The Wedding Speech That Ended Two Relationships
I was thirty-one when I learned that a wedding speech can be more dangerous than a confession booth. It happened in Dublin, on a wet Saturday in October, the kind of day…
She Read My Diary and Left Forever
I used to keep a diary in the bottom drawer of our bedside locker in Stoneybatter, under old ESB bills and a scarf she had once lent me and never asked back…
I Loved Someone Who Never Even Knew My Name
I first saw her on a wet Tuesday morning at Pearse Station, the kind of morning where Dublin looks like it has been dipped in grey paint and left to dry badly.…
The Night We Chose Each Other Instead of Our Partners
I used to think love ended with a slammed door or a dramatic confession, but mine began ending beside the smoking area of Whelan’s on a wet Thursday night, with someone else’s…
He Never Stopped Loving His First Love
My father was seventy-eight when I found the shoebox under his bed. I had gone to his little house in Cabra to clear out a leak-stained wardrobe after a bad winter, and…
The Secret Affair That Lasted Longer Than My Marriage
I met Ciarán two weeks before my wedding, which is a terrible sentence to write and a worse thing to have lived. It was raining so heavily that afternoon on Grafton Street…
I Couldn’t Tell My Family Who I Really Loved
I used to rehearse the sentence on the 16 bus into town, saying it silently while we passed through Rathmines and over the canal, my reflection trembling in the dark window. I…
The Love Story That Ended With a DNA Test
I met Daniel outside the Workman’s on a wet Thursday, both of us pretending the rain wasn’t getting into our shoes. He offered me the corner of his umbrella, and I laughed…
She Left Me for Someone Twenty Years Older
I was twenty-nine when Aoife told me she was leaving, though at first she said it in the gentlest possible way, as if she was asking me to mind her coat for…
The Couple Who Stayed Together Only for the Children
For years, people said myself and Niall were lucky. We had the house in Drumcondra, two healthy children, a shared calendar full of school runs, swimming lessons, birthday parties, and matches in…