#ch:nick

2003

When she spoke with adults who didn’t know her, they usually asked Lissa what she did. And how about you? They’d turn to her, and in that small moment where the question hung in the air, she would feel the rush of panic, as though some lie she hadn’t actually told them was about to be revealed. The tightly wound spool of her persona unravelled around her ankles like a length of ribbon. People often wore these looks on their faces when in conversation with her, like they expected answers to impress them.

And she could go the route of honesty—say she was still in secondary school, and only worked her hotel job on the side. She could brag on about how she ran the restaurant floor like a military operation, and knew everything there was to know. Adults twice her age listened when she spoke, and she had become confident enough since turning seventeen to ignore the resentment on her colleagues’ faces, which, at that point in her life was still easier for her to mistake for mere jealousy than admit something more unsavory about herself.

But she wanted to impress strangers. Shame of herself and her age and maturity, left her falling back on a default response. “Hospitality,” she’d say, in a voice she hoped was adult and mysterious. People heard a word like that and nodded without asking questions, which she liked. Liked to picture herself through the lens of other people. 

On the patio on a bright midsummer’s day, her stepmother’s arty mates heard the word. Nodded. Shuffled their feet, pretended to be distracted by a passing plate of hors d’oeuvres, and a sharp laugh from another conversation. One that had not been poisoned by such a boring thing. Hospitality. Lissa burned with embarrassment. “In a restaurant, like,” she clarified. “management, sometimes. Sort of.” Which made things worse. There was no duller job than floor manager in a hotel restaurant. The most thrilling event that had happened that year was when a marmalade cake split in two, and all the staff were allowed to take a slice home each.

She employed great effort to hold her pleasant expression in place. Someone asked her a halfhearted question for the sake of politeness, then moved on to talking about something else. A magazine article she hadn’t read, which wasn’t surprising. She didn’t see value in that type of literature—celebrities, where they were going on holidays, wearing to the beach, et cetera. She understood too late who she was talking to. Trendy people. The fact she was delusional enough to believe would like her was astounding now, and as she glanced around for an exit route, she spotted one. Her brother, stalking through a crowd toward her with a scowl that might have turned a person to stone. 

“They want me to be in the pictures,” Alexander muttered. He was fourteen and mid growth-spurt, all ankles and wrists, with the tailored trousers that fitted him last month hovering absurdly over his shoes. “And I’ve said I don’t want to, but they’re all like, ‘You have to.’ I don’t have to, do I? Like, they can’t force me.”

He absolutely had to. Family photographs and family weddings went together. “You’ll stand for one,” she said in a clipped voice. “For mum. Then you can go.”

“She wouldn’t want a picture.”

Lissa knew that. “Just one.”

He kicked some loose stones about and grumbled, but didn’t argue. Lissa wasn’t worth arguing with. Their mum had left a space behind her that Lissa had naturally filled. If there were no parent with authority in the house, she would become a surrogate—to make plans, keep things in order, give permission and take it away. Alexander would stand for a photograph, and it would go on the wall in the hallway, where it belonged.

By the willow trees in the garden, beneath a tangle of bulb lights, her father and Jade stood together as a white cage sprung open, and doves burst into the sky, flat and blue like silk, their wings flashing in the sunlight. A press photographer rushed forward as Jade laughed, throwing her head back and fluffing her dress around her with the intention of a woman who knew she’d be in a tabloid special in a week, looking like a confection on Jarlath’s arm. 

Lissa’s father wore his linen jacket open, and the first few buttons of his shirt undone just enough to display his thatch of chest hair. It was a shame, the chest hair, but she couldn’t disparage him for it when he looked so happy. He was happy in a way that was strikingly unguarded. Loose, real, and not solely for the photographs. As much as Lissa privately resented him for, despite her best efforts, going through with this wedding, she felt that old familiar tug of loyalty towards him. His daughter, whether she liked it or not, and no matter the viciousness of the thoughts she had about him inside her head, she lacked the fortitude to actually hate him. 

“Oh, wow. I love an understated wedding,” a voice said beside her. 

She startled. Turned. He was her age. Tall and narrow, with a sharpness to his features that tugged her memory. Cheekbones, a narrow nose, shiny from the heat. Her brain ticked for moments, deciding whether they had met before. 

“That’s funny,” she said, eyeing his smart little suit. “Rumour has it Bono is stopping by later.”

“Oh, Christ, Bono again. How unexpected. They always cart him out at these fancy bloody weddings to make themselves look relevant, don’t they? I’m floored.”

Lissa bristled, but tried to cover it up with what she hoped was bracing wit. “Here's a suggestion. Maybe you should be aware of who you’re talking to. It’s my father’s wedding.”

“Ah,” a shrug, unbothered. She thought he was going in for a handshake, but he reached behind her to the table of glasses. He glanced dismissively at her outstretched palm. “So you’re the Mansfield’s daughter.”

“Bouchard-Mansfield,” she said. “Lissa.”

He seemed to enjoy that she said this. A private joke with himself. “A double-barreler.” He sipped his champagne, and his face twitched. “Why not just choose one name? You’ll have to eventually.”

“I won’t,” she said. “And I suppose even if I did, I’d choose my mother’s. Bouchard.”

“Surely Mansfield is the name that matters,” he said, and she ignored him. On the surface of her champagne, her face frowned back at her. She had been developing a line on her forehead that made her look stricken in repose. She forced herself to relax, satisfied when her brow smoothed.

“And your name, by the way?”

“Nick Lynott.” 

She was, absurdly, disappointed by its mundanity. 

“Our dads know each other,” he went on. He had a smooth, charismatic voice. “Mine’s Ben Lynott. A TV exec.”

“Right.” Yes, of course he was. She remembered now. Actually, Lissa was sure this boy had visited the house at least a decade prior, in the days when people visited constantly. She’d become an expert host at about seven years old, giving the tour of the snooker table, the garden, showing off all the toys she had. But he’d refused to play with her. He sat around saying deliberately cute things for the adults to coo at, while she studded the garage door with the tennis balls she’d hauled out. Renewed bitterness swelled toward him, both for rejecting her in childhood, and then forgetting all about it. Here he was again, Nick Lynott, with his smug face and a hand inside his pocket, already looking over her head for someone more interesting to speak to. 

“So,” Nick said. “Where are you living at the moment?” 

“Dublin.”

A snort. “Well, yes. I hardly thought you lived in the country.” He peered at the pastoral fantasy of rural Ireland around the manor, the tracks from a haybine running up and down fields in braids of spun gold, and wrinkled his nose like it was an offense to him. “Could you be more specific?”

“Right. Sandymount.”

“Ah, I walk there with my parents. I assume you’re on the seafront or something, are you?”

“No,” she said. “Further in. Close to the station. It’s…” She broke off with a sigh. “You’d know it if you saw it. It’s a Georgian place with a very… noticeable extension.”

Lissa resented the extension so much she got hot and agitated when she thought about it. A gleaming modern rectangular block, all reinforced concrete and floor-to-ceiling windows, had followed her stepmother, Jade Nolan, and all her interior design aspirations. Jade was not a talented person, Lissa thought, just a lucky one, now with access to enough money to fund her delusion. 

It’d been four months since workmen had broken ground in the garden, flattened the beds of pampas grass and torn down the games room and the orangery where she and her brother used to languish with their mother, breakfasts that stretched into the afternoon. Track marks ripped over her winter garden, and the tennis court she played matches with the neighbour ladies, in one afternoon, was reduced to chunks of fractured tarmac and twisted metal in a skip

“Oh, I know it. Fantastic,” Nick said, and went on this voice that begged to sound like an authority on property, parroting the adults who actually knew what they were saying. “You’d be mad not to build in this economy though, wouldn’t you? And it’s much better to be somewhere modern, where at least the heat isn’t flying out through cracks in the window frames. I just don’t care about ‘charm’ or whatever people say. Clean and functional is always better.”

She wondered whether she shared her sense that the conversation was not going well. Considered agreeing with him to be polite, but couldn’t bring herself to. “Some people prefer to live somewhere comfortable and traditional. Nothing wrong at all with that. Maybe to some, all that glass and steel is cold and uncomfortable. Do you really want the entire world looking in your windows as you lie on the couch?”

“Well, I say move on, dinosaurs. Reject tradition. Embrace the new millennium, already.” What a worldly thing to say. He spoke with complete authority, as though there was no point even coming up with a retort. To conclude, he tilted his head back and drained his glass. 

Lissa intended to respond anyway. The captain of her debating team at school, she was no stranger to annoying, arrogant boys, but before she could respond, Alexander was hauled towards them by Angela, a family friend wielding a digital camera. She’d forgotten about her brother—evidently having wandered off in hopes he could hide from the lens.

“Come on,” Angela said. “Just one. For your mum. Lissa, tell him.”

Lissa said nothing, just stood there with him while he scowled. She smiled until her face ached.

“Oh, you look smashing, the both of you,” Angela cooed. “Diane is going to love these.”

Lissa was not convinced. She’d gone through an intense period of questioning while preparing for the wedding—the way she’d done her hair, whether the colour of dress complimented her skin, her makeup, which, the more she caught sight of herself, the more clownish it seemed. The makeup artist had done it at some ungodly hour that morning and kept saying it looked so natural, while glueing strip lashes around her eyes. Lissa had been too tired to protest. It was fine. Who was going to care?

But now, staring into the lens that would immortalise this look, she realised her mother would. She was so good at dressing them both. Choosing things from little French boutiques that had things nobody at home could get, and then they’d put them on and spin around the living room while she applauded and told them they were the most elegant children in town. 

Looking bad was a new and terrifying possibility for Lissa. Those pastel striped boutique bags from Diane, tied up with satin ribbon, had disappeared with her, replaced within the year with new things from Jade. Things with cut-outs and zips, snakeskin bags and sequined tops. Sure, Jade said she looked good, but what Jade thought was good was meaningless, and often, in Lissa’s opinion, blatantly wrong.

“And where’s mum today?” Nick said, and Lissa was surprised he was still standing there. 

“Oh,” she said. “France.”

“Ah, yeah, I remember hearing something about her moving.”

“Yes, Provence.”

“And I suppose her being here would be awkward, would it? It was an acrimonious divorce, right?”

Lissa frowned. “Do you always go around asking highly personal questions to strangers?”

And he shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t really asking. I was just repeating what I heard around the place. Whatever. It’s a pity she’s not here to see you do…” he waved his hand at her. “Whatever you were doing. Were you a flower girl? No, not flower girl. That sort of thing.” 

She felt a prickle. “No, I think it’s obvious I was not the flower girl. I’m too old for that.”

“Oh, well,” He flattened his mouth and pulled this silly, careless face that pissed her off. “Dunno.”

“We’re the same age.”

He squinted at something in the distance. The fact he wasn’t even bothering to look at her was making her angrier. Already one foot out of the conversation, while casually annihilating her confidence. “Oh, that’s funny,” he said. “I thought you were maybe fifteen, sixteen at a push.” 

She couldn’t think of what to say, or focus on anything but her boiling face, surely turning a ferocious shade of puce. “Right, well, um, good for you.” She wished she’d come up with something better, that she were quick, clever enough to handle such situations, but it hardly mattered, because she was already walking away from him, mumbling about a photographer waiting for her. 

It didn’t matter what Nick Lynott’s opinion was, she reminded herself. After today, she would surely never see him again. And if she did, it wasn’t as though he’d remember.

Still, she could feel exactly where his words had landed, like a thumb pressed into a bruise she hadn’t known was there. As she moved back toward the noise of the party, she kept her shoulders stiff and high, as if he might be watching, though she never once looked back to check.

“You don’t have to carry that—wait.”

“It’s fine, Nick, I can manage.”

He made a show of taking the box, hoisting it onto one shoulder and smiling, looking around to see if anyone could see him being chivalrous. 

“It’s not like it has far to go.”

“No, no, Lissa. I’ve got it. You shouldn’t have to carry anything.”

In the lift, she looked at him, darkened patches on the underarms of his t-shirt, admiring his own strength in the mirror. It wasn’t that he was exceptionally muscular or anything like that—he didn’t go to the gym or participate in exercise more rigorous and consistent than whacking balls around a squash court with his work mates once or twice a week—he simply had the natural, virile durability of a twenty-one-year-old man, which Lissa supposed in some way was a thing to be proud of. 

“Here we are.” He unlocked the door, and she squinted against the sunlight streaming through the windows. Outside was a view worth half a million, as Grand Canal Dock gleamed in the brilliance of summer. A skyline of cranes and glass office blocks: the broad ascent of Dublin’s tech empire in clear view from the living room. 

Nick set the box down, and it rattled with the contents of his material possessions. He always fancied himself a minimalist—a few books, a digital clock radio, one or two unique looking glasses he’d swiped from bars, and in the middle of a large, empty living space, it was impossible to imagine how he would ever fill it. 

“There’s the kitchen,” he announced with a flourish, though Lissa knew that. She could see it—glossy acrylic cabinets, chrome hardware, and a space where a fridge would go someday soon, to be filled with bottles of champagne and leftover takeaways. 

“Maybe one of those American ones with two doors,” he said. “With that dispenser for the ice, what do you think?”

“Mm. Lots of exciting possibilities,” said Lissa, and he beamed this huge, boyish grin he was usually too cool those days to grant her. A homeowner, he was. How novel. She smiled back, astonished anyone had convinced him this was a good idea. 

“I have grand plans, Lissa, grand plans.” 

“And the mortgage is what?”

“God, loads. It’s fine. My parents are helping me out with it until I get promoted at work, you know? The inevitable progression…” He glided his hand through the air like an airplane taking off. “It’s only up and up, really.”

“But really, then, it’s their apartment, isn’t it?”

Nick pouted. “Well, no, actually, it’s mine. Dad helped with the down payment, obviously. It’s not like I had, what? Fifty thousand euros lying around. But I secured the finances. It’s in my name… at least jointly.”

“Oh, wow. Good luck,” she said, though really, she scoffed it, and then felt guilty when he rolled his eyes before turning his face away. She didn’t know why she was like this with him sometimes—provoking and bad-tempered. It was as if she wanted him to argue with her, which, of course, she did not. It was the first time she’d seen him in two weeks, so why the urge to piss him off?

“The gym downstairs is a nice addition,” she admitted. “I haven’t—I didn’t know they were putting that kind of amenity in apartment blocks these days.”

“Yeah, it’s all very slick. Can you picture me down there lifting weights with the lads from Google?” 

“I can, actually. And you’re all talking about mortgages and investments… trading stocks.”

“Please, not me. I’m a creative.”

“Nah, I can just see you out there, those benches on the river, you and your tech friends drinking your fancy coffees in takeaway cups…”

“Can you, now.”

“Yeah. And you have some girlfriend from the building across from here. Her name’s Gretchen, and at night she leaves the blinds open so you can see her walking around naked.”

“Gretchen,” Nick savoured the name. “I could go out with a Gretchen.”

“Gretchen is too smart for you, actually, but don’t worry, she’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“Nice, nice. Of course she will.”

“It’s a whole new life for you, Nick. A life of American-style fridges. You’re moving up, aren’t you?”

“Well, not really. It’s just… it’s just an apartment. They’ll hand these out to anyone these days, won’t they?”

Lissa hesitated. “An asset is an asset.” 

“Yeah. Come on. Let me show you the best part. You’re going to love it.”

He led her across the hallway to a room, as blank and nondescript as the last. Rectangular. A window. Skirting boards. They stood there in its echo, just looking, until she became aware he was anticipating a reaction. 

“A room,” she commented. 

“Yes, Lissa,” he said. “For you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, look,” he entered a second door to reveal an ensuite bathroom, with small, brown and mirrored tiles , and opened the cabinet under the sink with the flourish of a magician unveiling his legless assistant. “A place for your things—your, your whatever—your face creams. No more complaints about them going missing. And see,” returning to the bedroom, he gestured broadly at an empty wall, “I’ll put a chest of drawers here, for your spare clothes and pyjamas. You won’t have to borrow my t-shirts anymore, how about that?”

Lissa felt something stuck in her throat. Of course, it was what she’d rallied passionately for those days in Merrion Square—her own room, her own moisturizer and specific shampoo, knickers that stayed where she’d left them—but now, Nick would never again pull some scandalous, hot pink g-string out of a heap and say “Is this not yours, no?” leaving her privately delighted that he thought her the kind of girl to wear it. It was a specific loss she couldn’t verbalise. 

“Oh, finally,” she said. “Thank God for that.”

“I’ll make it nice, too, Lissa. When you’re back from France, it’ll be ready, and you’re going to love it—you’ll love what I’ll have done with the place.”

Lissa just smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure I will.”

She was early to Nick’s, which she never liked to be. He was among the camp of people cool enough to invite you for nine when he actually meant ten—who had some secret, magical knowledge of the exact right time to arrive at a party and when to leave. Not Lissa. She was half an hour early for everything, no matter how she tried. 

He had told her five, and it was eleven minutes to four. Eight, by the time she’d attempted the mathematical equation in her head, battled her anxiety, and weighed up whether it was worse to call on him before he was ready to receive her, or loiter nervously on his doorstep for two hours staring at her reflection on the brass knob. 

She pressed the bell. 

Several moments passed, then his voice was low through the speaker. “Yeah?”

“It’s me.”

He buzzed her in. 

She went to his floor, where he was already waiting with the door open, messing with his hair in a way that felt oddly self-conscious, as though caught off guard. 

“Are you early?”

“I am—sorry. The thing at the hotel ended sooner than I thought, and I didn’t want to just sit in some cafe.”

“No, no. It’s fine, come in. I was just snoozing, basically.” 

It looked that way. His apartment had that smell—the stuffy, human smell she’d come to know from the rare moments she’d entered Alexander’s lair. Nick had the TV on, some quiz programme playing for background noise, and a rumpled mass of material on his bed, where he’d clearly passed out on the contents of his open suitcase. 

“You’ve not unpacked, I see.” 

“I kind of did. I’m just—” he yawned. His arms and stomach were brown from Ibiza. “I dunno if I’m jet lagged or what, but I’ve crashed since getting home.”

“Yes, you must be. That single hour is a killer.”

“Yeah. C’mere. I missed you.” When he hugged her, he squeezed so tight her feet left the floor. 

“You missed me after two weeks?”

“Yeah, course I did. I still wish you’d come.”

“Right. Can you picture that? Me in Ibiza with—I don’t know—a glow-band around my neck and some nuclear green shot dribbling down my chin?”

“One hundred percent. Come with me next time.”

“Next time?” Lissa sank onto the sofa, pulling a stack of papers from underneath her. “Two weeks didn’t satiate you?”

“It was—I mean… I don’t remember every moment, but it was… yeah. Mad, basically.” He was nodding a faraway look in his eyes—back in some den of iniquity screaming Shots! Shots! And posing for a photo next to someone’s arse tattoo. 

She’d opted not to go when he’d floated the idea, claiming busyness, but she knew the debauched shores of Ibiza was not the place for a person like her. She’d hold him back somehow, looming in the corner of a club with her generally judgemental air, then suggesting they take a guided tour of the old town while he was still vomiting the remains of the previous evening off the side of the balcony. 

But maybe she was just scared of what might or might not happen once they’d left the confines of their routine. A choice between moral vertigo and crushing rejection that she was not prepared for. 

“Maybe when we graduate, we could do an Ibiza holiday together. 2008. Our last free summer. What do you think? You think I could handle it?” 

“Ha. Yeah,” Nick said. Busy, suddenly, in a search through the miniature bottles in his toiletry bag. “We’ll see. Maybe.”

“Like, I’m just getting used to the club thing, but maybe in two years I’ll be a veteran. Do you reckon?”

He pinched his nostrils. “You act like it’s a quantifiable skill. I don’t know if it’s something you can study for.”

“So you’re saying I won’t ace the exams.”

Again, he dodged her eye. “Mm. I’m going to take a shower, is that cool?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, you can… do whatever. TV is yours.”

He shut the bathroom door, and she heard the hum of the shower, the splash of water over the tiles. Sighing, she reached for the pile of papers—the remnants of his holiday, tossed onto the cushions. Boarding pass, bus tickets, hotel booking. Inside the sleeve of his passport was a postcard with a colourful illustration of a white sand beach. She turned it over in her hands. 

4th September 2006. 

Lissa, 

He’d written it for her. She sat up straighter. 

It’s a cliche to write ‘I wish you were here,’ but I do, actually, wish you were. You’d hate it, but at least we’d be laughing about it in between moments of pure horror. Thinking of you on your birthday. I’m glad you’re not wasting your 21st here, but sad you’re not wasting it with me. I’ll buy you dinner when I’m home. 

Did I write ‘when’? I meant ‘if’. No guarantee I’ll survive.

Love, 

N. 

Beneath was someone else’s juvenile scrawl. Dowdall, no doubt, or one of his other barely literate friends who went exclusively by their last names and had seized control of the pen.

Love you Lisa. XXxXxx Your a sexy bitch I fancy you from Nick. 

Then there was another message. Smaller, bubblier font with little circles over each i occupied a portion of the postcard. 

Nick, you’re amazing! Had the greatest week ever with you. Text me! Message me on MSN. 

Don’t forget me! XxXxXx

Sharon. 

Ah, of course there was a Sharon, for where there was a Nick, there was a Sharon. Yes, Sharon, Lissa narrated. I’ll give you this postcard, and you can put your details there. I won’t send it to my friend. She won’t mind. 

And Lissa didn’t mind, not really, because he’d followed through on his postcard promise and was actually buying her dinner that night. They were ordering Chinese. Nick never actually would call Sharon, because he never got around to things like that—distance made relationships inconvenient. 

The bottom of the pile was his notebook—the one he carried with him sometimes, often pulling it out to scrawl observations into it. Smell of turf smoke–earthy?? Was one. Asics tracksuit pants in the canal. Ice cubes look like molars. Dog shit isn’t white anymore? The fractured ramblings of a madman. 

He never minded her snooping. She’d asked him once or twice what he was writing when he had the book out on the bus or at brunch, and when he’d showed her, she’d regretted having an interest. It was rarely something that made any sense to her, like, say, a juicy account of his most private feelings. She wasn’t actually sure he had private feelings at all, just blatant and very public ones. “You’re hot,” she’d actually heard him say once to someone in lieu of an introduction. “Do you mind if I kiss you?” and the girl said yes to him. He was like an alien. 

So she pulled a folded paper free from the pages—one of his printed pieces—and flipped it open. 

An essay. 

Mick’s taxi smells like cigarettes and pine-scented air freshener–the kind that hangs from the mirror and never exactly works. He’s been driving the city for over forty years, and knows the veins of this city like the ones on the back of his own hand. 

“I’ll tell you about Dublin,” he says to me. “Used to be you knew everyone. All the local characters. You heard about Johnny Forty Coats?”

I have, but anecdotally. For I was raised in a different Dublin—a city post Johnny Forty Coats and Bang Bang, the man who shot finger guns at passengers of Dublin Bus. I’ve come up amongst the flash and excess of the Celtic Tiger, exposed to more wealth than my ancestors could imagine. It’s different for Mick. He remembers life before the boom.  

“Now it’s all tourists, tech lads who think they own the place. Look, like your man over there.” 

He is pointing to a young lad with a backpack, speaking on the phone as he crosses from North Earl Street to the Spire. I don’t know what it is about him that’s caught Mick’s attention, but I am aware he looks a bit like I do. For a moment, there I am. Conscious of myself—a gentrifier in the back seat of the car.

Mick’s observational, not bitter. There’s truth in—

The bathroom door opened, and Nick emerged wearing a towel. Lissa reflexively folded the paper and tried to slot it back into the notebook. 

He barely cared. “Oh, you’re reading that thing.” 

“Yeah,” she hesitated. “I really like it.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s it for?”

“Oh, some college thing.” He crossed the room to pick through his clothing, and Lissa knew to keep her back to him while he changed. “I didn’t finish it.”

“You didn’t hand it in.”

“Nah.”

“Well, you should have. It’s interesting.”

“Mick was cool, yeah. Bit of a wildcard. Eventually, he started going on about conspiracy theories, though, kind of derailed the interview.”

“That’s why it’s unfinished?”

“No, I just didn’t get around to it. I was doing other things.”

Lissa fought a wave of frustration. What was more important than his college work? Especially when he was so clearly good at it, when it was so easy for him, but she held herself back from scolding him because she knew already that Nick did what Nick did, regardless of her opinion.  

“Well, I’d like to read whatever you write in future. You should email me your college work.”

“Serious? Thought you weren’t into that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing? Literature?”

“No. Articles. Interviews. Got the impression you’d rather self-immolate than read a magazine piece.”

She risked looking at him, mercifully clothed already, pulling his socks on. “Yeah, an article about Katie Price and her husband, sure, but I’d read your work. Whatever genre it is. If all magazines had writing like this, I’d clear the shelves.”

There was a razor-thin line to tread when speaking to Nick about his work—balancing between patronising encouragement and total dismissal. You had to hit exactly the right tone, or he disengaged. 

She bit her lip and watched him disengage. Took his paper from her and tossed it onto the coffee table. “C’mon, Lissa. Boring.” He flopped onto the sofa beside her. “Do you want to watch this programme? You like quiz shows, yeah? You should be on one. Smarty pants.” 

She didn’t, so he switched to Judge Judy, and they watched quietly, Nick’s shoulder pressed up against hers, his damp hair leaving an imprint on the cushion behind him. 

“What’s with the clothes?” he said, pinching the steel grey cotton of her slacks. 

“It’s just what I wore. I wanted to look professional.”

“Oh, the hotel,” looking at her, she couldn’t look back. His face was too close to hers. “How did it go?”

“Fine. There’s not much to it.”

“Running an actual hotel, like?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. The work is obvious. Dad just made a heap of phone calls and strolled around feeling smug about himself.”

“Nice. That’s the life.”

She huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Not mine. I really don’t think I’m cut out for the job.”

“Hm. You just don’t want it.”

“Mm.” 

“Did you see Phil?”

“I did.”

“And? What’d he say? That he hot-tubbing with fourteen Russian models with double-Ds?”

“No. Barely said anything, actually. Thank God.”

“Good. So you didn’t get a whiff of his gingivitis.”

“You should write about him in your next essay. He’s the kind of character you’d do justice, do you think?”

Nick’s expression shifted. Stood up suddenly and went into the kitchen. “Do you want a glass of wine? I’ve got some Pinot open in the fridge.”

She watched him. “Yeah, okay.”

“And then we can order dinner. Hang on, I’ll find the menu.”

“Okay. I’ll just order the prawn—”

“Yep, I’ll get the menu.”

“I know what I want.”

“Hang on.” His face was hidden from her behind the kitchen island as he rummaged through the bottom drawer. 

“Nick, are you alright?”

“Yeah, of course. All good.”

“You sure? You seem a bit…”

“Yeah, tired,” he said, before changing his answer to: “Wired, maybe. I dunno, yeah. I’ve barely slept since before Ibiza. Maybe I’m a bit manic.”

“...are you on drugs?”

“Yeah, Liss, I took a yoke on the flight. Of course not. I’m just looking for the menu, wait a sec.”

There would be times in Lissa’s life she would encounter difficulties far beyond those faced in her first two decades—times she would struggle, fail, claw her way back up, only to fail again. Moments she would feel out of her depth, inferior, overwhelmed, like surrendering was her only option—but New Year’s Eve, that crisp, white day in 2005, found her without notion of such things as losing. She was actively winning! No race but the one inside her head had been declared, but she was beating the others as she tore down the slope, leaving them in the mist. 

The precise forward tilt, her control of the skis, cutting, swerving. She conjured up a flattering image of herself—The olympian punching through the air, aerodynamic, sleek. She was pure technique. Undeniable, even in a suit that had fit more nicely the year before, the dull headache pressing at her temples from poor sleep. And Joshua—

Her mind snagged on him, and her body surged with a sourness that swamped her self-satisfaction. His face that morning. His “I don’t feel like going,” like he couldn’t be bothered with an excuse. The point was to show face—participate in an activity with her, as was the obligation of all boyfriends, instead of embarrassing her. 

She didn’t have time to correct. Her ski—the world tilted—sky, trees, snow, and then she was down, ankle twisted beneath her.

She felt a wrongness, like something coming off inside her. 

Then the pain came. Sharp, white-hot, shooting up her calf.

“Lissa!” Diane’s face appeared as the edges of her vision blurred. “Lissa, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, and that was instinct. The reality was her ankle swelling inside her boot. “Actually, I don’t know.”

And then they were all there—Alexander, Anika, Nick—filling her vision, staring. She did not want to be stared at. Not while fallen. She tried to struggle up, but someone pushed her back down. Nick. Gloved hands pinning her shoulders to the snow. 

“No, wait,” he said. Breathless from the skiing, hopefully, and not the sight of her. “Don’t move. You might have broken something.”

“That’s what I’m trying to see. Let me look at it.”

“No, stay down. What if you’re really hurt?”

“As in I’ve broken my back?” she said indignantly. “I think I would know!”

“It’s good to be safe,” Diane said. “Just stay there. Alexander—call for patrol.”

“You’re all being so ridiculous!”

“Shh,” Nick said, which made her want to shout some more. 

“I am fine! Let me up! I’m not going down like this, I’m not!” 

But she did go down like that, and doing it via sled, wrapped in a giant sheet of what might have been tin foil, which only added to the humiliation. Nick went with her. God knows why he’d insisted on coming, because all he was doing was repeatedly asking if she was okay between anxious comments to ski patrol in French spoken without even the barest attempt at an intelligible accent. She had to start ignoring him. 

The medic at the tent spoke as rudely as possible to her—likely for the crime of not being French enough—and prodded around her ankle with hard fingers while Nick went grey in the face. Sprained, not broken. That was the diagnosis.

“So I can’t ski?”

“Eh? Of course not.” Stupid girl. 

Bandaged and armed with a blister pack of painkillers, she was banished to the chalet in disgrace. 

“You can go back to the slopes if you want,” Lissa said, unsure what to do with her leg. “You don’t have to sit here staring at me. The injury’s not getting worse.”

Nick struggled out of his jacket and tossed it onto a chair. “It’s alright. I’ll stay.”

“If my mum forced you to come, it doesn’t mean she’ll be mad if you go back. Tell her I’m fine. Tell her I wanted to be alone.”

“Do you want to be alone?”

“I don’t mind.”

Nick picked a log from the pile by the fireplace. “I’ll light a fire,” he announced, as if offering a great, noble deed. “You’ll want to be warm, yeah?”

She watched him place the logs in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement atop the pile of last night’s ash. A perfectly lovely fire pit worthy of a children’s cartoon, which would absolutely never work. 

“You going to clean it first?” Lissa said. 

He chuckled under his breath. “Yes, of course. I was planning on doing that.”

“Your parents never made you light a fire.”

“No. Excuse you. I mowed the grass, washed the car, things like that.”

“Wow, I’m impressed. We’ve got a real handyman here.”

“Hmph.” He dismantled his tower, log by log. “And where’s your boyfriend, then? Shouldn’t he be the one lighting you a fire?”

“Well, it’s you that insisted.”

Nick opened the grate and let ashes spill onto the hearth. “Shouldn’t you tell him we’ve come back? Let him know about your ankle?”

From the bedroom above, there was no sound. “I don’t want to interrupt him,” Lissa said. “He’s so wrapped up in his essay.”

“What essay?”

She didn’t know. “Something for college. He takes it all really seriously.”

“Ah, so seriously it prevents him from engaging with his girlfriend’s sprained ankle.”

Lissa bristled. “He takes his work seriously. It’s one thing I admire about him.”

“Right, yes. Of course. That’s a special thing you share.”

“Well, anyway. There’s more to life than all of that, isn’t there?”

Nick just laughed. Emptied his shovel into the metal bucket and wiped his hands on his trousers, smearing grey powder over his hips. 

“Firelighters,” she told him. “Then logs.”

“Right, there’s an order.”

“Do you know how many fireplaces there are at the hotel?”

“I don’t. One hundred. And they made you light them all like a little child-servant.”

“Some. That’s how I learned.”

A match rasped against the side of the box. “So this is your future, then? Lighting fires in the Mansfield.”

“I don’t expect so, as I’m not the one who’ll own it.”

“What, the business? You won’t inherit it?”

Lissa chuckled. “No, of course not. I don’t want the hotel. I’m going to do something a bit more exciting, that actually belongs to me. The whole point is to create my legacy, not to inherit someone else’s, so whatever—Alexander can have the Mansfield, and I’ll have my thing.” 

Nick thought this was funny—a singular shake of his shoulders while he reassembled his stack.

“What?”

“No, just, I’m not convinced I can see Alexander take on the business. He doesn’t exactly seem like a tycoon to me, you know what I mean?”

“He’s still only seventeen.”

“Mm, but you at seventeen… You already had the spirit of a thirty-five-year-old estate agent. You’re not the same animal.”

Lissa paused. They were sitting suddenly on the edge of something, which he must have sensed too, as he was all at once extremely interested in the flames.

“I didn't know you thought that,” she said.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. I suppose I felt you were a bit—” he trailed off.

She let him trail off. Watched him.

“Well. At my dad's wedding, you said—”

Now his ears went red.

“You told me you thought I was the flower girl, and that I looked fifteen. Do you remember that? I remember it.”

“It was like two and a half years ago,” he mumbled. “I dunno what to say. I was an idiot.”

“So you didn’t think I was fifteen, then,” she said. “You just—did you say that to make me feel bad?”

“No, no, come on. I was joking.”

She could still recall his expression, and the careless shrug he threw her without even bothering to look her in the face. She hated that Nick. Even after all the time that had passed, he managed to bring her temper to a boil. 

“I don’t think you were.”

“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was harsh, probably. I don’t remember that being a very good day.”

“Well, neither do I,” she said. “My father was remarrying essentially the moment the courts allowed it to a woman who invited tabloid magazines to do a feature on them. I was trying not to cry while a load of bloody journalists followed me around, asking which Backstreet Boy was my favourite. It was hell. I get angry when I think about it.”

He turned now, a moody, cornered look on his face. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “That isn’t ideal.”

“It wasn’t. And then, in the middle of it all, some random teenage boy came over and told me he thought I was stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid. That isn’t what I thought. I thought the opposite, actually.”

“You thought I was a—a huge nerd or something,” Saying this was somehow unbearably embarrassing for Lissa, who flattened her hands against her face, burning from ear to ear.

“I didn’t know you were Lissa Mansfield,” Nick said. “We got off on the wrong foot. I would have spoken to you differently if I’d realised.”

“And how does one speak to Lissa Mansfield?”

He grunted dismissively. “Look, my parents talk about you the whole time—Jarlath’s daughter, and how perfect she is. They thought maybe because we’re the same age or in the same circles I would want to know. Or maybe, I dunno, it was a humiliation ritual, or a way to trick me into copping on. They thought I would like to know how well you were doing at school, or how you did debating, or hockey, or spoke fluent French, all while working that weekend job you had at the hotel. To be honest, it was annoying.”

“My dad brags about me to whoever. I think it’s to make himself look good.”

“Yeah, well, my parents were pulling me out of boarding school that summer—arranging for me to go somewhere where they could basically pay my way into college. It was our last, pathetic resort. The last stop before I became one of those sad men playing games in the family computer room until they died.”

Lissa was not in an especially sympathetic mood. “Right,” she said. “So because you were having a hard time, it was fine to take it out on me. Are those the kind of punch-down tactics they taught you at boarding school?”

“Well—come on. I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“You make me so self-conscious. I’ve always been convinced you kind of hate me.”

“What? I don’t remotely hate you. I actually—like, I admire you.”

She scoffed. “Oh, come on.”

“I do,” he watched the fire, picking up now and scorching the edges of the wood, and for a long moment, he was quiet. “Your dad’s right to brag. You’ve got pretty much unbelievable levels of work ethic. I was mad because I felt I needed to compare. I can’t, obviously. I’m just one guy, and you’re like three girls all in one, so…”

“Yes. My life is completely sorted.”

“I said you work hard, not that you’re a perfect person,” he said. “The point is, I’m sorry. I really am.”

“I know that.”

“I’m making a conscious effort to be less of a dickhead, even though it’s… innate.”

“Please, you’re not that bad.”

“It’s fine. I am. But I don’t want to be a dick to people who don’t deserve it.”

“Well, okay. I appreciate that.” 

Lissa shifted automatically, and as an arrow of pain shot up her leg, she remembered her ankle. She let out a small, involuntary cry, and Nick leapt to attention. 

“Can I do something?”

“Ah—no. You’re fine. It just hurts.”

He was grabbing a cushion. “Do you want to put this under it?” He was unsure whether or why such a thing would help, which struck Lissa as oddly cute. Not a sportsman.

“Could you do me a big favour, actually?”

“Of course.”

“I think I’d like hot chocolate. Do you think you could—”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely,” he grinned, delighted to be useful. “Don’t worry, Lissa, I’ve got you there. I can make hot chocolate easily.”

And to the kitchen he went, whistling to himself while the fire reached a hearty blaze. Its crackling and popping while the snow piled up on the sills brought a childhood comfort, a nostalgia for the good old days, if she hadn’t imagined them. 

Upstairs, Joshua was moving around, pacing. In the silent pockets between Nick’s clanging and cursing, she could hear the low rumble of his voice through the ceiling. He was on the phone. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. 

Nick emerged after some moments, pleased with himself, a mug in each fist like a pair of trophies. Sat with her on the sofa, and she disregarded the brief brush of her fingers against his as he passed her the drink. 

She sipped and held the liquid in her mouth for a long moment. Bitter. 

“Good?”

“Yes. Lovely.”

They watched whatever was on television—some French film featuring people in elaborate medieval costumes, already halfway through, without subtitles. 

Nick rested his head back against the cushions and stared at the screen. He was close enough that she could smell wood smoke on his clothes. She slyly observed the shape of his throat as he craned his neck toward the ceiling, and Joshua’s footsteps crossed the bedroom above. “Is he on the phone up there?” 

“Mm.”

A pause. “If we can hear him, he’s heard us, right?”

“I suppose.”

“And he’s not come down to say hello?”

Lissa didn’t say anything for a moment. “He’s busy. It’s probably about his brother’s baby.”

She felt him watching the side of her face, as if to make pointed eye contact, but she stared at the television.

He gave up. Joshua kept talking—pacing. It had been ages now. 

After sipping his drink, Nick jolted forward in his seat and sputtered. “Jesus Christ, that’s awful hot chocolate. What the hell did I do?”

“No sugar,” she said. “You used plain cocoa.” Her own cup was cooling on the coffee table—unstirred powder blooming on the surface.

“Well, why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t want to be rude.”

Nick laughed. “I think you should be ruder, Lissa.”

She liked hearing that. “You think?”

“Absolutely.”

She smiled. He smiled. They stopped speaking and watched the movie. 

Downstairs, someone shrieked with laughter. Music pounded. Diane’s voice rose above it all, bright and drunk and oblivious. “Fifteen minutes!” She cried. “Where is my daughter?”

And in the living room, among a sea of sophisticated strangers, ex-pats and art dealers, Diane caught her arm, champagne spilling onto the carpet, her eyes bright. “Lissa! Where is Joshua?”

“Not feeling well, unfortunately.” 

“Oh, that headache is lasting a while. Poor thing.” She pulled a great, dramatic, and utterly unconvincing sad face, but then her eyes sharpened as she looked more closely at Lissa. “Are you alright, darling?”

“Fine, yeah.”

“Are you sure? You don’t look—”

“I’m fine, Mum. Leave it.”

“Oh, well, then. Have some champagne. It’s almost midnight.”

Lissa took the glass and brought it to an armchair. Pushing coats and bags aside, she sat and sipped, observing as though through a pane of glass the party churning around her. She was the mysterious figure in the dark corner, watching adults behave like teenagers, laughing and laughing, faces bright and joyful, and easy to resent. 

The occasional drunken diplomat staggered up to greet her. Oh, Lissa. You look beautiful. You’ve grown. Do you remember me? She never did. Diane’s acquaintances were a rotating reel of sun-aged faces, Francis or Claude, Thelma or Camille. 

Near the fireplace, Nick and Anika had their heads close.

“I should say something to her, shouldn’t I? Just check?” He said. 

“No,” Anika replied. “Leave her. Don’t say anything. She’s more sensitive than she pretends to be.”

The countdown started.

Dix! Neuf! Huit! Sept! Six!

Lissa stayed where she was.

Cinq! Quatre! Trois! Deux! Un!

Bonne année! The room erupted, and Nick cupped Anika's face.

Lissa watched. Anika’s hand on his hip, the way her head tilted back as he kissed her. Open mouths. It was pleasant, in a way, to watch him kissing someone else—the angle of his jaw and the shadow of his lashes against his face while confetti exploded cinematically around them. 

She stayed where she was, staving off drunken small talk until the party died down and finally—finally, Diane had to be carried off to bed, and thus marked the end of the night. 

Anika appeared by the chair, crouching into Lissa’s eyeline. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said. “Are you doing alright?” 

“Yeah, fine.”

“Did something happen with Joshua?” 

“I don’t want to talk about it, thanks.”

Anika nodded. “Alright, well, I’m here if you want to talk.” 

“Yep.”

Alexander cleared the glasses and swept the confetti from the floor, stealing wary glances at Lissa, and frightened to address her. Then, when he had finished cleaning, he sloped off to bed, mumbling, “goodnight”. 

And Nick—Nick who she wouldn’t dare to look at again, in case he approached her—Nick snuck another bottle of wine from the cellar. With two glasses in his hand, he and Anika headed upstairs, pausing only to press up against the wall, giggling softly into one another’s mouths. 

And then she was alone. 

She moved the coffee table to make space for the pull-out bed, fetched blankets and pillows from the cupboard, and with the house silent save for the patter of snow on the glass and crackling timber in the dying fire, she lay down and finally, finally, she allowed herself to cry. 

Once she’d started, it was less of a cry and more a wail—retching, infant-like, and heaving from her depths. Open-mouthed with no sound, gasping for breath, and then the wave would pass for a few moments, and she’d stare at the beams on the ceiling, hot tears steaming down her face and she’d feel dimly optimistic in her assumption that nothing could ever feel worse than this. 

Then she’d remember something poignant, like when Joshua held her hand under the covers of this very pull-out bed, on this very night six years earlier as one century became another, and she would cry again for the hopes she’d held for them and for herself, her foolish assumptions that everything would be alright. 

There was movement on the stairs—the creak of a step, and Lissa sat up. 

Nick. 

A silhouette in the ghostly light, he moved toward the kitchen, then stopped. He’d spotted her. 

“You’re sleeping down here,” he said. 

“Yes.”

He went into the kitchen. Filled a glass with water. She heard the gurgle of the pipes, the squeak of the brass tap, then he paused in the archway, and they looked at one another. Lissa couldn’t think of what to say to him, but for once, that felt alright. They were caught in the shadowy place between one year and the next, and it was borrowed time. She felt no obligation to perform. 

“Fuck him, Lissa,” he said simply. “Fuck him.”

And then he was gone. 

Lissa stared at the fire for a long time—the final embers glowing orange, then fading to ash. 

And sometime in the very first hours of 2006, she finally slept.

End of Part One

She changed clothes in the bathroom of a shopping centre. A disgusting idea, in hindsight, but there she was anyway, peeling her knee-high socks off, folding her school uniform into neat rolls like hotel towels and stuffing them into her schoolbag. Her phone buzzed and let off the tinny ringtone sound she’d chosen specifically for her boyfriend. It was in the bag somewhere, amongst the cumbersome textbooks, pencil cases and the empty Tupperware box she brought her lunch in. She fumbled for it, its small, pebble shape, and then, hooking a strand of hair free from her lip gloss, she answered.

“Joshua.”

His voice competed with the whoosh of traffic. By the sound of things, his window was open, and his phone on speaker, resting on the neat little device clipped to his dashboard. “Sweetheart, I’m running a bit late, actually.”

She sighed. “Really?”

“Town is mad today. I’m sorry. I wonder could you sort of meet me on Leeson Street, or something like that.”

Examining her shoes, she chewed into her lip. Stupid thick wooden block heels. What seemed a logical idea when she was packing them that morning now seemed insane. She could hardly walk in them without feeling like a freshly born foal. “Right.”

“Sorry. Princesses shouldn’t have to walk so far.”

Joshua wasn’t being sarcastic. He enjoyed referring to Lissa as a princess who did princess things, deserved the treatment of a princess, but she felt a prickle when he did it. Not yet able to name what it was about this framing that annoyed her, she said nothing, became skilled at pretending otherwise, and encouraged him with her silence. 

As she hiked along the edge of Stephen’s Green, her footsteps made a hollow clop against the pavement, the balls of her feet already aching. But the first of the leaves were changing, all the trees above the railings turning from tired green to russet, gathering in the grates and by the kerbs. It was enough to make it bearable. She liked September more than other months–it was a practical time to have a birthday. 

The city was busying itself. Traffic building, buses chugging by carrying uniformed students crammed into their seats in lively conversation. Sometimes she imagined herself like that, hanging over the back of a bus seat, laughing with others, wrestling with some cheeky boy trying to steal her school bag. Her life was serious in a way no one else her age seemed to recognise. A seriousness of her own making, she thought, a life in which juvenile comedy and laughing at hypothetical scenarios didn’t feature, and she never felt the camaraderie of school bus banter.

She stood near the traffic lights on Leeson Street and stared in the direction she thought Joshua would appear as crowds swam around her. Affluent people around there, their shoes and their bags, and something about the look of their faces that gave them away. This ineffable trait she wondered if she had, or would earn eventually, just from living her life. 

Noise behind her as a group emerged from a school. Her age. Five or six of them. Their laughter buoyant, clear and bright like the slice of sky above the buildings. Convinced of their own brilliance, their own hilarity. She made a point of dodging eye contact and stiffened her posture. She knew their school. The one where good grades were easily given, and uniforms unnecessary. They didn’t value hard work, she thought. They just paid their way to top marks and walked into any college they wanted to. Hardly fair. Lissa could go there too if she were lazy, and didn’t bother so much with things. 

“Oh, is that Lissa?” one of them said, and she felt the blood drain from her face. Turned reluctantly, too close to them to risk pretending she didn’t hear. 

It was him. From the wedding–Nick Lynott, saluting her with a wave.

She flattened her mouth into the awkward cousin of a smile. His eyes flicked over her, not lingering, not kind, and then she turned away. He didn't come near, and she didn’t risk a glance at him again until he had walked past her, but still, her heart thumped like they'd had a confrontation.

One of his friends looked back at her and caught her eye. 

“Who’s that?” she heard him ask, as Lissa snapped her burning face back towards the road.

“Just someone I met at this wedding during the summer,” Nick replied. “To be honest, she was a bit—”

He let it trail off, and his friends giggled, like whatever she was was tragically obvious just from looking at her for three seconds. What was she? A bit what? Her pulse rushed in her ears.

Joshua’s jeep sailed to a stop by the lights as Lissa stood and stewed on the pavement. He had leaned across and opened the door for her before she even noticed him through blurry vision. 

“Uh, Lissa?” He said, like it wasn’t the first time he’d called her name. “Are you okay?”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, the traffic…”

She clambered into the passenger seat, gripping tight the straps of her schoolbag in the footwell. “No, it’s okay. I get it.”

“You seem upset.”

She pulled down the mirror. Relaxed the lines on her forehead. “No, I’m not, I’m fine. I’m… excited.” Arranged her face into a smile. “Nervous.”

“I know you don’t love surprises, but I promise you’ll love what I’ve put together. Just trust me.” He reached into the back seat to pass her an enormous bouquet of red roses. “These are just for now,” he said. “A taster.”

Lissa cradled them in her arms awkwardly, like an infant, held her smile until he leaned across and kissed her softly, his mouth damp and warm, and against her, he murmured, “happy birthday, princess.”

The pub was a stone’s throw from the gates of the college—an old traditional place, whose steps were now filled with banished smokers, as the late October wind tunneled down the street. It was the kind of dark, sultry venue that people flocked to in the hopes of finding an authentic experience, yellowed walls from decades of cigarettes, the thick, malty smell of beer, and a crackling fire. Later, Lissa would worry about the smell on her clothing, but now, she concentrated on her path through the crowd with Anika, the place so full and loud that she considered grabbing hold of her coat sleeve to guide her.

Anika navigated the space like she was from there, offering greetings as she passed, a hand on a shoulder, a back, I’ll chat to you later, yeah? Good to see you. She secured them two seats at the back, beneath signed posters of old rock stars and politicians. Half a table, already claimed by coats and half-empty pint glasses.

“Stay,” she said. “I’ll grab drinks. What’ll you have?”

Lissa struggled out of her coat, half-sitting on it already. “I don’t know. Whatever you’re having.”

She pulled her jacket into her lap and scanned the room with mild panic. Alone at a table, looking a bit gormless, like someone who’d never been to a pub before. They weren’t really pubs-and-pints people, the Mansfields, more wine bars and small plates, but she was keen to embrace the lifestyle. She was certain she could become someone who sat around holding a Guinness if she really put her mind to it. 

Like the people at the table across from her. Pints on the table in front of them, a packet of cheese and onion crisps torn open and flattened into a makeshift plate. She eavesdropped casually on their conversation, as if seeking instruction. 

“Yes, but the library is always unbearable in the evening,” someone said. “I actually have to go home to study, and that means—”

Indistinct muttering, laughing, the door to the beer garden swooshing open, and a blast of frigid air over Lissa’s legs. She craned around looking for Anika, or at least someone on the staff to clear away the dirty glasses, but no one was coming.  

She looked back at the table. Students, for sure, the way they spoke. The arts, too, if she had to wager a guess. Maybe history, anthropology, or English or something else that produced the type of degree designed to trap you in academia forever. Future doctors of philosophy, she thought with a private smile. They will write their theses about a Wittgensteinian remark or something. 

“No, no, wait, quiet for a minute,” the guy nearest to her was saying, his hand up like halting traffic. “Let Maddie talk—Maddie, continue.”

There was something oddly calming about the way he controlled the table—not loud, not showy, just certain. He turned his head back to Maddie, and she saw him in profile. 

Nick.

Lissa jolted her face away immediately, heat rushing to her cheeks, body tense like a spooked cat. Anika chose that moment to return, one slim glass in each hand. 

“Are you a bit warm?” She frowned. “You’ve gone… slightly violet.”

Lissa fanned her hands over her face. “I’m fine. I have one of those complexions.” Grabbed the drink and brought it to her cheek, the ice clinking pleasingly by her ear. “All good. This looks so nice, by the way. Is it a cocktail?”

Anika slipped into her seat. “Just a vodka and tonic. Is that cool?”

“Oh yeah, totally.” She took a sip. It was horrible. 

She tried not to focus on Nick, but he was also right there, which made it a challenge. Over Anika’s shoulder, leaning in, listening intently. Extremely intently, like there was no one in the room except the person speaking. How odd that she felt hurt by it. And the memories from her father’s wedding resurfaced—the way he’d treated her like the most boring creature on the planet. This—knowing he was capable of such intense levels of conversational engagement—made his flippancy sting even worse, like he’d torn off her plaster and spat into the wound.

She would have her drink. Concentrate on having it. At some point, she decided it would be best to keep an eye on Anika’s, and make sure they were having the same amount, but by the time she’d even had the thought, her drink was already lighter than she meant it to be. Fine. The edges of her bitterness had been knocked off, and other people were arriving, obscuring the other table from view. 

Someone Anika knew from lectures. Someone else who knew someone else. Coats slung over chairs, then over each other, and then someone was sitting on Lissa’s. Trapped irretrievably. She stopped planning her exit and ordered another drink while the table filled with glasses she wasn’t sure were hers. 

Anika leaned back and laughed at something said at the other table. Her knee bumped against Lissa’s. 

“Oh, how rude of me!” She said to the person next to her. “This is Nick, from…what do you do, darling? Literature?”

She could only see the top third of his head, and his hand running through his hair. He must have been getting gel on his fingers. She hated that she even gave it thought. 

She drank again. 

Around her, the room was warmer, louder, the fire blazing against the side of her face. Words were arriving a second too late, like she was grasping for them, pulling them out of the air after two, three failed attempts. When she laughed, she was surprised by how easily it spilled from her, and how raucous. Someone brought her a drink without asking. She didn’t refuse. 

At some point, she realised she was no longer thinking about the taste at all.

The realisation she was drunk didn’t hit until she stood, staggered towards the door. Amusing how things spun when she moved, the exotic dance of the door handles, guessing which one to grab. She unleashed herself into the night air and thick smog of nicotine, cold lapping up and down her arms. Which way? This way, surely. 

Someone told her the bathroom was inside, actually, which made sense. She spun back as the door swung open…

…and bumped straight into him. 

“Oh, sorry, love, I didn’t see you.” Nick had an unlit cigarette between two fingers. “Are you alright?”

“Yes. Sorry. I was trying to find—”

“Oh, Lissa. Sorry, Lissa Mansfield, right? I didn’t mean to crash into you there, I was just heading out for a smoke.”

She just stood there. Thought of pretending not to know him as a form of revenge, but had some dim awareness that the ability to carry off a convincing lie would be difficult in her condition. 

He caught her eye with intention and added, “Or, excuse me, Bouchard-Mansfield, wasn’t it?”

“Hm, yes,” she muttered. “From the wedding.”

“I was just about to say. The wedding.” A pause. “How’s your father?”

“He’s fine.”

“And that wonderful extension?”

It was difficult to tell whether the nauseating wave that came over her was caused by the vodka tonics or the harrowing images she was conjuring of that monstrous cube. “Ugh,” she said. “It’s finished. They’re landscaping. The landscaping is…” she struggled to think of the word. “... fetid.”

“‘Fetid’,” he echoed. “That’s a great word.”

“It’s not the appropriate word.”

“I should use it in an email.”

“Hm. You may.” 

He was moving around in front of her. Once Nick. Two Nicks. He was more pleasant when she couldn’t actually make out his expression, or any of the things about his face that annoyed her. Maybe one was Good Nick, and the other was Evil Nick. One could only tell the truth and the other could only lie. Was she mixing up her allegories? 

Both Nicks were laughing, which was interesting. 

“I may? Thanks so much for your permission.”

“You can write whatever emails you like. I don’t care.”

“Noted.” He reached for his pocket. “Do you want one?” 

He was offering her a cigarette, which she certainly didn’t want. She had never smoked, nor intended to, and shook her head. “They’re illegal.”

“Well, they aren’t…” 

It’s not what she meant. 

“Indoors, unfortunately,” he continued. “I miss not having to freeze my tits off every time I want to go for one.”

“I meant—” she didn’t actually know what she meant. She reached for the word and clutched at air. The buildings behind Nick were rotating as if fixed to a wheel, and she lurched sideways as she spun with them.

“Woah, hang on a second,” he grabbed her arm. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, yes, thank you very much.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Alright, maybe I drank a little too much.” As her words slurred together into one long, drunken soup, he stared at her blankly.

“We might need to find someone to bring you home.”

“I’m fine.”

“I respect that, but I reckon if the bouncers see you, they’ll chuck you out. I’d feel better if that didn’t happen.”

It was reasonably logical. 

“Where are you staying, Lissa?”

“Botany Bay.”

“Of course you are,” he muttered, as if he thought somehow she wouldn’t hear him. She didn’t like that. And why was he still holding onto her arm? She snatched herself away. 

He was floating near her eyeline now, looking serious. Very brown eyes, he had. “You live with Anika, yeah? Anika Sutton?” 

She blinked hard, seized with anxiety. “Don’t interrupt Anika.”

“Then who do I get, Lissa? Who will be looking after you?”

“Joshua,” she said, although that seemed like a poor idea, too. But yes, it was probably about time for her to be handed back to him, to whom she belonged, like a slightly crumpled jacket someone forgot at the cloakroom. 

“Is he inside?”

“He goes to another college.”

“So he’s not here? Where is he? Can you call him?” Nick said. “And tell him where you are.”

She would, but her phone was inside her coat pocket, and underneath someone else’s arse. A situation that was impossible to solve, now that the table she’d sat at was a hundred miles away, and her arms were made of lead and gelatin. But she knew Joshua’s number. Tomorrow, when she was clearheaded again, she’d be impressed by her recall of his digits, and the way she rattled them off to Nick under extreme conditions, but of course she could. She called him every day she wasn’t with him. Talked until one of them fell asleep. Was it past her bedtime? Maybe he was calling her now.

“Hey, Joshua.” Nick had one of those flat, silver phones with a chrome coated number pad that reflected the colours of the city in pleasing, abstract blobs. “This is Nick Lynott. No–no, you don’t. I’m just calling about Lissa. She’s here at the—she’s fine—” he broke off and sighed. “Nick Lynott, I said.”

While they spent several minutes arguing over who Nick was, Lissa sat. He’d put her sitting on a bench next to someone whose cigarette smoke was billowing into her face at regular intervals. Oh, wow. I’ll be sick later, she thought brightly. Joshua would have to be in there with her watching her do it, because she didn’t like vomiting. Found it violent and frightening. How odd to think she’d be in a situation like that later, sobbing over a toilet bowl, while now she smiled blandly at the neon shapes crossing the keyboard of Nick Lynott’s phone. 

“He’s coming,” Nick snapped his phone shut. His mouth was pulled tight. “Nice guy.”

“Lovely Joshua,” Lissa agreed.

He asked her to stay put, and she did, swaying in place while he ventured inside to fetch her belongings and a glass of water. The cigarette he’d been preparing to smoke had ended up on the ground, whole and unlit, and she tried to hand it back to him when he returned. 

“I don’t want to smoke something that’s been on the floor,” he said, which had her feeling inexplicably sad for it. She let it roll off her palm.

“Here,” he said, and laid her coat across her lap. He put the water into her hands, tending to her in a way that made her feel comforted and faintly infantile. It was in a Guinness glass. The embossed harp felt nice under her finger. As she stroked it hypnotically, she began recovering some thought she’d had earlier about pubs. Or pub people. Something like that. She had been very clever. She was sure of that. Nick reminded her to drink.

She did, and the pub was an aquarium through the lens of the glass. Intriguing. 

“Oh, Lissa, there you are.” And there was Joshua, emerging from the cigarette smoke like a medieval knight through mist. He smelled nice, like deodorant and clean sweat from exertion. “Princess, are you alright?” She smiled sweetly and nodded, though she wished he hadn’t called her that in front of Nick. 

But Nick was gone already, two versions of him folded into one, vanished into the noise of the pub. She looked for him anyway, searched the crowds as she felt herself be taken—Joshua’s guiding hand at her elbow—though she wasn’t sure what she meant to say if she found him.  

She tried, in a way that only made sense to her while drunk, to work out which one of him it had been. The good one or the bad one. But she found, as she was steered onto the street, the distinction no longer seemed very clear.

“Get in, get in! Huddle a bit.”

Lissa rushed and slotted herself in by someone’s elbow, pasting her most photogenic smile on before there was a noticeable shift in energy. Una glanced at Lissa. 

“Oh, sorry. This was actually meant to be a picture for the UCD girls. Don’t worry. We’ll take another after with you in it.”

And then, as Lissa stepped away, worrying, they were calling for Carley—Carley, come out, hurry, we don’t want to have a pic without you—since when couldn’t they do something without Carley? Who they’d all agreed was a drip. Or at least the last Lissa was informed, they were still on their constant pursuit to get away from her. 

Joshua was in the photo. She stared at him, pretending to laugh for the lens, having a great time with his deck-shoed mates. He didn’t even look at her. 

And, like she suspected, nobody bothered with another picture. They didn’t mention it, and fell away from the photo session with laughter and comments about how their hair looked, and who had a strawberry seed in her teeth.

Lissa found Joshua by the drinks table.  

“I’m going to head off.”

“What? Already?” He didn’t look at her as he poured a glass of prosecco. 

“Yeah, I’m unwell. A bit crampy.”

“Oh, okay then. I’ll probably stay a bit longer, so. I’ll text you later.”

She paused. “Yeah, we’ll talk later.”

He kissed her absently on the forehead and returned to his conversation. 

She slipped out through the side gate alone. Behind her, she could hear them all laughing. The sound followed her down the street, soaring into the sky above the hedgerows of the house, through the syrupy air as she passed others: children with ice cream smiles, couples holding hands, enjoying a day in the sun. 

Commuters piled through the station barriers and stood on the platform, and with the hot air of a passing train sweeping over her bare legs, Lissa waited. She watched the sparkling slash of sea through the chicken-wire fence at Booterstown Strand, and thought, as she did often those days, of Nick. She wished she was with him instead. She still carried a vivid memory of that night, together on the bed, and his wrinkled shirt. She’d told him: I know that feeling. Every day. Like nothing I do is ever going to be enough. And he’d understood that, hadn’t he? He’d looked right back at her and seen her. 

And where was Nick Lynott now? It had been weeks since she’d watched him disappear from sight through her bedroom window. She thought of him somewhere like a Spanish island with his parents—a villa with a pool, drinking cocktails with complicated garnishes. Or on a beach with a rolled-up sweatshirt under his head, dozing off to sleep while his friends tossed a frisbee around. Or was he with Anika wherever she was—home in England in the big country pile Lissa had imagined. Kissing languidly between sets of tennis, or during a scenic rest while walking up and down hills, beautiful, leggy people, like models from a perfume advertisement. Kissing, kissing, endlessly kissing. 

She wondered how she could care so much for someone with whom she’d connected only once. Holding her hand in a taxi, a thumb over her wrist. Simply looking her in the eye. It explained something either tragically romantic or pathetic about her, she concluded, and it was terribly sad for her. 

And as the train pulled up, the wind brought her back. She hit the button for the door, let the other passengers out, and stepped onboard, bound for home again.