MORNING SERIAL

IT’S a dark night in late April outside. This Pigeon, standing on my doorstep is different and the same. His different and similar face is white against the wet night air. Efa looks from me to Pigeon, from Pigeon to me. None of us say anything for a few seconds.

He’s not a boy. Not anymore. He’s something that’s got out of a box, out of where he belongs. Pigeon and me catch eyes in the air. We share something in that look that makes me cold, then he makes a blank face again, for Efa.

“Hi,” he says, in English. “Pigeon?” says Efa. As if she even needs to ask. His is a face you would recognise, and even if he didn’t still look so much like that boy, you’d know it was him from the smile.

He grins. “Yep,” he says. Efa starts to question him now.

“Pryd ddes ti’n ôl? Sut wyt ti? Sut ma’ dy fam?” but his answers are short and in English.

“Friday. I’m fine. Mam’s OK.” He looks over at me. “How’s it going?” he asks me. I shrug. How can I answer that. How do I even talk to him?

But Efa invites him in. He comes in, sits down next to me. The sofa flinches. Efa goes through to the kitchen, starts on the phone to Dafydd. She really doesn’t care. Pigeon sits next to me, making the sofa heavy, weighing down my whole house.

“I brought you something,” says Pigeon, looking at me, looking right at me. He starts rustling in his pockets for it. He brings it out, offering it to me with his strange, familiar hands. It’s wrapped in brown paper. He gives it to me. Looking at the paper, looking at this little parcel, I feel sick. But I begin to unwrap, my hands feeling like they belong to someone else.

It’s just a magnifying glass, mottled and dusty.

“It’s yours,” he says quietly. I stare at it. I stare at it, and in my head there’s that statement, that statement:

Ma’ Gwyn yn od.

It’s an angry boy’s voice, a child’s voice, just a kid’s.

I look up at Pigeon. Pigeon. He has a feeling about him that’s big and almost like a man.

> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian

CONTINUES TOMORROW