I was twenty-nine, living in a damp little flat off Clanbrassil Street, and engaged to a woman who knew exactly how I took my tea. That sounds like a small thing until you realise how much of love is made from small things. Aoife knew the brand of biscuits I pretended not to like, the way I went quiet after a phone call with my father, and the fact that I always needed ten minutes alone after work before I could be decent company. We had been together six years, long enough that people no longer asked if we were happy, only when the wedding was. I thought that was maturity. Looking back, I think it was also sleepwalking.
The night it happened, we had argued about something so ordinary it embarrassed me later. Invitations, I think. Her mother wanted more cousins added. I wanted to spend less money. Aoife said I was acting like the wedding was being done to me instead of with me. I said she cared more about the day than the marriage. It was a cruel sentence, the kind that leaves the room colder after it lands. She didn’t shout. She just looked at me with a tiredness I had never seen before and said, “Go out if you’re going to be like this.”
So I did. I told myself I was taking a walk to clear my head, but I put on a clean shirt. That is the part I still think about. The little decisions that pretend not to be decisions. I walked towards Dublin city centre in the rain, past the takeaways and buses hissing at stops, and ended up outside Whelan’s on Wexford Street, where a lad from work had said he’d be with a few people. Inside, the place was warm and loud, all damp coats, pints, and bodies moving too close because there was nowhere else to go.
Her name was Clara. She was a friend of someone’s sister, visiting from Galway but living in London, with red lipstick and a laugh that made people turn around. She asked why I looked like a man waiting for bad news. I should have said, “Because I’m engaged and I’ve had a fight.” Instead I said, “Because I’m boring.” She said, “You don’t look boring.” It was ridiculous how quickly that sentence worked on me.
There are people who imagine betrayal as a sudden storm, but mine was more like stepping down a staircase in the dark. One drink. Then another. Her hand touching my sleeve when she laughed. Me not moving away. I remember my phone lighting up on the table with Aoife’s name. I turned it face down. That was the moment, really. Not the kiss later in the smoking area, not the taxi, not the narrow hotel room near Harcourt Street where the curtains didn’t close properly. The betrayal was that small square of light, my future wife’s name shining up at me, and my decision to pretend I hadn’t seen it.
I won’t dress it up as romance. It wasn’t. It was hunger, vanity, fear, and drink wearing a beautiful coat. Clara was not wicked, and I was not under a spell. We were two adults who wanted to feel chosen for a few hours without having to be known. That was the attraction. Aoife knew me too well. She knew the weak parts, the lazy parts, the cowardly parts. Clara only knew the version of me lit by pub lights, making jokes, still possible. I chose that version because it demanded nothing from me.
In the morning, the city looked brutal. Grey light, delivery vans, the smell of last night’s rain coming off the pavement. Clara was kind, which somehow made it worse. She asked if I was all right. I said yes, then sat
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