to talk to Matthew right now.
‘I think I need some fresh air,’ I tell him, lifting my coat.
‘Me too.’
He follows me outside and we stand in the slushy snow watching waves crash on a grey foamy sea in the near distance. I shiver, clutching my bag that holds my dress and other bits and pieces from last night, while Tom paces around me, smoking a cigarette and waiting for a reaction. But I can’t give him one right now.
‘None of this has to ruin us, does it?’ pleads Tom. ‘We can’t let it happen again, no way. I have feelings for you, Charlie. We can’t keep letting other people get in our way. Do you have feelings for me, too? Tell me.’
He puts his cold hand on my face and rests it there, looking deep into my soul. A hot tear trickles down onto his fingers from my eye but he doesn’t move his hand away.
‘I do,’ I say to him. ‘More than you’ll ever know.’
He slips his arms around my waist now and pulls me close to him, the warmth of his body soothing me instantly. I close my eyes, lean on his chest and feel the rush that fills me up from head to toe. I have to be with him. I just have to.
‘Last night at the bar,’ he says to me, like he’s breathing his last words to me. ‘Charlie, I didn’t just turn up there unexpectedly, you know that.’
I’m confused now. I look up at his face.
‘I was hoping you’d be there,’ he says. ‘I had absolutely no idea if I was on some wild goose chase, but I went to Pip’s Bar because I was looking for you. I had this mad hope you might be there, just because it’s the area of town you used to live in, and then I gave up and went out the back for a cigarette but … well then, there you were. It was like it was meant to be. Mad, really, when you think of it.’
I gulp, stunned a little that it worked out as it did. My friends and I hadn’t planned to go there last night. It was only because of the weather that we did. He couldn’t have known. He took a gamble. He’s telling the truth.
I look up to the black, snow-filled night sky and the moon that reflects down over Dublin Bay. We didn’t just meet last night by accident. Sometimes things are meant to happen. Some things are meant to be.
‘You should be a detective,’ I laugh, and he kisses me on the forehead, not lightly like he has done before, but a long, lingering kiss that makes me hold him even tighter. I give myself to him, leaning in and absorbing every ounce of the man I’ve wanted to hold me and touch me for so long.
‘I wish we could stay here forever,’ he whispers to me, and I feel exactly the same. I love this place more than anywhere I’ve ever been. This moment, this kiss, this knowing that for once in my life the planets aligned and brought us here together again.
I think I love Tom Farley, but then I always knew I did.
‘Look, just let me talk to Matthew once and for all,’ I whisper and when he looks at me, I can see the pain and worry in his eyes. ‘I’ll explain to him that he can’t get between us, no matter what happened before, and we’ll see where this all goes. I can’t take a chance on losing you again, Tom, and I know you feel the same.’
‘You sure?’
I nod at him. ‘I’ve never been so sure,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve waited five years for this. I don’t want to lose you again. Never. It’s happened once and it will never happen again.’
Matthew James Taylor, my one and only brother, was my hero every day of my life when I was a little girl. He was the big brother of dreams, the one who all my friends adored and wished they could be around, no matter what stage of life I was at.
As a child I’d hear him sing in his bedroom, everything from Elvis Presley to Oasis, and I’d watch him in awe when he took the lead in school concerts, drama groups and anything that allowed him to take centre stage. Other boys were mad into following football and chasing women, but Matthew had one dream and one dream only and that was to sing.
At first my father tried to push him into sports of all sorts, thinking he wasn’t manly enough if he didn’t play rugby or cheer on the reds or blues or whoever was the popular soccer team of the day. But Matthew was always to be found in his bedroom with a guitar strumming along to the Top Ten hits, or in the music room that used to be our garage but was soon filled with second-hand keyboards, drums and everything under the sun that Matthew could gather to build his own idea of a ‘man shed’.
In many ways he was an isolated boy growing up, because in rural Ireland it was only cool to have alternative interests as long as you could still score points and goals when it came to Gaelic games and show some rough and tumble.
But Matthew wasn’t that type at all. He was quiet and gentle and the only time he’d raise his voice was when he was hitting the high notes of a Guns N’ Roses song.
‘He’s a deep boy,’ my mother used to say, as if in apology. ‘He thinks too much. Maybe his passion for music will be his saviour one day.’
And so, it became his thing.
I, on the other hand, could have stood on my head and done a jig to try and impress, but even if I could I’d never be seen to be talented like Matthew was. Emily often joked she was the invisible middle child, while at least I got some attention being the youngest, but Matthew was always the one to watch – the one who was destined to be different – and everyone came to adore him for it.
Now, to see him put down his tools as such, to have abandoned his university degree in architecture (which was a back-up plan he never thought he’d need anyhow), and to be working in the village corner shop back at home as he battled with the demons in his head was a bitter pill to swallow.
I follow the stone walls into Loughisland, a drive I could do with my eyes closed, and my heart swells when I see the familiar faces making their way up and down the little street where I will always call home.
It’s a quiet-looking place to the naked eye, but behind the scenes it’s a bustling little village, where the tiny primary school is the heart of the community and where everyone lives and breathes for football matches on a Sunday after Mass. I loved growing up here – a world away from Dublin and the city life that caught my stride since I left here almost ten years ago.
I park the car on the side of the street and walk towards Sullivan’s corner shop, which even in December has a huge ice cream cone outside advertising its famous 99s that everyone who passes through will stop for. The shop is attached to a pub of the same name where you’ll also find the local undertaker, should you ever need to plan a funeral when you’re doing your grocery shopping. Well, you never know, do you?
Across the street is the chapel with its adjoining cemetery, and I notice some very entrepreneurial thinker has opened a new florist’s alongside, meaning that every event or occasion, be it a christening, a wedding or a funeral, is well catered for. A tall, somewhat overpowering evergreen tree is decorated with bulbs of green, red and blue and a string of clear lights hang to tell us that it’s the season to be jolly.
I was christened in that very chapel on a sunny Saturday in April many years ago. I made my First Holy Communion there in a white dress handed down from Emily when I was seven, and it was the first place I heard a choir singing ‘Ave Maria’, which made me fall in love with live music when I was barely tall enough to see over the pews. We sang carols every year beneath a tree in the exact same place, which would then be replaced when spring came with pots of daffodils and snowdrops, then bursts of colour in summer that always made us proud of the locals who made such an effort to make the place so pretty.
The snow has thawed a little now, but a bitter winter breeze catches my breath, forcing me to tighten my scarf and quicken my step towards the shop front of Sullivan’s. I get there and stop, despite the sharp weather, to watch Matthew through the window