Letters from Galway – Part 1: The Quay

Aoife had read Cian's letters so often that the creases had gone soft as cloth. A year of them, blue ink on thin paper, about his boat, his terrible neighbour, the way the light on Galway Bay turned pewter before rain.

Now she stood on the quay with a suitcase and her heart going like a drum, and she did not know his face.

"Aoife?"

A man was jogging toward her along the wet stones, coat flapping, a bunch of tulips held out in front of him like a lantern. He was thirty-four, tall, dark-haired, with the sort of windburnt cheeks that came from a life outdoors.

"Cian," she said.

"I'm late. I'm sorry. The tide. The engine. A swan." He stopped, out of breath. "They're crushed. I sat on them."

"You sat on the flowers?"

"In the van. It's a long story, it's in the next letter."

She laughed, and he laughed, and the nerves went out of her like air from a tyre.

They walked the length of the Long Walk, past the painted houses and the gulls, talking exactly as they wrote: sideways, funny, never quite finishing a sentence. He took her to a café where the scones were the size of fists and the owner had known him since he was six.

"Can I ask you something?" said Aoife, over her second cup of tea.

"Yes."

"In your letters you sound braver than you do in person."

"I know," said Cian. "I write at night. Nobody's looking."

"I'm looking now."

He went red to the roots of his hair. "Then I'll try to be brave in daylight."

"Green?" she said, quietly.

"Green," said Cian. "Very green. Will you come out on the boat tomorrow?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – The Boat.