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given her any warning at all.
    —Yes, she said. Yes, Redmond, I will, leaning forward and taking my hand.
    I couldn't believe my luck. I just sat there staring in silence — like a simpleton. Then she laughed and kissed me on the
     cheek. She was wearing a silver necklace which she fingered a little nervously, abstractedly playing with the dangling charm,
     a shining initial, the letter 'C.
    —Look at you! she said and laughed again, a tincture of pink appearing on her cheek.
    We were married exactly six months after that, in 1981. I was forty and she was twenty-two but the age difference didn't matter
     one whit. That was what she had said and that was what I knew.
    It was the greatest day of my life. No question.
    We rented a basement flat in Dublin, in the south city suburb of leafy Rathmines, in an old rambling rundown Georgian house
     in Cowper Road. It wasn't much but it was all we could afford. It didn't matter, we told ourselves - it wouldn't always be
     like this. Sooner or later our ship would come in.
    —And who knows, maybe we'll be able to afford a mansion, she used to say, tossing her scarf back, with a kind of impish devil-may-care
     laugh.
    At weekends we used to visit houses that were for sale — just for amusement and something to do. There was one she took a
     special shine to. It was situated in the suburb of Rathfarnham, on Ballyroan Road. It had a lovely little apple orchard out
     the back. I could tell by her expression that she really loved that house.
    —Maybe one day, love, I remember saying, squeezing her arm as we strode towards the bus stop.
    You'd hear her humming and it would do your heart good. She was humming it on the bus that day going home.
    It's just that sweet little mystery that's here in your heart It's just that sweet little mystery makes me cry.
    I continued working for the Leinster News, serialising my articles and going down to visit Ned. Rathmines then was a lovely place to live and Catherine got work in the
     various bars, frequented in the main by students. I used to meet her in the Sunset Grill after work, a little place not far
     from the library. Our treats at that time were Knickerbocker Glories.
    It was stupid, I know. Love makes you like that.
    We continued living in Cowper Road. Then our firstborn, a girl, arrived two years later, in March 1983. We decided to call
     her Imogen, after Catherine's grandmother. She was a wonder, really. To look at, to listen to, everything. Every day I woke
     up she filled my heart with pride. Catherine Courtney had been given to me as a gift. And now there was Imogen. She had her
     mother's looks - the green-blue eyes and the very same laugh. I used to take her in the evenings and wheel her buggy through
     the streets of Rathmines, before we'd meet her mother in the Sunset Grill, after her shift had ended in the pub.
    You looked at Imogen's curls and felt guilty — why, you thought, should you be so privileged? Occasionally I'd receive a bonus
     and I'd arrive home unexpectedly with a present — an album or a book for Catherine, maybe, and something from the Early Learning
     Centre for Immy. That was what I called her now. The odd time we'd get down to Slattery's for a pint - if the girl upstairs
     offered to babysit. But generally we didn't bother. We didn't want to, to tell the honest truth. We were just as happy to
     sit and listen to John Martyn or watch Dallas on the telly. Dallas - we were crazy about that.
    —I lawrv you Jay-Awl Catherine used to say.
    It became a kind of catchphrase of ours.
    —I lawrv yon Jay-Awl we'd laugh, as Immy gurgled and Catherine sat in the firelight, reading, wiggling her toes as she serenely turned the pages.
    On my way into work, I would find myself lapsing into a daydream, unable to understand what it was I had done to deserve such
     bounteous, unmitigated good fortune. But then nothing, of course, nothing, is ever as simple as that.
    You should never really expect it to be.
    We had been in