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looking at Cate’s dad and smiling. Cate’s dad didn’t look surprised any more. He looked as if he’d known this was coming since before he was born, since before the words were lost in libraries and radiowaves and dumped at the school gates, since before his folk starting coming down from the hills to the honeycombs, since before they drove the painted ones from the peaks, since before one of them said: there’s not enough room here, let’s go out west to that big island and fuck the Britons, we’re that much harder than them, the women. He rested his arms on the table on either side of his plate, cocked his head to oneside, looked Adam in the eyes and said: I’m sorry son, I don’t understand you.
    Y tess ley, said Adam. It means I love you. You know. It’s your language.
    It’s not your language, said Cate’s dad. You don’t anyway. You only come at Christmas.
    I’m family.
    Adam, shut up, you’re not ready, said Cate. It’s the wrong place to start.
    What’s the right place to start? said Adam. He doesn’t even answer back when I say thank you.
    He’s shy! You don’t know what he went through at school.
    Maybe but I know what I go through every time I’m round here, standing in the kitchen for half an hour listening to songs of old Mercia and pretending not to notice.
    It’s only once a year. Who do you think you are, telling my dad you love him, Mary Tyler Moore?
    I’ll tell your dad I love him if I fucking well like.
    You will not.
    I fucking will. And Mary Tyler Moore doesn’t speak Mercian.
    How do you know?
    ’Cause if she did she’d be packing sandwiches for Tesco’s in Wolverhampton instead of having her own TV production company and a millionaire lifestyle. Who are you to tell me what I can say to your dad?
    Tell him that you love him, then. In English. Go on.
    Adam looked at Cate’s dad, focusing on the bridge of his nose. I love you, he said.
    I’m not sure I like you, said Cate’s dad.
    Adam folded his arms and looked down into the cake. Cate put her hand on her dad’s.
    They walked home late after watching a film. Cate was quiet.
    It’s true, said Adam. You do never see it in the foreign phrase books. Tell us the way to the bus station, give us five kilos of sun-dried tomatoes, escort my bags to the dental office, and I love you.
    It’s something you know already before you go, and you never learn anything else, said Cate.
    What I don’t understand is why the TV people never come round and make films about him. You’d think they were waiting for him to die.
    They walked side by side through the raw smoky night of small infinite streets and turnings, pattering with the footsteps of the fearful, the drunk and the doubting.
    What does dryk mean? said Adam after they had walked for half an hour without saying anything.
    It means cancer, said Cate.
    It was prostate cancer, advanced, and they would have to operate. There was a high chance Cate’s dad would die. She went to see him most days. Sometimes she stopped overnight. Adam went about once a week. He moved a chair into the kitchen and took a book but he couldn’t concentrate with the uninterrupted flow of Mercian coming from the next room. He tried sitting on the toilet with the door closed but he could still hear them. There was no doubt. Cate was eloquent in Mercian. English was for the moving of objects and the taking of decisions, for plain reason, the turning on and off of a tap. Mercian was a waterfall, interrupted by laughter. He began taking a cassette player with him and with the earphones clamped on his head and music playing he was free for a time.
    At home he would open the Mercian book after tea, with a pen and a ruled notepad on the desk in the bedroom. He began by staring out at his reflection in the window that looked out on the darkness of January, a planet Adam half in darkness, halfin lamplight. He went to get a coffee and started watching the news. He came back, sat down and looked through the close