She turned quickly to look away and I turned as quickly to look in the opposite direction. My heart opened and took in every black poison the morning could offer.

Midsummer. Slant of the sun coming through the white-clouded sky then, and the church across the way drew its own shade over half of Washington Street; a fat pigeon flew beneath the eave of the church and only the heavy beat of its wings on the air broke the dark spell that had formed about us. I turned to look at her, and she responded with a half-smile, half sorrowful. She placed her palms face down on the ledge and pushed herself to a stand. Languid, the movement, to let me know what I was missing.

‘I’m going to go,’ she said.

I nodded as coolly as I could. That I could muster even the tiniest measure of cool was credit to my resilience. I was resilient as the small medieval city beneath – throw a siege upon me and I will withstand it. She crawled through the Velux window to the flat inside, and I heard after a few moments the turn and click on the flat’s door; then her footsteps on the stair. With her steps’ fading, the summer went, even as the sun came higher across the rooftops and warmed the stone ledge and the slates, and I looked out across the still, quiet city, and I sat there for hours and for months and for years. I sat there until all that had been about us had faded again to nothing, until the sound of the crowd died and the music had ended, and we all trailed home along the sleeping streets, with youth packed away, and life about to begin.

WIFEY REDUX

THIS IS THE story of a happy marriage but before you throw up and turn the page let me say that it will end with my face pressed hard into the cold metal of the Volvo’s bonnet, my hands cuffed behind my back, and my rights droned into my ear – this will occur in the car park of a big-box retail unit on the Naas Road in Dublin.

We were teenage sweethearts, Saoirse and I. She was exquisite, and seventeen; I was a couple of years the older. She was blonde and wispily slight with a delicate, bone-china complexion. Her green eyes were depthless pools – I’m sorry, but this is a love story – and I drowned in them. She had amazing tits, too, small but textbook, perfectly cuppable, and an outstanding arse. I mean literally an outstanding arse. Lasciviously draw in the air, while letting your tongue loll and eyes roll, the abrupt curve of a perfect, flab-free butt-cheek: she had a pair of those. It was shelved, the kind of arse my father used to say (in wry and manly side-mouthing) you could settle a mug of tea on. Also, she had a raunchy laugh and unwavering taste and she understood me. In retrospect, with the due modesty of middle age, I accept there wasn’t that much to understand. I was a moderately poetical kid, and moderately rebellious, but diligent in my studies all the same, and three months out of college I had a comfortable nook secured in the civil service. We got married when Saoirse was twenty-one and I was twenty-three. That seems impossibly young now but this was the late ’eighties. And we made a picture – I was a gorgeous kid myself. A Matt Dillon-type, people used to say, which dates me. But your dates can work out, and we were historically lucky in the property market. We bought a fabulous old terrace house with a view to the seafront in Dun Laoghaire. We could lie in bed and watch the ships roll out across Dublin Bay, all lighted and melancholy in the night. We’d lie amid the flicker of candles and feast on each other. We couldn’t believe our luck.