MORNING SERIAL

I STOP. I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of it, my friend Cher, in that cold damp shed. It’s not made for her. It’s made for someone wild like Pigeon. Efa’s word for him pops into my head. Feral. That’s what she called him. Feral. Like one of the scraggy black cats that hang about by our door, waiting for scraps and love. Comfort. You have to turn them away, or they come back and back.

“Pigeon,” I say, in English now, “I’ve just remembered I’m meeting someone, I’ve got to go.”

Pigeon stands looking at me, as if I’m something he doesn’t believe.

“Welai chdi eto rywbryd ta?” I say then in Welsh, to pretend we’re still friends.

“Yep, see you,” agrees Pigeon, standing still.

I walk away quickly, going right and going left between the houses and to my front door. Behind me Pigeon stands under the streetlight, pocketed hands, scuffed toes, green cat eyes looking after me, hungry.

Cher’s waiting by my back door, she’s standing there, could have waited for hours. “He’s back,” she tells me. “I know,” I say, all innocent. “Pigeon. He came back yesterday.”

“I know, Cher.”

I watch my friend’s face. “Don’t look so happy, Cher.” “No,” Cher agrees. “No,” she says again, looking at the ground.

There’s a silence. Then “He won’t talk to me,” I say. “You saw him?”

“Yep.”

“When?”

“Just now. But he won’t talk.” “What, not at all?” asks Cher, slowly.

“Just not properly. Not in Welsh.”

Cher looks confused. “So?”

“I dunno. It’s weird.” “You and me talk English,” says Cher, shrugging her shoulders as if it doesn’t matter.

I look at Cher, and there’s that feeling. That feeling that it does matter. It matters a whole place worth of words and meanings and memories.

“What’s he been doing?” Cher asks me.

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