6.20 pm

The gallery is closing. Ruth is still by the door, unsure of where to go. Home? Not yet. She sees the windows lit up across the street.

Inside the pub it’s quiet, still early, though there’s a group with the tables pulled together, laughing, and soon they will be loud, they have that air about them. The young man behind the bar nods to her and she goes up to order.

‘A dry day they got anyway,’ says the barman as he takes up a glass, but Ruth looks blank. ‘For the protests,’ he says, nodding at the TV screen and its carnival of protestors waving signs and banners. ‘We get a lot of students in here, they’re keen. Doing no harm, that’s what I say.’ Ruth barely smiles in acknowledgement, and the barman knows she’s another one of those, they come for somewhere to be. He won’t bother her by asking what kind of gin she prefers, goes for the Dingle, safe bet.

‘Take a seat,’ he says, ‘I’ll drop it over to you.’

The glass leaves a wet mark on the beer mat, Ruth swirls it to hear the ice rattle. She nurses the drink, staring at nothing. Is this what you want, he had said, but he was not really asking, it was not a plea or a request. He was avoiding saying that it was not what he wanted.

A cheer goes up from the group by the door as more come to join them, and it is surprising to see them in such full swing – a Monday night – perhaps it is a work leaving do, perhaps a reunion. The barman goes over to them, what would they like, holding his hands wide, earning his tips.

Aidan had said she was not easy, but wasn’t that another avoidance tactic? A cover-up for his real point, that without children, she is not enough.

Her pocket buzzes and, though Ruth has the urge to ignore it, she takes it out. A missed message.

LANDED

Ruth hadn’t heard the bleeps, or, no, that was it, the phone was still on silent from the gallery.

So, he is coming home.

What does it even mean? Enough. ‘Stop! Enough,’ her mother would shout, meaning it was over. Ruth clinks the ice in her glass again, raises it in an ironic toast, trying to pretend she is not a woman in a bar raking through the entrails of her marriage. How had she not seen this coming? How did she get Aidan so wrong? So much for being an analyst.

She will tell him of the affair, that will seal it, and he will leave her for sure then. Or maybe she will be the one to move out. Ruth imagines saying this to him, ‘I’ll move out,’ imagines the look of acceptance on Aidan’s face. At least, that way, she will have some control. I am the captain of my fate. Was that the line? What a fucking joke! Another sip. Perhaps she will just stay here instead, get slowly drunk.

She will move out, okay, make yourself imagine what comes next, Ruth. She’ll have to get a flat for herself, maybe somewhere nearer work. She’s always wanted to live near a park, perhaps the Phoenix Park, then. She’ll go back to running, or long walks, she could probably even do yoga in the park. But then they will have to sell the house. That does not feel like an easy thing to imagine. All the things that go with that decision. Will she need a new solicitor? A new will? And they will have to split their possessions. Ruth should start mentally tagging things now, yours and mine, hers and his. Don’t, Ruth. You know how dangerous it is to imagine something into being.

It would be easier if they had less to lose. Ruth can remember, and it is not so long ago really, how Aidan would clear his throat so that she would look up from what she was doing, and he would just smile at her, and she would smile back. ‘Boo!’ he’d say, and she’d laugh at the ridiculous word, laugh because they were so happy. And they could not get enough of talking, late into the night sometimes, talking like this was the most important thing in the world, hearing the other person’s words. It was a drought now, oh god, a drought of words and gestures and love, but it had been radiant once. How had they thrown away this precious thing?

Maybe they had been too happy. They had sex like breathing, not just at the start, but for years. With a kind of pure joy at being wholly themselves with one another. After sex, Aidan would get sleepy, his relaxed face defenceless. Ruth would wait a while, knees pressed to her chest, then when it was safe to move, she would go to the bathroom to pee, seeing her flushed face in the mirror and smiling. I am here, I am desired. Ruth would come back into the bedroom slowly, allowing the scene to reveal itself. And with hands still a little wet, she would trace a line from his toe to his lips, watching his face twitch with anticipation. It seems so far away.

The phone buzzes on the table and, as if moving through water, she presses the button to see the screen.

IN A TAXI

Ruth sips her drink, pretending a calm she does not feel. What if it really is lost?

Run!

Stay!

She thinks of her first day, three years ago, the first day of clients in the new practice. It was after the second cancelled cycle, when the numb fear had started, the fear that she could not have children. Ruth remembers how nervous she was that morning, how she’d got to the office early, fresh coffee, flowers (unscented) and the softest brand of tissues. How she’d sat, waiting for this other part of her life to begin. Twenty minutes before the client appointment her phone had buzzed and she’d chastised herself for not turning it off, but it was a message from Aidan: Look in your pencil case. She had thought it was a joke at her expense, because he teased her for carrying a pencil case like she was still in school. But she had unzipped it and seen the yellow note and unfolded it. ‘I believe in you.’ That was all it said. What would she trade, oh, not for a baby, but to have that back.

Her phone buzzes again and she presses the button to light up the screen.

SEE YOU AT HOME?

It is the question mark that does it. Something as little as that deciding your fate. Ruth moves before she knows it herself, almost knocking the table, the chair giving a screech, the door of the pub banging behind her, the colder air outside a shock. The canal will be jam-packed at this time, she thinks, better to head for Cuffe Street, hail one there.

As Ruth overtakes a group of shoppers, she imagines Aidan in the back of the taxi, his thumb hovering over the screen. He would be saying no to the port tunnel, he’ll risk Drumcondra, looking out at the roads, and Dublin is not the prettiest when approached from the airport, but maybe he had seen the curve of Dublin Bay as the plane flew over. Ruth crosses at the lights at the bottom of Dawson Street, retracing her route, past the empty space behind its palisades, and was that only today? It feels a lifetime away. Perhaps Aidan had realised his texts were – what? – too gruff, too peremptory, too like a test? And now, as he travels back towards their life, he is thinking of her.

Ruth hates the people in her way, as she rounds the Green. Let the traffic be unexpectedly quiet, she wills, let me get there before him, let me be the home he is coming to. Her breath is ragged now but she’s past the Unitarian and here’s the corner, and if there is a god there will be an empty taxi. She holds her hand out, and one swerves to the kerb. Ruth gets into this stranger’s car and gives her address. As they take off, she remembers the book she didn’t collect, but it does not matter.

Had she really thought she would leave him? Or that she would let him leave her? Past the technology institute and the cathedral spire, a hard left, red brake lights stretching out ahead. Had she really thought – only this morning – that perhaps this was for the best, that it was not what she wanted, that there was nothing left to catch hold of and say, no, this is mine? But now. It is as if the love has come back into her body.

They go through more lights, the road climbing slightly, and Ruth looks again at her phone, at the text, at the question mark, and it feels like the first real question he has asked her in, oh, in years. Asking her if she will be there.

It is a thing, as they come up to Leonard’s Corner and the bridge ahead, the same bridge from this morning but it is different now because now she is going home. It is a thing, Ruth thinks, that if you forced yourself to feel the pain then you could also feel the joy. She will say this to Aidan and he will look doubtful, but she will mean it and maybe her meaning it will make both of them believe. Ruth leans forward to tell the driver to bear left of the park, to head for the Five Points.

The car sails into the square, through the gap left by the cars parked on either side, over the first set of speed bumps, then turns left. ‘Just here,’ she says to the driver, and he nods to her in the mirror. The car pulls up and Ruth has a last-minute wave of fear, of doubt, gazing out the taxi window at the house. The light is on. He is here before her and she is coming home to him, but how, really, can she come home at all? (One night Aidan had said, ‘I can’t imagine a life without children.’ And she had said, ‘I can.’)

She won’t get out of the car, she’ll ask the driver to go on, to take her somewhere else, but she’s paying the fare now, and pushing the gate, and the hinges creak and Ruth thinks, oh, he’ll hear that, and she’s nearly at the porch now, finding her key, and she can see him through the front window, standing in the middle of the living room, looking around him. She’s shutting the front door, the house giving a shudder of recognition, and she’s coming into the room, and he is looking at her, and she wants to hold him because his face is so open and so sad and so lost. And she almost laughs, the way you do when you’re really afraid, because here is the storm at last.

Ruth stands facing Aidan, looking at his face. Not laughing, serious now. Because there is the thought. There is the thing she has not allowed. There it is.

He has stopped loving her.