I checked inside the canopy—at the chaos of wine stains and moulting bouquets—but everyone had left, so I wandered back toward the rose garden, pausing at the top of the steps to look at Byrne Hall. There were no lights on in any of the front windows. The house would blend into the night soon, and we’d hardly know it was there.

“Hello stranger.” My father was sitting on a bench beside a couple of empty beer glasses and an ashtray full of stubs.

“Dad, I’m so sorry.” I moved the ashtray out of the way and dropped down beside him. “I was feeling sick, so I lay down. I didn’t mean to disappear off.”

“It’s fine.” He touched my hand. “Honestly. As long as you’re all right.”

The last of the outdoor lights came on in the trees, yellowing the undersides of the leaves. A few people cried, “Ooh!” and someone nearby said, “How lovely.” It was funny how the noise of the crowd seemed to come and go. Occasionally a quietness fell over everyone, all at the same time, and you could hear the swash of the sea on the rocks below the garden.

The saxophonist threw out a sinuous thread of tune, and the bride and groom laughed their way through a few awkward moves on the dance floor. After a while, the music got livelier, and others began to join them in dribs and drabs. I wondered if anyone had ventured down to the beach, and I looked round for the wet-haired man, but all I could remember was his stare and the salty smell of his clothes. I couldn’t have told you what colour his hair was, or whether he was tall, or broad, or anything like that. His eyes were either grey or green—unless I was confusing them with the eyes in the painting.

“You should dance too,” said Dad, but I shook my head, and we sat side by side as the night gathered around us, the couples held each other close, and the fairy lights swayed in the breeze from the sea.

I stopped noticing the music after a while, but the following day, when the wedding was over, I could still feel the pulse of it thrumming through me like a coded message without a key.

2

If the weather had been oppressive on the coast, it was a hundred times worse once we got home. Work was manic that week, and unusually tedious. Every evening, as soon as I could escape the office, I made my way to the public pool down the road and swam a lazy backstroke up and down until dusk. The pool was hot and soupy and crowded, but it became the highlight of my day, and I was—briefly—a free person, leading a free life, rather than a prisoner serving a life sentence. Sometimes I came close to happiness when I was gazing up at the sky with the burble of water in my ears, thinking about green leaves and chequered floors, and a strange man with bare feet.