on. I’ve already seen to it you’re half frozen, I’m not going to have you drenched as well.’
His hand gripped hers, lacing fingers, and he pulled her to her feet. She’d gladly have sat on that bench until they seeped into the structure, matter fusing with matter, but she allowed herself to be drawn upwards, and walked towards the exit. Towards real life.
Near the gate a clump of snowdrops bowed their heads against the wind; Helen marvelled that no sound emanated from their bell-like heads – she always expected them to chime.
‘There are snowdrops in the front garden of a house in the street behind mine,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t been in my own house long enough to plant any. But whenever I’m melancholic I look at their snowdrops and my heart is lifted. I sometimes feel like knocking on the door and thanking the owners for planting them. I’d like them to know how much joy their froth of tiny blossoms have given me this winter.’
‘Perhaps they do know.’ His grey-green eyes softened. ‘Perhaps they’ve been watching from the window, noticing how you pause to look. They probably say, “There goes the beautiful girl who likes our snowdrops.”’
She felt bashfully enchanted by the compliment, hardly daring to believe that Patrick might find her beautiful.
They walked on and still his hand was woven through hers. But trepidation coursed through her once the park was behind them and they were on the pavement; other people appeared and she dropped his hand. She had to be sensible, even if he seemed impervious to others noticing them behave like sweethearts. Helen didn’t realise that, whether they touched or not, the lover’s mark was upon them. They were linked by that invisible chain binding those who love, a bond which others sense. And occasionally envy.
By her car she offered him a lift back to his hotel. Patrick demurred; he needed a brisk walk to stamp the refrigeration from his bones. Helen yearned for him to step inside the metal box with her, to breathe the same air, to be physically close again. Perversely, because she craved it so much, she knew she should deny herself.
‘I suppose this is goodbye then.’ She doodled her key fob across the moisture on the passenger window.
‘I suppose.’
Vehemence laced her voice. ‘How I hate that word.’
‘Then let’s not say goodbye yet,’ said Patrick. ‘Come for a coffee with me. Let’s try the art gallery.’
She went. Virtue definitely wasn’t its own reward and she was being pious enough without aspiring to martyrdom. Besides, they’d be safe in a public place. Consenting adults drinking coffee, what could be more innocent. To the onlooker.
‘We have to admire one exhibit at least,’ she stipulated. ‘Maybe the Caravaggio. I’ll show you where he painted Judas Iscariot’s ear in the wrong place and had to blot it out and re-draw it. I like that – it shows genius takes effort as well as inspiration. More credible than being swept along by the muse.’
She was gabbling, Helen realised, but the way his eyes lingered on her mouth unnerved her.
She hurtled on. ‘I can’t be doing with people who only go into art galleries to drink coffee and buy greetings cards. Kevin Boylan, who’s in my pod at work, meets all his pick-ups there. He thinks it portrays him as cultured, but he wouldn’t know a Yeats from an O’Conor. He’s the sort of culture you find inside the teapot after you’ve forgotten to wash out the dregs for a couple of weeks. My friend Molly, the journalist on the Chronicle – you should remember her, everyone does – has just signed on for a course of lectures here. I wanted to, but Thursday nights are impossible because –’
‘Helen, we can look at the Caravaggio.’ Patrick intercepted her torrent. ‘We can look at as many Caravaggios as you like.’
‘There is only the one,’ she said. But she stopped prattling.
He fetched coffee while she pretended to read the gallery’s February brochure. As he placed the cup and saucer in front of her he trailed his fingertips across her face. She started; the gesture was so tender, so instinctive, it sent delight coursing through her veins, but was he completely insane? Anyone could have observed them.
There was silence. When you want to speak of love, any other conversation is too trite to contemplate. Or maybe, she pondered, they were both struck dumb by their coup de foudre. It wasn’t totally unexpected, it seemed to have been there always in her life, and yet … there’s no way to prepare for meltdown.
‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ she asked.
Patrick slanted a glance at her. ‘How could I not believe?’
But love, she thought later, is supposed to exault you, to energise you. This love was packaged in wave after wave of misery. Being with him rendered her bleakly disconsolate and not being with him glazed her in yet more desolation. The joy was sporadic, the guilt permanent.
Some people, she reflected that night, lying in bed with her brain whirring, were able to make it work. They fell in love with people who reciprocated. They invented lives together – homes, children, pets, sun-and-sand holidays, Sunday lunches with other couples. Why not her? Why couldn’t she fall in love with a man who was available – that would be a flying start. Start as you mean to go on, isn’t that what they say? No wonder she was toppling over hurdles. But it was all a matter of luck, Helen concluded resentfully, and she’d been short-changed.
The theorising and labelling and deconstructing and attempting to make sense of something that defied definition came later, however. For now she was drinking latte, content to feel his shoulder against hers. Body heat – no comfort could match it. He brought her a scone and jam, she knew she’d never be able to eat it tidily and ignored it until he cajoled her to slice and nibble it.
‘You don’t eat enough,’ he scolded. ‘There isn’t an ounce of flesh on you. You need someone to look after you.’
‘There’s no one to do that. I must be more trouble than I’m worth,’ she shrugged, but her heart was singing.
‘Do you remember when we all used to go on holidays to a leaky caravan in Tramore?’ asked Patrick.
She rolled her eyes and giggled. Theirs was invariably the wettest fortnight of the summer, the first two weeks in July – decreed by Helen’s mother from habit because her parents had always taken her away then. But her mother grew up in Belfast and Helen’s grandparents had wanted to avoid the North’s tribal tensions during the run-up to the Orange parades on the Twelfth; it was hardly relevant in Ballydoyle, a mote of a village in County Kilkenny.
‘Who could forget Tramore: Aran cardigans over our swimsuits and goosebumps among the freckles- the epitome of the Irish summer?’ said Helen.
‘Do you ever go to Tramore at all now?’ He tapped his spoon against the handle of his cup.
‘Haven’t been for years. The last time I was there we were on our way to the Burren – I know it was a convoluted route – and stopped off for chips. It looked seedy and peeling but it was out of season, and I’ve heard the place is buzzing now.’
‘Shall we go? Will we jump in the car and head off?’
Helen looked at him in wonder. ‘Tramore in late January – have you been so long in London you’ve
