But it was only a fleeting feeling. She had long held the view that nerves were merely a loss of confidence. That fear could be quashed with optimism. She stepped out of the car and pressed the lock. The unease lowered its head beneath the surface once more as she walked away from the car, the cabin light fading to black.

2

Contrary to what Abi believed, it was not cowardice that held Mark back from going to the airport, but a hangover.

He waited until the Cherokee had pulled out of the driveway before dropping two Solpadeine tablets in a glass of water and retreating to the quiet of his studio, shutting the door behind him. There, he threw himself on to the sofa and closed his eyes, the luxuriant silence of an empty house on a Saturday afternoon wrapping comfortingly around him as he mulled over the night’s events.

It had been a long time since he’d been that drunk. There had just been two of them in O’Donoghue’s that Friday night – Mark and his old roommate, Andrew, who was in Dublin to shoot a whiskey commercial. Andrew mainly worked on film productions now but, as he explained to Mark, the ad work was regular, not to mention lucrative. ‘The money’s too good to turn down, you know what I mean?’ he’d said.

Yes, Mark knew. But only anecdotally.

The truth was, whenever he met up with Andrew – which was less and less as the years went by – Mark felt himself exposed to a niggling sense of envy. When they had started out together at university, two enthusiastic film students with differing sensibilities, Andrew’s interests had lain in animation – Manga and Japanese anime mainly – while Mark was drawn to Eastern European cinema with its dark themes and slow pacing, its preoccupations with memory. Their friends used to joke that one was a fan of Tarkovsky, the other of Tartakovsky. Regardless of their differences, the friendship had been close, and for a while after university, they had shared a flat, often working on the same productions, both of them as junior designers expected to muck in and complete whatever tasks needed doing from painting the set to fetching sandwiches for the crew when the caterers failed to show up. Exhausting, exhilarating, back-breaking, impecunious – they had been the most exciting years of his life. But then Mark and Abi got together and Andrew had moved to London. Their paths had forked at that point, swerving in different directions.

Now Andrew had his own production design company, his crew working on locations all over the world, involved in film projects that had won BAFTAs and once, an Oscar nomination. Mark was a stay-at-home dad.

‘You’re the lucky one, really,’ Andrew had said. This was after the fourth or maybe fifth pint. ‘A wife, two gorgeous kids, a comfortable home. What I wouldn’t give.’