MORNING SERIAL
CHER says what she knows, and he knows.
There’s a silence.
“What are you doing here?” he asks her again. His voice is leaden and dangerous.
She shrugs. He’s made her unhappy again. He can see the thought, passing across her broad face: why should I not be here? It’s a simple thought. Stupid.
This is his house. This is his house.
Pigeon sits down, and as he sits, the house moves around him, as if it’s standing in an untenable posture. Cher sits down too. She’s quiet. She knows the drill. There should be no words. No sudden movements. No thoughts or opinions other than his own. There’s only him, Pigeon, his chair, his white hands, the cigarette he lights now, and around him, the house.
But Pigeon is different to Him. Pigeon’s crying now. They sit, the three of them. Pigeon crying. His mam gently puts a hand on his shoulder, and Cher watches him. This boy that killed her father. This boy that finally killed Him.
“It wasn’t me, Mam,” he says. “What, love?”
“It wasn’t me killed him,” again. Do the words even work?
“Oh, Pigeon,” is all she says. And he can tell she thinks he’s sick. Thinks he doesn’t know himself. Doesn’t know what he did and didn’t do.
“It was Iola, Mam. She came in and she did it.”
His mam says nothing. But when he looks up at Cher, she’s smiling.
“I’ll make us some dinner,” she says. “I’ll make us some beans.”
26
When Efa answers the door, I’m sat on the sofa opposite. I’ve been reading a book. I’m halfway through the world of the book. There’s a girl in it, and when she’s hurt, you ache. I look up from the page when I hear the neat little knocks. Six. Him.
“O,” says Efa when she opens the door and sees him standing there. Efa turns to me. But I’m just sat here, looking at the doorway with him caught in it, like a framed picture.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES TOMORROW