I said that Christmas wasn’t the best time of the year in my family either and the loss of Brian was felt acutely, and I told her that my mother still laid a place at the table for Brian and that neither my father nor I could bring it upon ourselves to say how that made us feel. We didn’t have the words and even if we had the words we didn’t know how to use them.

26. Living Together

January 1997

My flat on Camden Lane had always seemed a good place to live. When Jenny moved in, it was perfect. A new year a new beginning. I was full of an enthusiasm to decorate. I painted the walls a heritage stone colour. I framed a couple of old album covers and Jenny covered the rest of the living space wall with her stuff. It was her living mood board – cut-outs from Circa art magazine, postcards from the Gallery of Photography and from IMMA and the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, a photo of us from her twenty-first birthday that I’d asked Angela to take. In the shot Jenny’s lips were covered in a deep red stain that I particularly liked.

I told Jenny not to worry about money. She had her grant, I had my work. She gave up the coffee shop gig, it wasn’t practical and secretly I was glad of it. I told her I would look after her, I was there for her. She seemed so happy and she told me that she loved me and I believed her and I believed that it would be enough.

We held each other at night and relished the excitement of the moonlight coming in through our bedroom window and all the while her body beside mine. The feel of her, our closeness.

I found an old table outside the Green Building in Temple Bar and enquired about it at the restaurant next door and discovered that they were doing up the kitchen and didn’t need it any more. The owner said it was mine if I could organize its removal. I had a friend with a van and he came over and we hauled it to the flat.