When we woke up almost two hours had passed. My mouth tasted like stale beer. Jenny told me that the pain had receded somewhat, like a lazy tide with a forgiving shore, the water pulling away from the pebbles and the masses of grey flat stones. Jenny was cradled in my arms and it was lovely having just woken up like that, together, and still it wasn’t that late. It was four in the afternoon and we still had much of the day left and we lay there not really talking but resting in each other’s company and it felt comfortable and I thought there was nowhere else that I would rather be.

I had lifted her pain and she was left only with the after-pain, a pain that wasn’t physically debilitating any more but was a kind of lighter dull ache. She wasn’t proud of the fact that she was struck down by those migraine clusters from time to time, almost as if there might be something wrong with her, as if she was the cause.

And I thought that there must be other people in the world lying down together the way myself and Jenny were, in a different country, in a different time zone, with a different language for love.

I suggested air and that we head out to Killiney beach. Then I tickled her and she begged me to stop. I told her I would stop tickling her if she said she loved me. But when the threat from my fingers had gone away and she lay once again in my arms she said that she did indeed love me and it was in a very quiet and beautiful voice and I held that information so close.

Love was the thing that you couldn’t discuss. You ought to keep well away from it, it was a train crash coming. It would get you in the end and leave you crushed and severed and fucked. I held Jenny again and this time the grip wasn’t as lazy, it was tighter and I could feel her body sinking in against mine. I was her natural protector.

We got ready and we headed out to the beach. It was cool enough on the train so I closed the two windows above Jenny’s head. We talked about music and books and she said she wished there were more hours in the day. The time she needed to study her old art history books and to hold on to her inspirations was endless. She felt she wasted time flitting from one artist to another but I assured her that this was her brain’s way of exercising and it had to be good for her. Nothing was a waste, I told her.