MORNING SERIAL

“WE need to make a plan for it,” said Allan “Get you set up with a plan so it goes well for you back home.”

But Pigeon just stared at Allan. He was due out. Pigeon felt small, grey, nondescript. He felt terrified, his mouth full of too much stifling quietness.

According to Allan, it was to be home and then just keeping up with lessons and everything and ‘staying out of trouble’. What did that mean?

Trouble was the house, was the hill, was his mam, was Iola, was everything he had inside his head and everything that was making its way slowly, day by day, to the tip of his tongue. ...

Walking downtown, we both ignore the crooked house as we pass it. Cher goes on about the exams.

“Iola,” she asks me slowly, “did you study yet?”

Cher’s English is like a slow song. It goes up and down, and some of the letters are pulled out long. She never learnt Welsh after all, Cher, only a few words and they sound out of tune in her mouth.

Before the accident Cher’d been learning it automatically, like all the kids who move here do, but after the accident, the words just didn’t stick.

Cher means for the exams, have I started revising?

“Nah,” I say. But Cher gives me a slow, sly look that means don’t believe you.

It’s been all paper and pens and writing and thinking about school ever since Pigeon left. All hard work, that’s what it’s been, all through one school year, and then into another, and up to secondary.

That’s because they think you must be good if your marks are. My marks are top or second top. You can keep safe in good marks. I keep my grades high.

Cher doesn’t. Her writing was like a kid’s when she first came back. I’d got set a task of helping her with reading.

We didn’t do much reading but Cher is cleverer and funnier than you’d think once you give her time, and so we’re friends now.