MORNING SERIAL
AND I can feel it all beginning again, now he’s home. The story starts moving, and I can’t stop it.
“Da ni am fynd lawr dre, Efa,” I call to my sister, and it’s not my mouth that says it. It doesn’t feel like me.
Efa comes through, nods. She’ll let me do anything. But this time Efa gives me a kiss, and in my ear, “Be careful, Iola,” she says, but she lets me go anyway. Efa’ll let me go anywhere, even down to the bus stops in town, where there’s smoking and drinking and lads who can’t keep their hands or their thoughts to themselves.
It’s not until we’re on the road on our own, Pigeon’s white face glowing with the streetlights, that we say anything else.
“So be ’nes di’n Lerpwl?”
“In Liverpool? Nothing. We were shut in. I didn’t do anything.”
Pigeon, in English?
I try again. “‘Ma raid nes ti ’wbath.”
“Nope, not much.” This Pigeon’s a book full of blank pages.
“O,” I say.
There’s a long silence. I want to go back to mine, pretend he never came back.
“You stayin’ at your mam’s?” I ask him.
“Yep.”
We walk down the hill in the yellow glow of the streetlamps.
Pigeon’s different. And, although he came round, it’s like he’s come looking for something that isn’t here anymore. Something we’ve lost, like Nain’s ring which got lost in the laundry all those years back, and which we never found again although we all cursed black and blue looking for it. It must be here. It must be here. Like that. The same feeling of desperate, hopeless searching, except worse. Like losing your own eyes, or your ears, or your heart. I try twice more.
“Sut ma’ dy fam?”
“She’s alright.”
“Ti, ’di gweld Cher?” “Yep, she’s at my house.” He stops, turns to look at me. “Cher’s staying in the shed now,” he says. We scuff along the road, carrying on as if nothing’s happened, as if Cher’s the enemy. As if Cher’s still pretty and clever and a girl everyone likes.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES TOMORROW