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Jack eventually reached out to me, apologising profusely for leaving in such a hurry, without a word of explanation. I had only a few weeks left in Ireland, so I told myself—what’s done is done.
It was late in the afternoon when he came to collect me in his new company car. The sleek, unfamiliar vehicle felt like a small emblem of how much had changed between us. He said he wanted to take me to Carlow. Along the way, in that matter-of-fact tone he sometimes used when speaking of personal things, he told me that during the months we’d been apart, he had been seeing a girl named Mary Therese. There was no bitterness in his voice, only a quiet statement that it was already over.
In Carlow, he brought me to his flat. He explained that he shared it with his personal assistant, Sinead, and another young man. I followed him through the spacious rooms, noting the neatness, the light falling in through the tall windows, and beyond them, the slow, calm water of the river. It was impossible not to notice how well he seemed to be doing. He was now working as an estate agent for Remax, and the air about him was different—more self-assured, more settled—yet there was still that same reserved stillness I had always known.
After the small tour, he drove me back home. The road between Carlow and Bagenalstown rolled out quietly before us, and somewhere in the middle of it, we began to laugh. Not the polite laughter you offer to strangers, but the sudden, breathless kind born from old jokes and shared history—things that would mean nothing to anyone else. That laughter was a bridge, a brief reminder of how easy it once had been between us. And in that moment, I knew—I would come back to Ireland. There was no question of it. I loved him too much not to.
The day before I was due to leave for the Czech Republic, I wrote to him again. I asked him to meet me at Phelans so we could say goodbye properly. I waited. And waited. But the minutes lengthened into hours, and he never came.
The next morning, before the sun had fully lifted, Paddy pulled up outside with the engine running. Marketa and I loaded the suitcases in silence. We were all subdued, as though the early hour had drained the air from our voices. I sat in the back seat, my gaze resting on the familiar streets outside the window. I didn’t want to go anywhere. Over these months, this place had quietly become my home. I had found friends here. I had found love.
A heavy fog lay over the town, wrapping it in soft grey, while the first pale threads of sunlight began to weave through. The scene had a stillness that felt almost deliberate, as if the town itself were holding its breath. I climbed into the car with quiet resignation. No footsteps came running down the street to stop us.
Part of me, irrational and desperate, wished for something as simple as a broken engine—that Paddy’s car might stall and refuse to move, that the flight would be missed and I could stay just a little longer. I turned my head for one final look, and my Bagenalstown was already receding into the mist, the shapes of buildings dissolving until nothing remained but the memory. My eyes blurred with tears.
And there, in the moving silence of that car, I made myself a promise. I would return. I didn’t know when, or under what circumstances, but I would come back.
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