I visualize Jenny in another place at a desk, just a different desk, perhaps made of hard wood. And the children, Mikey and Joey and Maeve, happily reading or playing Monopoly in a corner. I can see how happy she seems, in colourful clothes and still painting the sea but painting other things as well, drawing from other inspirations. I see her David Hockney book facing out on a shelf above the desk, I can discern the ring marks on the cover from the many hundreds of cups of tea I have brought to her while she works. I see purple tulips in a vase on the desk. I see all these things and Jenny in the centre of it all, my Jenny. And I see a man touching her shoulders and I see her raising her face to be kissed and to kiss back and I realize that this man is not me. This man is Jerome.

As I’m rinsing the spinach I realize that I cannot let him take her and my children.

49. The Last Dinner

I often think back to Paris, and the cold. The type of cold where the street cannot warm up and you can see your breath in the air, as you exhale. But despite the cold, a sense of rapture makes everything seem possible; Jenny and I, there, together – wrapped up in our winter coats and our arms slung about each other as we manoeuvred our way through the streets of the city and along the river. Glorious – the aroma from the bakeries and the aroma from people smoking on the streets and although I hate smoking, and in a way smokers, there is something about Paris that makes it acceptable. I am a reasonable man.

I can still see the Pont Neuf. I can visualize the thousands of locks attached to the bridge, over the Seine. The swathes of people, the fluidity of the place, the sense of life. I often think about the graffiti in Paris, how it looked, so modern, so sharp, full of authenticity and sincerity and confident in its message. The bravery of the hip artists as they go to blank walls exuding a self-belief in the thick of the night. I don’t see the designs in Dublin in the same way. They are too safe.

I often think about my level of happiness when we went on a family holiday to Spain. It was astronomical. The pinnacle of my happiness, the magnificence making me smile, on the plane with Jenny and the children. The collective hope that we would have a fabulous time and the very notion of Granizado de Limón and fried chorizo and salted almonds and beer and cheap wine would be enough.