I was in the post office near Phibsborough on a wet Tuesday morning, the kind of rain that seems to come at you sideways and make everyone look slightly defeated. I had…

The bicycle was older than me, older than my daughter, and, according to my father, “still younger than some of the grudges in Dublin.” It leaned for years against the back wall…

I first noticed her in the back pew of a small chapel near Glasnevin Cemetery, wearing a navy coat with a missing button and holding a folded tissue like it was a…

I was seventeen when I first noticed how quiet the courtyard had become. I lived with my mam in a block of flats near Dublin city centre, the kind of place where…

I was eleven when I found out my grandfather couldn’t read. Until then, I thought he was the cleverest man in Dublin. He could fix a kettle with a butter knife, tell…

I run a small flower shop off the North Circular Road, not far from Phibsborough, the sort of place people pass without noticing unless they need carnations for a school play, lilies…

I was twelve the first time Garda Declan Byrne came to our flat in Stoneybatter. It was the winter after my father died, the kind of Dublin winter that got into the…

When my daughter was seven, she spent five nights in CHI at Temple Street with a chest infection that frightened the life out of me. I remember the small sounds more than…

The first Christmas after my mother died, I planned to spend the day with the curtains closed in my flat near Phibsborough, eating toast and pretending the phone had broken. My sister…