MORNING SERIAL

SHE appeared. It was Iola, come out of the wood like a genie, small with a pot belly over her skirt, knees as always covered in bruises and grazes, shoes undone, hair so light it’s almost white. Beckoning.

Pigeon took a quick look up the path in case of his mam, and then ran after Iola through the wood and back up the hill again into the grey, into the grey full of purple and orange stories that go on and on and on.

They ran together to Iola’s house, to where there was a real kitchen, a real home, and as the van started its meandering songs up the road, Efa and Iola danced in the kitchen, and, smiling a little too brightly, Efa put two fifty p’s in Iola’s white palm. Heaven. At the van, Iola and Pigeon, their breath steamy in the cold January air, order one chocolate thing, and one orangey thing, cos, like Pigeon tells Iola, they’re “saff”, and it’s good they’re safe, cause that chocolate one, it’s delicious.

But Pigeon stares at Gwyn’s hands as he hands Iola the ice-creams. He stares at Gwyn’s man’s hands. And he hates him.

Gwyn is growing in Pigeon’s mind. He grows and is altered and bent out of shape.

Pigeon would give him horns, would have him turn rotten inside.

Pigeon fires up so much anger about Gwyn, that he can still smell him, long after leaving the van, and long after leaving Iola to her home, her chores, her regular life.

The next bit is when I’m on Pigeon’s bed in the shed. I’m reading a comic, lying, bol down, and Pigeon is bol up, his legs stretching up the shed wall.

Ryan Giggs is looking down at us from the poster, looking good, but next to me, Pigeon’s ignoring Ryan and looking at his wood ceiling, where the blue-tack holds part of an old mobile: half an aeroplane and a crumbly cloud. I just read my comic, and I’m almost there, at the end, when “Murdyryr! Dyna be ’di o: murdyryr!”