She Loved Me Until I Told Her the Truth
I met Aoife on a wet Thursday outside St Stephen’s Green, both of us waiting for the same late bus and pretending the rain wasn’t getting in under our collars. She had…
My First Love Came Back After Fifteen Years
I was twenty-one when I first loved Aoife, though at the time I thought I was older than that in every way that mattered. We met outside a lecture hall in Rathmines,…
The Divorce That Finally Set Us Free
On the morning our divorce was finalised, I wore the same navy coat I had worn to our registry office wedding twelve years earlier. It was missing a button and smelled faintly…
I Couldn’t Forget the Woman I Met at Forty Foot
I met her on a Tuesday morning at the Forty Foot, which is not the kind of place I ever expected to meet anyone. I was there because my doctor had told…
We Were Lovers Every Summer in Dingle
I met him in Dingle when I was twenty-three and convinced my life in Dublin was only a temporary thing. I had a summer job pulling pints in a small pub off…
The Secret Relationship Hidden From an Entire Irish Village
I grew up in a village in west Clare where people knew the sound of your car before they saw the colour of it. If you bought a new coat, someone would…
He Loved Me Until I Said Yes
For almost a year, I thought I was being loved in the most patient way a person could be loved. He would wait outside my office near Grand Canal Dock with two…
The Love I Never Had Hurt More Than the Love I Lost
I used to think heartbreak had to come with a clear ending. A suitcase by the door, a final argument, a text that said we were better off apart. When my three-year…
The Night We Almost Destroyed Our Marriages
I used to think marriages ended in dramatic ways, with slammed doors, suitcases on beds, rings left beside sinks. I didn’t know they could almost end quietly, at 1.40am on a wet…
I Fell for My Boss During a Business Trip to Belfast
I used to think falling in love at work was something that happened to people with messy calendars and no sense of self-preservation. I was thirty-two, living in a small flat near…