MORNING SERIAL

GWYN’S face is covered with drops of sweat, like dew on a window. His breathing’s fast and short. He’s weird and worried, and, although I’m on my feet now, brushing myself off, Gwyn’s still trying to get me to “ista lawr” to “relacs” and take it easy. He won’t take no for an answer, Gwyn, and he’s all worked up, and I don’t get it. Why?

Five minutes later, I’m stood on my front doorstep, Gwyn’s hands heavy and hairy on my shoulders and Efa looking down at me, eyebrows climbing up her forehead. Efa looks pretty fearsome stood there in all her flower-power glory. She’s facing Gwyn down, shaking her head like the terminator, and she has that face she makes for men that says “you arsehole”.

“Your daughter,” begins Gwyn in his funny chapel Welsh.

“She’s my sister.” Frowning even more.

“Your sister has had an ALLERGIC REACTION. Perhaps indeed…” again his funny bible language, “perhaps indeed she needs to go to the HOSPITAL?” says Gwyn to Efa. He talks funny, like chapel, but with English in. Like as if he’s learnt it. Like as if he doesn’t belong.

Efa looks at me. I smile. Efa looks at me again, scowls at Gwyn. “Sothach!” she says quickly. Rubbish! And pulls me inside.

So that’s that for my ice cream. And I’m sitting on my bed in the attic, upset about that, and about not seeing Pigeon, and not going out for all of today Efa says, pulling the two sides of her forehead together all cross like she’s buttoning it up that long line between her eyes.

Now I’m frowning just like Efa, sitting on the bed, when I hear Gwyn’s van starting up its tunes again, and I jump up, and my heart goes all over my body and into my head until it’s full of a quiet thud and I go all cold with the feeling.

I’m looking into the window and the picture it makes, with the houses and the hill and the mountains past it, and, in the middle, trickling down the picture, is Gwyn’s van, driving down and down, with a pop song that’s like crying left behind a bit in the air as it goes away.