn’t ask questions.

The she sits in the portacabin. Small, easy, almost nothing.

The key sits under the mat. Smaller, easier.

Neither one is nothing.

The site’s loud, Block C going vertical, Dave on the phone with the structural engineer, the concrete curing right on the edge of acceptable, and I’m checking everything twice because the work has to be perfect because nothing else is.

Gaz finds me at the slab edge.

‘You’re happy,’ he says. ‘That’s new. You’re never happy.’

I don’t correct it. Correcting it would take more energy than I’ve got.

‘It’s different,’ I say. This is the most I’ve said about it.

‘Different how.’

‘Just different.’ I pick up the sandwich.

‘Love at first sight?’ Gaz says. ‘That’s sweet.’

‘Wasn’t first sight. Was slow.’ I think about the weeks at the bar. The table. The months before that going to the Northern Quarter every weekend because I knew someone was there. ‘Was so slow I didn’t notice until, until they said something and then I noticed.’

‘And now.’

‘Now I gave them a key.’

Gaz grins bigger, ‘Mate. You’re gone. You’re actually gone.’

I’m not gone. I’m stood at a slab edge eating a dry sandwich and my hands know what to do on a pour and my body knows where the site is and the building and the concrete. But the key’s in my pocket and the spare’s under the mat and slow turns out to be the only way I know how to do things.

At the gate, half five. A girl waiting on the pavement, blonde, puffer jacket, jeans. Scrolling her phone, holding a thermos in the other hand.