The Girl I Could Never Stop Looking For
I first saw her on the upper deck of the 46A, somewhere between Stillorgan and Dublin city centre, on a wet Tuesday morning when the windows were fogged and everyone looked half-asleep.…
He Loved Me Until I Needed Him
I used to think love was proven in the soft things. His hand on the small of my back crossing Grafton Street. The way he kept the last chip for me outside…
The First Time We Held Hands Was the Last Time We Met
I met her in the kind of rain that makes Dublin look like it has been painted in watercolour. It was outside Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street, where I had stopped under…
She Married Someone Else but Wrote to Me Every Birthday
I met Clara in a queue outside the old Screen Cinema when we were both nineteen and pretending we knew more about foreign films than we did. It was raining with that…
I Stayed Because Leaving Hurt More
I came to Dublin for a woman and pretended for years that I had come for work. That was easier to say at parties. “There are more opportunities here,” I’d tell people,…
The Stranger Who Understood Me Better Than Anyone
I met him on a wet Thursday outside Dublin Busáras, the kind of evening when the city looks like it has been crying before you have. I had my phone in one…
Our Love Survived Distance but Not Silence
I used to think distance was the hardest thing two people could survive. When Cian got the job in Amsterdam, I cried into my scarf outside Heuston Station as if he was…
The Night We Shared Our Biggest Secrets
I met Niamh on a wet Thursday outside the Workman’s Club, when the rain was coming down sideways and everyone was pretending not to mind. I had been standing under the narrow…
She Remembered Everything Except Me
The first thing Maeve remembered was the smell of rain on the steps of the Hugh Lane Gallery. She said it before she said my name, though my name did not come…
The House We Bought Before We Broke Up
We got the keys on a wet Friday in November, the kind of Dublin rain that makes every streetlight look bruised. The house was in Drimnagh, a small redbrick terrace with a…