‘No, don’t, please, there’s no point. I’m due in to work in an hour and really, it’s the sort of thing I probably need to do on my own; after all, it’s my mess.’

‘Look, this is a lot of things, but it’s absolutely not your mess, Liv. You haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘No? I’ve let myself be a complete doormat to Eddie Quirke, obviously. When I told him that moving Anya in here wasn’t okay, he just completely ignored me and now look at where I’m left. They’re parading around Ballycove like Romeo and Juliet and they still think that somehow I’ll just roll over and let them both move into my flat.’

‘Please, don’t talk like that. If I know Anya, she’ll have convinced Eddie that it will be all right, and as for Eddie, well, we all know that he might be a lot of things, but emotional intelligence isn’t one of his strong points.’

‘I can’t think about it now, Pete. Honestly, I just have to get to work and when I come back here later, I’ll start sorting through all this stuff,’ she said wearily, even though she hadn’t even started yet. She hung up the phone. It was time to get to work. Some unreasonable voice inside her knew she’d have to get this sorted before New Year and that didn’t give her very long, but for now, she needed to turn up at the hospital and do her job.

*

Even though Liv was absolutely famished and in need of a long hot shower and a good night’s sleep, she had this strange longing to see Pete, so she stayed on the bus home from the hospital, bypassing her usual stop and heading on towards the city. Pete had bought a swanky docklands apartment a few years earlier. It had views of the river and, on a clear day, he could see right out to the Dublin Mountains and across the bay from the balcony window. Funny, but it had never really suited him, Liv thought now. He’d had some interior designer come in and do the place over. He wouldn’t tell her how much the whole thing had cost, but she knew Smeg fridges that were the size of army tanks and showers that came at you from every conceivable angle did not come cheap. It was all very lads’ pad, New York loft living and although, in theory, Liv knew she should love it, she’d never actually been able to relax there. It was why, if they were having a night in, he always came to her flat. She assumed he liked being surrounded by their shared memories. In many ways, he’d been as much a part of putting the place together with her as Rachel had been.