MORNING SERIAL

PIGEON looks at it, looks at the small shoebox that’s number seventeen, and he looks like a balloon that’s lost its air. Gwyn’s always rich in Pigeon’s stories. Pigeon’s even angrier now things don’t fit in. That’s not good for me. That’s not good for Gwyn. Pigeon says “Stay here, Iola.” And I do. I wait, standing just outside Gwyn’s garden. Except Gwyn doesn’t have a garden. He has gravel and one rose in the middle with some rocks that are the same colour as gravel in a little circle round the dead rose.

Pigeon goes up to the window of number seventeen. He goes so close that I feel hot and sick. My shoulders and my chest are burning all of a sudden with all the fear of Pigeon going up to the window. Pigeon’s looking into the room now. He looks for a few seconds, then he comes back to me. “He’s there,” he says. “O,” I say. “He’s planning,” says Pigeon in Welsh, and then changes to English like in the films “Planning his next terrible crime,” says Pigeon.

I shiver. And I want to see too, want to see Gwyn in there planning what he’s going to do next, and to who, and it’s like when you think you can fly, and you forget what’s real and what’s not, and forget you’re not brave enough, and it’s like that, when all of a sudden, I’m at the window, like Pigeon was before.

Inside, it’s quite dark, and looks like old cupboards smell. It’s a living room, but it looks dead. Like a kind of a coffin. Everything’s a pale brown. There’s a sofa and two armchairs all in the same colour. Apart from that, there’s a glass topped coffee table and some plastic flowers in a pot in the middle of the table. And there’s Gwyn, on the sofa. The murderer. I can see his hairy neck, and the shiny round top of his head, and I can see his stubby hands and they’re… He’s just doing a crossword. Which I don’t say anything about to Pigeon. Pigeon looks annoyed enough already, cos it’s not going like in his stories, not really. Gwyn just looks boring, and his house is boring too, but I don’t say it.