MORNING SERIAL
EFA’S like something alive when she does yoga. I’m her sister. Maybe we’re proud?
But I can hear them talking about me while they get the blankets out, ready for ‘relaxation’, where you lie on your back and listen to Dafydd fill your body with feelings.
Efa and her English friend Pam are walking back across the hall with the blankets, one each for them, and one for me.
“She’ll come round you know,” says Pam, Efa’s friend, as if I’m not there. “They always do in the end, take my Henry.” Henry is her son who runs the boxing. “I never thought it, never thought he’d do this well, what with all the trouble he’d got into, but now look at him!” Efa’s face doesn’t flinch, although everyone knows about Henry. He’s not exactly a saint.
Dafydd’s fiddling with the CD player, trying to find some relaxing music. Pam settles down under her blanket, closing her eyes like Jesus! But a few seconds later she opens one eye again.
“‘Course, what you’ve got to worry about is drugs. There’s drugs everywhere these days, and dealers. She in secondary school now? Yes, well, drugs, they get them onto them in the first couple of years, and that’s it: hooked! I heard they’re taking them before school these days, gets them through the exams they say, but then they get a split personality, like Hannibal Lecter.” Pam nods to herself.
The laugh comes up into my nose, and I have to pretend to be coughing. I wish I wish I wish that Pigeon was here. I wish we were here in the chapel again drawing moustaches on all these stupid women who haven’t got a clue how serious our lives have got.
Dafydd looks over at us, his heavenly smile breaking briefly, flattening out.
“I’m not worrried about drugs with Iola,” says Efa through her teeth.
“FOCUS ON THE BREATH!” says Dafydd, his voice spiralling upwards.
Pam takes a deep snort of an in-breath through her nose. Then mutters, “That’s what they all say, honestly! No-one thinks it of their own.”
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES MONDAY