Free Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham

except that nothing’s quite how it was. We have sex quite often, pretty much every night that I stay over, and this was
meant to be a staying-over night. But we can both feel that’s not where this evening is headed now. We finish eating. Find a little rhythm again. Have a nice cuddle on his sofa, but we both
realise that I need some head space and so, before too long, I make my move andgo.
    Downstairs and outside.
    A wet cold autumnal street. Today is the first of November. Is this the last month of autumn, or the first of winter? I don’t know, but I like it. I like any weather that feels
hostile.
    This part of town is tidy now. Modern, functional, well designed. And yet, in comparison with the old Tiger Bay, the place is void of life. Before the developers arrived,the area was a warren
of rusting docks, narrow streets, and dark, secretive little pubs. The people were different too. A stew of foreign sailors, Welsh prostitutes, and Somali-Norwegian-Yemeni-Caribbean immigrants with
their maze of accents and unknowable intrigues.
    That’s where my Dad came from, back in the day. The place he grew up. The place that made him.
    Because I can’t revisitthat world, I just get in my car and start driving home. No music. I don’t even speed.
    I’m almost there. About to turn off Eastern Avenue. Then just Pentwyn Road, Croescadarn, and home. Home to bed.
    That’s the theory.
    Only where I should turn off, I don’t. I keep going, up toward Saint Mellon’s. Not too sure where I’m going. Hoping to navigate from old memories, sepia-tinted printsup in the
attic of my mind. I get lost in the cul-de-sacs, swear a bit, wonder if this is a good idea – then, suddenly, I’m there. My headlights shining on hooped iron railings. The lawn. The
circular flower bed, rosebushes cropped against the weather.
    The house is dark. I’m looking at the dashboard clock – 11 PM and too late to knock – when I see a light come on downstairs.
    A sign.

    I don’t believe in signs, but I do believe in light switches.
    I go to the door and knock.

 
     
     
     
12
     
     
     
     
    Emrys Thomas doesn’t seem to have aged. Or perhaps when I was thirteen he just struck me as so amazingly old, I can’t tell the difference now. Not that he is old,
even. Sixty, sixty-five. White haired and courteous. A bit slow, but he was always slow.
    I want to sit with him in his yellow-walled kitchen and ask some questions, butthat’s all too fast for him. He has to take my coat, shake it out, hang it on a peg by the door, then he
decides it won’t dry out there, so he moves some other coats so mine can stretch across two pegs for better drying.
    ‘There!’
    I didn’t mind my coat wet.
    We exchange comments about the weather. Then he sees me through to the kitchen. Then goes back to the living room to reset theheating controls. Then back to the kitchen and the kettle. Then
biscuits, which I refuse but which he gets anyway. Then tea. I ask if he has herbal and, bless the man, he does, so I have herbal.
    ‘You’ve grown, haven’t you? A bit, anyway.’
    ‘Not much, Em. You should see the others, though. Kay’s as tall as you are, and Ant’s my height. She might even be taller now.’
    Emrys did somebabysitting for Mam and Dad at one point. Not babysitting exactly. It was more like he acted like an honorary uncle for a while. If Mam and Dad went off to London for something,
they’d drive us round to Em’s for the evening. We’d sleep here even. Me in a little room next to Em’s. Ant and Kay in the twin beds down the hall. It was a safe place.
Boring, but in a nice way. Em and Kay and I wouldsit on the living room floor and play Monopoly or Cluedo, while Ant fell asleep upstairs. Then Kay would get sleepy too and I’d have an hour
or so reading or watching TV with Emrys, before I too headed up. They were nice times. Normal and quiet, in a way that life with my dad never was.
    Then I got a little older, and my illness muddled