She was a traveller, a citizen of the world, who had seen more countries than the other three of us put together.

It was always Izzy, never Isobel, except for that first time we had all met in the corridor of New Orchard Hall on the first day of uni, all of us wide-eyed and hopeful – and secretly a bit terrified of what lay ahead – smiling as she explained why no one ever used her full baptismal name. ‘It’s Isobel on my passport but nowhere bloody else,’ she’d said in her lovely, lilting Irish accent. ‘Isobel is my great-aunt, who is the most dreary woman you could ever hope to meet. I’m Izzy, pleased to meet you.’

‘So,’ I said, ‘what made you come back?’

Izzy shrugged, gave me a smile.

‘I think maybe it’s time I finally put down some roots.’

‘You seeing anyone?’

‘It’s still early stages.’

‘You’re being very cryptic about it.’

She waved a hand, coloured bangles jangling and clinking together on her wrist.

‘Don’t want to curse it.’

She was from the same part of Limerick as Sean, and had been indirectly responsible for us getting together at university. As soon as she introduced him to our little group I was instantly smitten by this broad-shouldered Irishman who was always smiling, who could talk to anyone, who danced like a fool and whose heart beat so hard the first time we kissed that I thought it would burst out of his chest. He looked at me the way boys had never done before. Really looked at me. I had been amazed when he’d first asked me out. I’d always felt like he was out of my league – he could have had the pick of the girls.

My Sean.

Back in secondary school, he and Izzy had briefly been an item, but Sean never wanted to talk about it much and I wasn’t sure how it had ended. He had once told me – after a considerable amount of Guinness and red wine – that they had made a pact at the age of sixteen. That if they were both still single at forty – and Sean had not yet ‘made his first million’ – they would get married. One of those jokey, teenage agreements that was done tongue-in-cheek – but maybe meant more to one of them than they were willing to admit.

Of all my friends, she was the one that Sean got on the best with. They had always kept in touch – even while she was working abroad – in a way that none of my other friends had. They would exchange jokey texts about shared interests, about sport, films and home town reminiscences, that I was only ever on the periphery of, never really involved in.