Art stops at our table and interrupts what I was going to say. He plans to buy a guitar for his son’s thirteenth birthday and wants our advice. Jake makes a few suggestions and tells him to call in to see us in Tõnality.

‘You were saying?’ He leans his elbows on the table when Art leaves.

‘Forget it. It was just a thought.’

‘You don’t throw something like that at me without thinking it through,’ he says. ‘You’ve obviously seriously considered selling Tõnality and the house.’ This is not an accusation, more like a consideration, as if I’ve opened his mind to other possibilities. ‘Is there something else you want to tell me?’

I can’t do it. Marriages usually end after hate rants and havoc, accusations, revelations, confessions, vows of vengeance, tears, blood and sweat. What excuse do I have? How can I destroy twenty-three years of togetherness simply because I’m stressed and overworked, not thinking rationally?

‘Nothing that can’t be discussed another time,’ I reply.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Art returns with the bill and places it discreetly on the table. A business card falls from Jake’s wallet when he removes his credit card. I notice the logo as I hand it back to him. A bird, vivid blue head, russet chest. Kingfisher Graphics is written in blue below the logo. I turn the card over and see her name. The letters rise towards me then dissolve into mist. My eyes sting.

‘Where did you get this?’ I hold the card out to him.

The pause that follows is insignificant. In fact, it’s hardly noticeable, yet I’m acutely aware of his breathing, how it shortens before he clears his throat.

‘Probably at some trade fair.’

‘Which trade fair?’

‘How do I know?’ He shrugs, spreads his hands outwards, as if shoving the question away then his face clears. ‘No, that’s wrong. I remember now. We met on a flight to New York.’

‘You never told me.’

‘I meant to… then it slipped my mind.’

‘It slipped your mind?’

He takes the card from me and glances at the logo. ‘She’s a graphic designer.’

‘I know what she is.’

‘She gave me her card in case we ever need her services.’

‘Why should we need a graphic designer?’

‘We don’t need most of the services offered on the business cards that people give us,’ he replies. ‘Have you ever looked at your desk? It’s littered with them.’

The heat from the pizza ovens blasts over me. I press the beer glass to my cheeks. My forehead is hot, suddenly sweaty. ‘Yes. They’re on my desk, not in my wallet.’

‘I’d forgotten it was there. Why are you getting so uptight?’

‘Did she mention me?’

‘I can’t remember. We were only together for a short while. It took me ages to even remember who she was.’ Nothing in his voice or expression suggests he’s lying but there’s a tremor running through this conversation. It makes me nervous.

‘You never told me why you fell out with each other,’ he says. ‘I know what happened that summer was dreadful but I don’t understand why it destroyed your friendship.’

‘I’ve no intention of raking all that up again.’ I hate the hard snap in my voice but it’s better than a quiver. Karin Moylan will never make me quiver again. Why is Jake asking? Is it idle curiosity or did she say something? They must have talked about Monsheelagh. How could they not?

‘But you obviously haven’t forgotten,’ he says.

‘I said I don’t want…’

‘Okay… okay.’ He rips the card in two and flings the pieces on the table. ‘Let’s get out of here. The noise is doing my head in.’

I remember the kingfisher in Odd Bods. Why I should suddenly think about a jumble shop in Gracehills Village where my mother loved to potter on Saturday afternoons is surprising but my mind darts like a silverfish towards the memory. Two months had passed since my return from Monsheelagh and I was with Sara when she discovered the stuffed kingfisher in a glass case, almost hidden behind a set of occasional tables.

‘What do you think, Nadine?’ She pulled it free and held it towards me. ‘How would this look on the hall table?’

I backed away from the bird’s iridescent plumage, its savage gaze.

‘It’s too gaudy,’ I said. ‘I hate it.’

‘If you feel that strongly about it…’ She shrugged and replaced it back behind the tables. It was sold the next time we returned to Odd Bods.

Karin Moylan’s name has been ripped in two but the kingfisher is still recognisable: its long dagger beak and pitiless eyes.

The high, black gates with their sharply-pointed tips open and admit us to Bartizan Downs. The round, ornate bartizans are jutting like medieval turrets from the gate posts but the houses with their lush rolling lawns are in darkness. Only the smooth growl of our car suggests that lives are lived within this gated community.

We go our separate ways when we enter the house. Jake closes the door of his music room with unnecessary firmness. I go into my home office. After a short search I find a photo album in a bottom drawer of my desk. My mother was conscientious when it came to dating photographs. The albums she filled tell the story of my childhood. I’ve been tempted over the years to remove the photographs of Karin Moylan but that would break the link of who I am today. And, so, she stays in her allotted slot.

One of the photographs is larger than the others. A day in summer. Rocks and coarse golden sand, a gouged cliff face where kittiwakes fly high above us, swirling and scattered as black flakes of ash. Four weeks of blistering sunshine and frayed tempers. I’m wearing a pink bikini and leaning back on my hands, my face raised to the sun. My hair is tangled, my shoulders sunburned. Karin, in a blue bikini, sits between me and her father. She hugs her knees, taut shoulder blades raised like slender wings. He’s wearing swimming trunks, his long legs sprawled before him. Someone else must have taken the photograph because Joan Moylan is also in it. Maybe it was Jake who snapped us. Unlike the rest of us, Joan is fully dressed in jeans and a flowery blouse, a sunhat shading her face.

Fifteen years of age was a time for dreaming, and, oh, how I dreamed those days away. I walked that long, curving beach in a lovesick haze, imagining a future that was never going to happen. The tide was far out, stretched to its limits before it turned and flowed back over the hot sands, obliterating my footprints in one fluid swell.

Jenny is wrong. The past does matter. That’s the trouble with it. Like elastic, it can only be stretched so far before it recoils and slaps one in the face. Twack.

PART TWO

Chapter 8

Gracehills – twenty-seven years earlier

I fell in love with Karin Moylan when I was thirteen. This was a platonic love. I was not about to enter or emerge from any closet and my love for her was akin to that reserved for a precious item like a treasured doll or a delicate piece of jewellery. And even if I had loved her in that way, the physical differences between us could well have been a deterrent. She was small-boned and dainty. I was tall and angular, awkward elbows, knees as gangly as a colt, cheekbones too pronounced for my long, thin face. As for my hair, those unruly curls. I felt like a scarecrow who’d been left out for far too long in the rain.

We met in the fitting room of a department store. A summer heatwave had arrived and Dublin sweltered beneath it. I, too, was hot and surly, stooped with self-pity as I stood in the fitting room and tried on my new school uniform. The skirt was too long, the jumper too wide and the sleeves of the blazer hung over my hands. A smaller size would have been perfect but my mother believed I’d grow out of it within months. The fact that she was right added to my misery. In those days, I had the growing momentum of a beanstalk. The colours, maroon, cream and charcoal grey, drained my complexion and I was convinced I’d look like a corpse for the next six years. I twisted the lobes of my ears and stuck my tongue out at my reflection… in out… in out… in out. My five-year-old self came effortlessly to the surface on certain occasions and this was one of them. The fitting room curtains opened slightly and Karin’s reflection appeared behind me in the long mirror.