Jerome, she said, saw an alluring picture in her, one of complexity. It seemed a bit lame to me that he had compared her to a piece of art while setting out to seduce her. And seduce her he did, magnificently. Jenny had a way of talking around her relationship with Jerome instead of imparting any real information. It was driving me insane. I wanted more. I wanted to know his qualities without really wanting to know about them. Sure, he was a good-looking guy, I clearly recognized that fact when I saw him the first time. But there had to be more. What was it about him that allowed her to show her vulnerable side, to be loved? She had been living with him for a year before we met at Lennox Street. Jenny assured me that she had never been unfaithful to Jerome before me, that was something, and I felt peculiarly honoured but it was a fact that I had already sensed. I asked her to sum him up, to describe him in one sentence, and she said he was kind and I thought to myself that that wasn’t a bad attribute, not one bit. And she told me that he made her laugh and that a part of her would always remember their laughter, the good times.

But he couldn’t have been as kind to her as I was. He showered her with affection initially but then his affection became too much for her and she began to feel suffocated by it, by him. Over time he admitted to her that he wasn’t comfortable with her having a life outside of himself. He didn’t want her going out with her own friends, and I told her that I would never be like that with her. She was young, I said, she could explore life, she could see her friends, I wouldn’t treat her like a possession.

And the laughter between them, she admitted, faded away like the last of the bright evenings as summer draws to a close. She must have loved him and she admitted that she had, certainly at one point, but that it is entirely possible to choose the wrong person to love.

I had gone one step further than Jerome. I hadn’t merely instigated a relationship that was pleasurable from the get go, it was deeper, it had to be. I often took Jenny to clubs and as she danced the rhythm that she kept was a kind of power for her and I enjoyed immensely watching her. Those nights were so good. We drank a fair bit and Dublin seemed all the more interesting for it. You never really knew for sure where the night would lead. For a while I felt as happy as I had been, when Brian was alive and we would go along to our local pub and our local club and chase local girls.