I met Ciarán in the queue for coffee on a wet Tuesday in February, the kind of Dublin morning where everyone looks personally betrayed by the sky. We worked in the same office near Grand Canal Dock, though on different floors, and for months our conversations were nothing more dangerous than milk, deadlines, and the terrible lifts. I had a boyfriend in Clontarf. He had a wife in Rathmines. We were both ordinary people with ordinary lives, which is why I still think about how close we came to ruining them.
It started, as these things do, with being understood at the wrong time. My relationship with Mark had gone quiet. Not bad, not cruel, just quiet, like a radio left on in another room. Ciarán was going through something similar, though he never said much against his wife. That was one of the reasons I liked him. He was careful with other people, even when they weren’t there to hear him.
After work we began walking the same direction, first by accident and then not. We would pass the water at Grand Canal, talk about everything except the obvious thing, and part at the Luas stop with too-bright smiles. I told myself it was harmless because we hadn’t touched. I told myself a lot of things in those weeks. Dublin can be a small city when you are trying to behave, and a very big one when you are trying to hide.
The night it nearly happened was after a leaving do in Dublin city centre. We were in a crowded pub near South William Street, everyone shouting over music, glasses sweating on the table. Mark had texted to say he was tired and going to bed. Ciarán’s wife had sent a photo of their dog asleep on the couch. We both looked at our phones at almost the same time, then put them face down like they had accused us of something.
By eleven, the others had scattered into taxis and late buses. Ciarán and I ended up outside Grogans, standing under the awning while rain stitched the pavement silver. He asked if I wanted one more drink. I said yes too quickly. We walked without deciding to walk, past shopfronts gone dark, through the soft blur of town after closing time. There is a particular kind of silence between two people who know exactly what they are doing and are pretending not to.
We stopped near St Stephen’s Green. The gates were closed, the park black behind them, and taxis kept sliding by with their orange lights on. Ciarán said my name, just once, and I felt it everywhere. He didn’t make a speech. He didn’t say he loved me. He said, “If we go for that drink, I don’t think I’ll be able to pretend it’s just a drink.”
I remember being angry at him for saying the honest thing before I could. It would have been easier if he had kissed me and given me someone to blame. Instead he stood there with his hands in his coat pockets, looking frightened and decent, and I realised I was frightened too. Not of getting caught, though that was part of it. I was frightened of becoming someone who could take the loneliness of my own life and use it to damage someone else’s.
We walked to the Ha’penny Bridge without touching. The Liffey was high and dark, carrying all the city lights in broken pieces. Halfway across, I started crying, which was mortifying because I am not a graceful crier. Ciarán didn’t hug me. He leaned on the railing beside me and looked at the water.
“I don’t want to be the worst thing that happened to your life,” he said.
I said, “I don’t want to be that for yours either.”
That was our grand romantic moment: two soaked idiots on a bridge, choosing to disappoint desire. No music swelled. No one applauded. A man on a bicycle told us to move in language my
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