Read Chapter 9: DINNER WITHOUT RESEARCH

Maeve chose a restaurant where she knew the manager, because familiarity provided exits.

Julian noticed.

“You’ve sat facing the door.”

“Everyone sits facing something.”

“You also chose the chair with a clear path to it.”

“Do you want dinner or a behavioural study?”

“Dinner.”

He turned his chair slightly so he was no longer between her and the aisle.

Maeve hated how much she appreciated the gesture.

They had agreed not to discuss Thomas, Evelyn, Nora, archives, or the shop’s finances for one evening.

This left the dangerous subject of themselves.

Julian told her he grew up in Cork, the son of two secondary-school teachers. He had wanted to be a novelist until twenty-four, when he discovered he preferred explaining other people’s sentences to producing his own.

“You surrendered.”

“I specialised.”

“Academic word for surrendered.”

He asked about event production.

Maeve described product launches in Berlin, conferences in London, a fashion show in Paris where a lighting rig failed eleven minutes before doors opened. She liked the work’s temporary architecture: build a world, make it function, dismantle it before anyone noticed the seams.

“And then leave,” Julian said.

She looked at him.

He held up his hands. “Observation, not diagnosis.”

“Very close cousins.”

“Fair.”

Maeve drank wine.

“What happened with your marriage?” she asked.

Julian’s expression shifted but did not close.

“Sarah and I were together twelve years. Married seven.”

“That isn’t what happened.”

“No.” He turned his water glass slowly. “I became very good at being agreeable instead of honest. She became very good at doing everything because I never objected. By the time we admitted we were unhappy, we were both furious about decisions neither of us had actually made.”

Maeve thought of Thomas.

“You hid behind restraint.”

Julian smiled without amusement. “Exactly.”

“And therapy told you this?”

“Therapy, Sarah, several friends, eventually common sense.”

“Did one of you cheat?”

“No.”

“Did you hate each other?”

“No.”

“That sounds worse.”

“It was sadder. Not worse.”

Maeve absorbed that.

“What about Conor?” he asked.

She considered refusing.

Instead she said, “He wanted to buy a flat together.”

Julian waited.

“That’s it.”

“That can’t be it.”

“I said I wasn’t ready. He asked when I might be. I couldn’t answer. Then he asked whether I wanted to be ready.”

“And?”

“I packed for a job in Brussels.”

Julian looked down.

“You can say it.”

“What?”

“That I ran.”

“I think you know.”

The absence of judgement made honesty harder, not easier.

Maeve stared at the candle between them.

“My parents died on a Tuesday,” she said. “We’d had breakfast together. My mother complained I left wet towels on the floor. My father said he’d collect me from school. By five they were dead.”

Julian did not move.

Maeve rarely told the story because facts became dangerous when spoken. They invited sympathy, and sympathy invited touch.

“Nora took me in. She was wonderful, in her way. But she didn’t talk about feelings. We talked about practical things. University. Money. Whether the immersion was off.”

“That can keep you alive.”

“Yes.”

“But not necessarily…”

“Not necessarily what?”

He looked at her. “Close.”

Maeve swallowed.

The waiter cleared their plates.

Outside, Dublin glistened after rain. They walked north across Ha’penny Bridge. The river below carried broken reflections of lights.

Near the middle, Julian stopped.

“I’d like to kiss you.”

Maeve’s chest tightened.

He did not move closer.

“Why are you announcing it?”

“Because I don’t want to guess.”

She could say no.

The fact steadied her.

“Yes,” she said.

His hand touched her cheek first, warm in the cold. Then he kissed her, gently enough that she had time to withdraw.

She did not.

The kiss deepened by degrees, no sudden claim, no hand pulling her into him. Maeve felt the strange panic of wanting something she could lose.

She stepped back.

Julian let her.

“Sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to apologise.”

“I know.”

They stood in the wind, a metre apart.

Maeve laughed once, breathless and annoyed. “This is absurd.”

“Which part?”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“Tragic. Practically ancient.”

She smiled.

Then she took his hand.

They crossed the rest of the bridge that way.