‘Nothing, I just got held up.’ There was no point telling Eddie about the angiogram – he’d probably tell her she was worrying over nothing and would have forgotten it by the morning. She drove towards his mother’s house, pulling up at the gate and switching off the engine, presuming he was going to ask her in – had he planned on proposing to her today? She checked the rear-view mirror; maybe he’d ask her now, or in his mother’s house? Did she want to be proposed to in Barbara Quirke’s gingham kitchen or faded, but still strangely overwhelming chintz sitting room surrounded by china figurines?

‘Right, well, the big match is on tomorrow, usual time, so I suppose, I’ll see you then,’ he said getting out of the car and obviously completely oblivious to her racing thoughts.

‘Hey.’ She leant over for a goodnight kiss.

‘Hey, yourself,’ he said kissing her while he stood on the footpath at the open jeep window. Even here, outside his mother’s front door, he could elicit desire in her with a drunken kiss. Perhaps, it was because they couldn’t just fall into bed together, but still, it was nice. ‘I’ve got to dash. I’ve been standing out there in the freezing cold; if I don’t get to the toilet quick, it’s not going to be good…’ he said pushing open the front gate of his mother’s house and disappearing inside before she had a chance to say goodnight.

Driving back to the farm, Liv was overcome by that familiar loneliness that had the ability to smash into her as if it was just holding out behind the next invisible corner. It had been like this for the last decade: startling moments of desolate wretchedness, creeping up on her and pushing tears into her eyes from somewhere deep within her. She missed Rachel so much. How on earth could she call her life completely sorted when it still felt as if there was this gaping wound right in the middle of it?

*

It was a lie. Of course it was a lie. Well, it was a fib, at any rate. Liv wasn’t okay. She was lonely and miserable here in Dublin on her own. On Christmas night, when she should have been dreaming of her wedding to Eddie, she’d slept badly, tossing and turning, thinking about the accident and Finn O’Connell lying in ICU and the impossibly beautiful Estelle and the fact that she’d felt such a strong connection to him just before it had happened. She was meant to be getting engaged for heaven’s sake – what on earth was wrong with her? Like most things that hit you when you’re overtired at three o’clock in the morning, it was all out of proportion.