‘Not yet,’ Nina would reply. ‘It’s too soon.’ After a year as a substitute, she’d secured a permanent position in St Fachtna’s National School on Dublin’s southside. Although she’d been there only twelve months, she was entitled to apply for leave of absence. Tom had pounced upon this. ‘Some other young teacher would be thrilled to get the gig for a year,’ he’d said. ‘And then you can walk right back, no questions asked. You’d be mad not to go for it.’

‘It wouldn’t feel right,’ she’d replied.

This had prompted a lot of muttering about them only being young once, but Nina wouldn’t be moved. While Tom accused her of not taking his job seriously, couldn’t the same accusation be levelled at him? In Tom’s mind, teachers were interchangeable. One could waltz out, another could waltz in, and the children would barely notice. This rankled with Nina. What was more important than teaching small people how to read and write?

When they’d started going out, her parents had been amused. ‘Are there no boys in Dublin?’ her dad had asked. The longer they stayed together, the more perplexed her parents became. When Tom failed his second-year exams, he chose not to repeat. It was for the best, he told his disappointed parents. Commerce hadn’t been for him (true) and he’d find another opportunity (not so true). Nina’s mother and father weren’t impressed. ‘What’s he going to do with himself?’ her dad said, before delivering a speech about the importance of university education. Nina attempted to fob them off with stories about night classes and training schemes, but back then, she wasn’t too bothered about Tom’s career. She trusted that everything would come right in the end. They were having such a wonderful time that practical matters were irrelevant. Conversations, sex, nights out, days at home: everything felt fresh. They lived as if they were part of a two-person conspiracy, as if they alone saw everything as it really was. They needed no one but themselves.

Despite this, Tom remained prone to bouts of darkness. He might begin the day in high good humour and end it listless and withdrawn. Something small would tip him into silence. He would slide into another world, where he was impossible to reach. When Nina enquired about the root causes of this unhappiness, he would give a vague answer or ask her to leave him alone. Later he would apologise and claim he didn’t know what was wrong. For a long time, she’d convinced herself that he’d grow out of these episodes. Now she worried they were becoming more frequent.