I need to do as Jack once told me and stay focused in the here and now and try and enjoy my evening. I need to stay in the present and let go of my longing for what could have happened in the past.

Chapter Eight

Dublin, March 2017

‘You have got to be joking! What? How?’

I lean both my hands on the island unit in mine and Jack’s city centre apartment and stare at the photo in front of me as my sister stares at me, waiting on my reaction. It’s the sunniest March in almost a hundred years so I’m dressed like a summer’s day, and I was just about to launch into some spring cleaning with only some old-school Bruce Springsteen for company when my sister dropped round with a bombshell that has hit me like a wrecking ball.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she says, ‘but I nearly choked when I saw it in the salon! I had to come straight round to show you.’

I hold the magazine closer to get a better look as Emily rambles on.

‘I mean, there I was, casually flicking through whatever magazine I could get my hands on to pass the time when I almost jumped out of the chair! Have you even heard from him lately? Did you have any clue he was actually famous?!’

I shake my head, then nod, then shake it again, still squinting and staring in disbelief at the glossy image of ‘Blind Generation lead singer Tom Farley and his actress girlfriend Joanie Brown at the premiere of Fifty Shades Darker in London’ a few weeks before. On the same page is the movie’s main star Dakota Johnson in a striking Alexander McQueen dress alongside the very handsome Jamie Dornan, but all I can see is Tom in his three-piece suit, slicked-back hair and with a girl on his arm who looks distinctly like … oh my God she looks exactly like—

‘Do you see what I see?’ asked Emily, nodding like one of those dogs you see in the back window of a car. Her eyes are like dinner plates.

‘Do you think she looks like—’

‘She looks like you! She’s like your long-lost twin!’ she says, taking the magazine from my clutches and pointing out the similarities. ‘I mean, look at her hair! Long, bleached blonde, big chunky plaits like you wear sometimes! Look at her frame – she’s tiny like you are! Look at her—’

‘Clothes,’ I say, and then I lean my head in my hands onto the worktop in the kitchen and let out a deep sigh. ‘She’s in a dress exactly like something I would wear. Oh Tom!’

Emily folds the magazine back into her handbag, guessing it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to leave it around for me to examine any further.