Eric would look for her too. Their relationship had been turbulent of late. It had started off as a bit of fun; she’d met him at a foam party in Lanzarote, for Christ’s sake. But then he’d moved to Ireland to work in pharmaceuticals, of all the luck, in her hometown in Cork. She introduced him to a few nightclubs in the city, then they started to meet up regularly. He was fun, but as soon as it became apparent that he was looking to get serious, she’d felt the familiar panic. She couldn’t go down that route. He was lovely, but she couldn’t do it. Not again.

Treasa had a reputation to maintain. She was the mad party animal, unable to commit, looking to shag all around her. Her friends had got annoyed with her over Eric. He was marriage material – tall, dark, a great sense of humour and a fantastic job. They made a great match. Treasa was a beauty – even she knew that, but not in a cocky way. It was just something she had always been. Long blonde hair, big blue eyes and full red lips. She and Eric could have had stunning-looking children.

Her circle of friends were all in their thirties and biological clocks were ticking. What, exactly, was she waiting for, they asked her?

But they didn’t understand.

Few people in her life these days knew about Kevin, her soul-mate. He’d died when they were both twenty-one. Just dropped dead on the GAA pitch while playing hurling. Sudden adult death syndrome, they called it.

Fewer still knew that he’d proposed to her the night before. Even though they were still so young and even though neither of them had ever been with anybody else.

‘You’ll get bored of me,’ Treasa had laughed. ‘You’ll want to be off shagging all around you when you’re up winning all-Ireland finals in Croke Park.’

‘Never,’ he’d said, serious, those big brown eyes she loved holding hers. ‘How could I stop loving the most beautiful girl in the world? Who could hold a candle to you?’

And the next day he was gone. She’d stood beside his coffin in the church, her hand in her pocket fingering the silver claddagh ring he’d placed on her finger hours before he died.

So, no. Treasa couldn’t settle with anybody else. And, yes, she partied – she had to do something to dull the pain.

His life had been cruelly taken from him. But she had wasted hers. She’d grown to hate herself. What would Kevin have thought of her? He was the first boy she’d ever even kissed, let alone anything else. Now, she couldn’t count the number of men she’d slept with. Her life had spiralled and nothing she did numbed the pain any more.