She grew up in Bray, with its long promenade and the masses of stones on the beach. It was uncomfortable to walk on but she didn’t mind that. I loved Bray myself, and growing up in Dun Laoghaire I spent a good deal of time out there with my old friend, Dean. I hung out in the arcades and then the Bray Head nightclub. I was surprised I hadn’t met Jenny earlier on. Dun Laoghaire had its charm but Bray had something different going on. I enjoyed the games at the arcades and the smell from Henry & Rose, the fish and chip shop beside the DART station, the special aroma of cod being fried in hot oil. Nobody did fish the way it was done at Henry & Rose. The batter was crispy and the fish flaky with just the right amount of meatiness to it, so it didn’t end up having a chicken consistency, which sometimes happened in other chippers.

She said that she wished she could dance.

I told her she could dance. I imagined her dancing, her body writhing in front of me, so close I could touch it.

I asked Jenny to tell me more about her family because I could feel myself going distant on her. I sometimes did that – got lost in my own thoughts and reflections.

Her mother was dead and her father had pretty much stopped talking to her when she had moved in with Jerome. He didn’t like Jerome, he was too sure of himself, a trait that her father despised because it was the complete opposite of the way he was.

I talked to Jenny about opposites and about how my father was about things that were overtly dissimilar. Jenny as if teasing me asked me what the opposite of purple was and she said she had it in her head that it was a kind of off-white. It had something to do with Advent candles and although this didn’t make any sense to me, I agreed with her. She was an artist after all and she could find colour opposites any way she pleased. I wanted to experience Advent with her. I wanted Christmas blessings with Jenny. I wanted to kiss her on the lips when the priest told us to offer each other a sign of peace.

Dad taught me other things like the difference between traction and retraction, about supply and demand and the subtleties of cloud formations and what they could mean. Some of the names rolled off my tongue but I had difficulty with others like cumulonimbus and stratocumulus and cirrocumulus. He taught me that for all the softness and innocence that could be found in nature, there was also a hardness, a vehemence, and this opposing strand was something that I should be aware of. If someone is kind to you, he once said, look underneath the surface, dig deep. Kindness is not free, it comes with a price.