I used to think betrayal had to look dramatic. A suitcase by the door. A lipstick mark. A phone lighting up at midnight. Mine came in plain white envelopes from the bank,…

I met Aoife on a wet Tuesday evening outside Hodges Figgis, both of us pretending the rain wasn’t soaking through our coats. She was standing under the narrow shelter by the door,…

By the time we decided to pretend we had never met, we had been together eight years and had become very good at silence. Not the peaceful kind. The kind that sits…

I used to think love was proved by waiting. Waiting for a text back, waiting outside a pub in the rain, waiting for someone to become the person they were on the…

For nearly four months, every Thursday evening after work, I met the same woman on the number 46A just outside Dublin city centre. I was working in an office near Leeson Street…

I met Ciarán when we were both nineteen and pretending to be harder than we were. It was outside a house party in Phibsborough, raining sideways, and he gave me the dry…

I met Ciarán outside Whelan’s on a wet Thursday when we were both twenty-two and pretending we had somewhere better to be. I had lost my friends in the crowd, he had…