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two years older than her, so was he. They both had good jobs and came from similar rural backgrounds. But most importantly they wanted exactly the same things in life – lots of fun and meals out. Despite all the restaurants they went to, she was less overweight than might have been expected.
    They were the balsamic-vinegar generation – a handsome couple in their twenties, having dinner parties, getting great use out of Alasdair’s cappuccino machine, driving around London in his red MG, drinking champagne at least once a week, shopping on Saturdays at Paul Smith or Joseph. (Sometimes they even bought something. Like a pair of socks or a tie-pin.)
    When Tara went home to Ireland for a week one summer, Alasdair came with her. Suddenly she saw Knockavoy through his eyes. The magnificence of the crazed Atlantic, taking lumps out of the cliffs, the vast expanse of empty golden sand, the air so soft and clean you could almost see it. Up until then she’d hated her home town. A tiny rural backwater where nothing ever happened, except for a few months in the summer when the tourists came.
    Tara’s mother had loved Alasdair. Her father hadn’t, ofcourse, but he disliked everything about Tara, why would Alasdair be any different? Next, Alasdair took Tara to meet his family in Skye, which Tara found immensely reassuring. She often feared that the people she met in London weren’t giving her the full picture. That to some degree they’d reinvented themselves. Simply because they could – almost no one was actually
from
London so they hadn’t any annoying family hanging around to give the lie to whatever fantasy they fed people. And even though it took her a week to recover from the excessive partying Alasdair’s family made her do, at least now she knew where and what he came from.
    Shortly after their return from Skye, it was their two-year anniversary and Tara thought it was about time things started to move in the direction of marriage. Or, at the very least, living together. She practically lived in Alasdair’s flat anyway, and she reckoned making it official was merely a formality.
    However, when she put it to him, he surprised her by looking terrified. ‘But…’ he said, his dancing eyes sitting this one out. ‘But we’re fine as we are, no need to rush things…’
    Badly shaken and denying how hurt she was, Tara backed off. ‘You’re right,’ she reassured him warmly. ‘Things
are
fine as they are, and there’s no need to rush things.’ Then she settled in for a war of attrition. All things come to those who wait. The only thing was, at twenty-eight, she knew time was a commodity she no longer had a surfeit of.
    She calmed her hysteria by telling herself he loved her. She was certain of it. She gripped on to this knowledge as if her life depended on it.
    Things continued for another six months or so, ostensibly the same. Except they weren’t. Alasdair had a faint hunted air about him that permeated everything, tainting it, dousing fun.And Tara had become watchful and anxious. Conscious that she was no longer in her mid-twenties, conscious that everyone she’d been to school with, with the exception of Katherine, was married and had children, conscious that there were fewer men around than there used to be, conscious that she was hurtling towards thirty. She’d invested a lot of time and hope in Alasdair –
all
her time and hope – and the idea that she’d backed a loser was unbearable to contemplate.
    I’m too old to start again, she often thought, gripped with nauseating panic when she woke in the middle of the night. I haven’t got
time
. This one has got to work.
    Eventually, patience not being her strong point, she couldn’t help but ask him again what his long-term intentions towards her were. She knew she shouldn’t. That if it was good news, he’d have let her know. And that trying to force his hand would only bring things to a head, to the conclusion she didn’t want.
    She was right.