MORNING SERIAL
HE’S walking all on his own on the road, the wind like a brushstroke pulling him along. I see his short little legs and the top of his bald head, and I don’t even have to see his face with its bristly shadows to know that it’s Gwyn! Poor Gwyn.
And then I see, stood there, there on the road by the streetlight just a few meters away from Gwyn, there’s Pigeon! And I want to shout out at one or both of them Gofalwch! Be careful, Murderer! Murderer! It takes me by surprised that I want to shout that. So stupid. As if part of me still believes it.
But I don’t. So I just peer out from the window, and watch Gwyn walking up to Pigeon, watch while his arm comes out, stretching out in front of him, like he’s going to give Pigeon something with his hand, and my heart is almost stopping just to see them standing there. And the two of them almost the same height too.
And it’s then I see what they’re doing: shaking hands, like men do, like men do in meetings between men. Proper and grown up. Dignified.
I realise it properly, watching him. What we did to him, with his ice-cream van and all that, was terrible. What we burnt was his life.
And that is a serious, grown-up thing to do to someone, something even adults would be ashamed of, and would hide forever.
It doesn’t run out. It sticks. And I hate Pigeon, I hate him, standing down there with Gwyn, having their unknown, unimaginable conversation, because it was all him.
All him, but it’s my fault in a deep, private way, that no one knows, a secret that’s closing me up like a bud that won’t open.
The young man, standing in my window frame, shaking hands, has come clean. Pigeon’s been punished already. Everyone knows about Pigeon, and what Pigeon did – to Gwyn and to Cher – and Pigeon can just kind of wear what he’s done wrong, like it’s not him, it’s just something that belongs to him, like jeans or a jumper or baseball boots. He can wear it, and not keep it buried and black.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES MONDAY