Posted inLove
We Pretended to Be Friends After Everything
For three months after Conor moved out, we kept saying we were fine. Not together, obviously, but fine. Mature. The sort of people who could meet for a pint in Dublin and…
Posted inLove
I Found My Husband’s Dating Profile by Accident
I found it on a wet Tuesday evening in Rathmines, the kind of evening when the rain seems to come sideways and everyone on the bus looks personally betrayed by the weather.…
Posted inLove
The Marriage That Ended Over One Secret
I used to think a marriage ended in one loud moment, with a slammed door or a suitcase thrown open on the bed. Ours ended quietly, on a wet Thursday evening in…
Posted inLove
I Thought Lust Was Love Until It Was Too Late
I met him on a wet Thursday evening on Camden Street, the kind of rain that makes everyone look briefly honest. I had gone into a pub near Whelan’s with two girls…
Posted inLove
The Last Hug Before She Moved to Australia
The last night before Aoife moved to Australia, we sat on the low wall outside St Stephen’s Green with a bag of chips between us and said almost nothing useful. We had…
Posted inLove
The Girl I Met During a Storm in Donegal
I met her because the bus never came. That is the simplest way to tell it, though it leaves out the rain hammering sideways across Donegal, the way the sky had turned…
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My Biggest Regret Was Letting Her Leave Ireland
I met Clara on a wet Tuesday evening outside Trinity College Dublin, both of us standing under the same thin shop awning, pretending our umbrellas had not betrayed us. She was from…
Posted inLove
He Was the Right Man at the Wrong Time
I met him on a wet Thursday evening outside Whelan’s, both of us pretending the rain wasn’t as bad as it was. I was twenty-eight, newly back in Dublin after three years…
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The Woman Who Loved Two Men at the Same Time
I was forty-one when I realised love was not the tidy thing I had been taught to believe in. By then I had a husband, Declan, a terraced house in Drumcondra, two…
Posted inLove
I Was Only Meant to Be His Rebound
I met him on a wet Thursday evening in Dublin, the kind of rain that makes everyone in the city look briefly forgiven. I was in Grogan’s with two friends, standing too…