By the time we decided to pretend we had never met, we had been together eight years and had become very good at silence. Not the peaceful kind. The kind that sits between two people at the kitchen table in Phibsborough while one scrolls and the other asks if there is milk, though both know there is not. We were thirty-four, tired, and convinced we knew every possible version of each other. I knew how he cleared his throat before bad news. He knew I washed mugs when I was angry. Love had not disappeared, exactly. It had gone quiet, like a song playing in the next room.
The idea came on a Friday evening in October, after a small argument about nothing that was really about everything. He said, “Maybe we just need to meet again.” I thought he meant counselling. Then he said, “Tomorrow, noon. Somewhere public. We’ll pretend we’re strangers.” I laughed because it sounded ridiculous, and then I cried because some part of me wanted it to work. So we made rules. No mentioning the house, our jobs, old fights, his mother, my anxiety, the dog we never got, or the wedding we kept postponing. We would meet as if Dublin itself had arranged it.
At twelve on Saturday, I walked into St Stephen’s Green wearing a blue coat he had seen a hundred times. He was sitting on a bench near the Fusiliers’ Arch with two coffees, trying too hard not to smile. “Is anyone sitting here?” I asked. He looked up and said, very formally, “Only a woman I’m hoping to impress.” It was awful. It was also the first time in months I felt my chest loosen.
We walked without a plan. Down Grafton Street, past buskers singing to shoppers who had somewhere to be, past tourists taking photos of the Molly Malone statue as if she might wink. He told me his name was Daniel and that he liked old maps, badly made sandwiches, and women who looked like they knew when it was going to rain. I told him my name was Niamh and that I had once wanted to be a painter, which was true, though I had not said it out loud in years. He looked surprised, not because he didn’t know, but because he had forgotten to remember.
We had lunch in a little place near South William Street and ordered for ourselves instead of sharing out of habit. I noticed how carefully he listened when I spoke to the waiter. He noticed I still tore napkins into tiny pieces when I was nervous. But because we were strangers, he did not tease me. He asked why I was nervous. That question nearly ended the game. I wanted to say, because I think I have become someone you endure. Instead I said, “Because I don’t know what happens next.” He nodded as if this was the most reasonable thing in the world.
In the afternoon we went to Merrion Square and sat near the Oscar Wilde statue while the sky threatened rain. He told me about his father’s funeral, though I had been there beside him, holding his coat, watching him shake hands with men who had not seen him since childhood. This time he told it differently. He said he had felt embarrassed by grief, as if he was doing it wrong. I had never known that. I told him about the winter after my sister moved to Canada, how lonely I had been in our own sitting room while he thought I wanted space. He reached for my hand, then stopped himself because strangers do not always get permission. I gave it to him.
That night, we went to The Long Hall on South Great George’s Street. It was crowded, red-lit, and loud enough to make honesty easier. We stood shoulder to shoulder with pints we barely drank. A man beside us asked if we were on a first date. Daniel said, “Something like that.” The man raised his glass and said, “Best of luck. Don’t ruin it by being yourselves too soon.” We laughed so hard I had to lean into Daniel’s arm.
On Sunday morning, we took the <a href="https://www.dailydigest.ie/" target="_blank
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