I first noticed them outside the little supermarket near Phibsborough on a Thursday afternoon, the kind of damp Dublin afternoon where the sky seems to sit on your shoulders. I was working…

I was twenty-three when the kitchen I worked in near Temple Bar went quiet. Not peaceful quiet, but that strange kind of silence where the fridges still hummed and the stainless-steel counters…

I used to think I was invisible on my road in Stoneybatter. Not in a sad way, exactly. I knew the woman in number 14 had a terrier that barked at cyclists,…

The playground burned on a Tuesday night, just after the rain had stopped and the streets around Portland Row were shining under the lamps. I remember the smell most of all, that…

I was eight the winter my father stopped coming through the door at six o’clock. Before that, the sound of his key was the surest thing in our flat in Ballybough. The…

I met Mrs. O’Leary on a wet Tuesday evening outside the music room in Marino, when my son was nine and I was pretending not to count coins in my coat pocket.…

I started writing the letters because I could not bear the quiet in my own flat. It was a small place in Phibsborough, above a pharmacy, and during those long months when…