I Read My Husband’s Messages and Everything Changed
I never thought of myself as the kind of woman who would read someone else’s phone. I used to say that privacy was part of love, the small room you left untouched…
The Couple Everyone Envied Was Secretly Falling Apart
People used to tell us we looked like the kind of couple Dublin was invented for. Rain on the windows, two pints on a small table, his hand over mine like a…
She Wanted a Family, I Wanted Freedom
I was thirty-two when Maeve asked me the question I had been dodging for nearly three years. We were walking along the canal near Portobello, sharing chips from a paper bag, the…
The Most Passionate Kiss Happened Just Before Goodbye
I met Clara on a Tuesday evening when the rain had made mirrors of the footpaths around Dublin. I was standing outside a small café near Grand Canal Dock, pretending to read…
I Stayed Because the Sex Was Incredible
I used to tell my friends I stayed because he was complicated. That sounded more dignified than the truth. The truth was that when he touched me, every sensible part of me…
He Proposed to Me While Loving Someone Else
He proposed to me on a wet Friday evening in St Stephen’s Green, with the ducks shouting like drunks and the sky the colour of an old saucepan. It was not the…
The Irish Holiday That Ended My Engagement
I came to Dublin with a ring on my finger and left with it wrapped in a receipt from a chemist on Westmoreland Street. It sounds dramatic now, like the sort of…
She Loved My Money More Than Me
I met Aoife on a wet Thursday evening outside Dublin Castle, both of us pretending the rain was softer than it was. She was waiting for a taxi that kept cancelling, and…
The One Person I Should Never Have Fallen For
I knew he was married before I knew the colour of his eyes properly. That should have been enough. It should have put a wall in me, clean and high, the way…
We Shared a Bed but Not a Future
I met him on a wet Thursday outside Whelan’s, both of us standing under the same useless strip of shelter while the rain came down like it had a personal grudge against…