MORNING SERIAL

I RECOGNISE it as one of Nain’s. It’s funny to think of Nain ever singing a lullaby. I remember her singing it, neatly, and in a matter-of-fact way. But Pigeon’s mam sings it differently. It makes me think of sad things to hear it.

Pigeon goes and gets the radio from upstairs and switches it on to drown her out. The static fills the room until he tunes it to a football match and the crowd’s cheers that rise and fall like a sea thrashing. He doesn’t say anything to me. He ignores me. Or is he waiting for me to speak? His mam ignores me, too. It’s like she’s not there. I sit down on the sofa as if I’m nothing.

“Efa’s boyfriend’s a scumbag,” says Pigeon suddenly.

“No, he’s not,” I say quickly, because Dafydd’s the man of our house. He’s our man.

“He is,” says Pigeon.

Why does he say this? There’s something about the way he says it, makes me think I don’t want to know.

Pigeon goes to the cabinet in the corner, gets the square bottle, fills his mam’s glass. She looks up at him, all vague, stops in her song.

“Iola,” says Pigeon into the silence, looking at me suddenly “D’you think it was my fault, what happened to Cher?”

The question kicks the wind out of me. I can’t breathe. There’s a long silence. When I speak, my voice is raw and low.

“Na, Pigeon. No way. Gwyn did it. You know that.” “Gwyn?”

“Well it was his fault anyway, that the van fell.” My voice sounds tiny, and stupid, like a kid’s.

There’s a long silence. Pigeon pulls another cigarette from his packet. He goes to the kitchen and lights it from the stove. He comes back, stands by the door. “Who hurt Cher, Iola?” “Dwn im … I dunno,” I shrug. I don’t want to look at him.

Pigeon walks close to me, sits down next to me on the sofa, puts his cigarette to smoke itself in the ashtray, and reaches for one of my wrists so that I have to turn to him.

“We did, Iola.” He says it so quietly that I know it’s what he believes. I’m shaking my head. But he’s going on. “We made the whole thing up, and then we hurt her, Iola. We did it cos we hated her, didn’t we Iola? We did it.”

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