I ordered a carafe of house red and I noticed that the waiter was getting a little frisky with Jenny with his fake Italian accent. I knew by looking at him that he was probably from Artane or somewhere. Part of me felt proud of this fact, that the girl that I was with was making such an impact. Rosario’s – there was something shit cool about the place, despite the waiter, and I recognized faces from around town, and I nodded at one or two of them.

It was the perfect end to a perfect day. The sea air had done us a world of good and things were stronger between us than before. We had found our place and I was looking forward to revisiting it over and over with Jenny, now that she was firmly in my life.

13. Celebration

May 1996

Our relationship grew tighter and stronger and although it had only been a year, I felt that Jenny had been in my life forever. It was her twenty-first birthday and that had to be celebrated and I was going to do it in style.

Even though I believed that we had each other and it should be enough, I knew that on some level Jenny was still at that stage where it was important for her to be surrounded by other people to mark special occasions, otherwise they weren’t sufficiently meaningful. She had been looking forward to her birthday, talking it up for some weeks beforehand, and I felt a compulsion to do a ring around and invite some of the old college friends to join us, mainly to impress her. I figured that I should get to know them better.

I went ahead without Jenny’s knowledge and booked Pizza Stop because I knew that she liked the informal atmosphere of the place. The evening was going well. Garlic bread, scattered with shavings of Parmesan, and bruschetta lay on a platter in the middle of the table which was covered in a red and white checked oilcloth. I had ordered the starter with the intention that the act of sharing food might open up the conversation. It worked. There was a lot of talk of music and people taking on shit jobs in order to pay the rent. The conversation was such that I found to my pleasure, with my job at the magazine and in the Crown, I had a fair bit to offer. Some of the crowd laughed at the things I told them about the ins and outs of running a magazine. I tried to make it sound bohemian or glamorous but I think for the most part I put them off. However, I felt that my contribution was as good as the next. I was at that stage in life, young – where you felt that anything was possible. Despite having lost my brother Brian, I had a false belief in my own immortality, it was as simple as that.