The Book of Love. Fionnuala Kearney

memory of Erin, months ago, trying to convince me to digitally diarise everything onto my phone. I resisted, laughed, ignored the jibe about my Jurassic ways and reminded her that it was she who’d dragged me kicking and screaming to the written word in the first place.

      Today’s date, with a spidery doodle right in the middle of the page also confirms Lydia’s birthday party tonight. My sister will have staff, borrowed from the cafés she owns, bearing trays of minuscule canapés and warm prosecco. She’ll be floating through our group of friends, and some of hers whom I don’t know, with a painted smile firmly in place, pretending everything’s fine.

      The phone ringing in the hall makes me flinch but I don’t move, sensing it will be another hang-up.

      ‘Hi,’ Erin says from beyond the doorway. ‘We’re not home right now. Leave a message.’ My voice pitches in, ‘If anyone cares, I’m not here either’ and she giggles just before the beep and the final click. I walk to the hall – hear her laugh resonate, almost bounce off the walls, and wonder how days without her seem so achingly exhausting. It’s always been like that. From that first moment I saw her, and her ridiculous dancing, to the last time we spoke, she has lived in my soul. She just moved in, took up residence. No discussion. No permission. No regrets.

      Without realising it, I’ve approached the mahogany console table, towards the single drawer. The book seems to beckon to me. I imagine flashing lights warning me of the perils ahead, yet the comfort of it in my hand brings familiar relief; the soft nappa leather, like myself, scarred in places. I find myself fanning our handwritten pages. They smell of Erin, a vague whiff of her peony scent. I raise them to my face and inhale deeply before opening it on her last entry. In the hallway of the home we made together, I pace the tiled black and white floor. The first rays of morning light from the glazed dome in the roof above help me read her words aloud:

      12th May 2017

      Darling Dom,

      Back in August 2004, you took something from here, remember?

      Sometimes, usually lying in bed around daybreak, I wonder – no, more than that, I’m quite desperate to know – whether we might have avoided so much heartache if you hadn’t.

      I mean, what if you’d left that page where it was meant to be? What if those words had been the very words in our book of love that you really needed to say to me back then? Maybe you were honest, reached out, even asked for help. And maybe if I’d read those words of yours at that time, things might have been different? What if I’d been able to see them by holding the next page up to the light and tracing the faint imprint of your pen?

      I tried – it only works in the movies.

      I know, I know. You call me ‘The Queen of What Ifs’. But this is just one of the things that haunts me when I wake too early in those dawn-drenched hours.

      You tell me not to be silly, not to dwell on the past. You hold me and tell me everything happens as it’s meant to, not exactly ‘for a reason’, but ‘life’, you say all the time, ‘life unfolds just the way it should’.

      So, that missing page stayed very much missing. Absent. Gone. I never knew what it said, and you’ve never told me. And life unfolded the way it was meant to and there was heartache – but so much love too. God, there was so much love.

      There is still love.

      That’s what I cling to in those restless hours that follow night.

      I remind myself that love endures.

      Erin x

      I sit down on the first stair. The closed front door opposite seems to taunt me. ‘What if she walked in here now?’ My whisper is just about audible.

      My ‘Queen of What Ifs …’ I’d hold her, touch the soft skin on her face with my fingertips and tell her that she’s right, that it’s love that brings meaning to life.

       2. Erin

      THEN – December 1996

      ‘Because without love, you’re screwed,’ Seamus Fitzpatrick, Fitz, to his friends and audience, announced.

      Erin felt Dom squeeze her hand, followed his nervous glance across the table. Seeing her new mother-in-law’s pinched lips, she looked away and focused instead on a wet ring mark on the paper tablecloth.

      ‘We’ve another way of saying that in Ireland, you know, “screwed”, but when in Rome and all that.’ Fitz laughed; a soft, uneasy sound.

      Oh God, thought Erin. Please don’t swear. Sit down now, Dad. Sit. Please.

      She swallowed hard as his voice filled the small room. It was a private space at the back of the King’s Arms located right across the street from the registry office. It wasn’t the sort of place she’d imagined her wedding might be. Like almost every small girl, she had, once upon a time, pictured herself in an elegant gown saying her vows in a quaint village chapel. At a grand reception, there would have been a feast followed by a practised first waltz by the bride and groom to ‘their song’.

      A room in a pub, slightly sticky underfoot, with smoke-scented flock wallpaper, worn velvet seating, loops of stringy tinsel and Christmas lights with missing bulbs had never been part of the dream. And she and Dom hadn’t known one another long enough yet to have ‘a song’. Erin rubbed her hand over her belly as a familiar anxiety began to gnaw. They’d known each other long enough to create the human being that danced inside her, but not long enough to have a song. It was only Dom’s hand on hers that calmed her doubts, reminding her that she had got the most important thing right. Dominic Carter was a prince among men.

      ‘See, without love,’ her father continued, ‘you’re just two people roaming through life, wandering around in a valley of … a valley of tears.’

      Resisting the urge to pull on his sleeve, instead she prayed to her mother. Make him sit down, Mam, please.

      ‘So, it does fill me with joy …’

      She looked up and her face crumpled as Fitz started to cry.

      ‘It fills me with joy,’ he sniffed, ‘to see that you two really do love each other, so bear with me while I say,’ he peeked at her and Dom over the rim of his oval, steel-rimmed spectacles, ‘keep hold of that love and you’ll be grand.’

      Erin’s mouth twitched as she attempted a smile.

      ‘Finally, let’s raise a glass to the bride and groom. I wish you both health and happiness and family that will love and anchor you.’

      ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she touched his arm, his new, but ill-fitting, suit as he sat down.

      ‘Your mam would have been so proud of you today,’ he smiled.

      ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Erin repeated and stared at her bump. There had been no way or no gown to hide it and everyone who was there knew anyway.

      ‘Was it alright?’ Fitz asked.

      She told her father that his speech had been perfect as she, once again, looked across the circular table towards her in-laws. Sophie was scooping imaginary crumbs from the table. Gerard smiled, gave a small nod in her direction.

      ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have—’ Her father leaned into her as he drained his glass. She crooked an arm around his neck and kissed his cheek.

      ‘I told you, Dad, it was really perfect. Thank you.’

      Three round tables of ten people squeezed into the room created the background noise that she and Dom needed. ‘You wanna get out of here?’ her husband whispered.

      ‘You know we can’t.’ She felt his sigh in her ear and shivered. There was nothing she wanted more than to get back to the flat and curl up in bed with this man and their bump.

      ‘Okay, we’ll stay a bit longer,’ he agreed. ‘But