Tony believed Lacey would change her mind and that was why he didn’t put up much of a fight when she said she was thinking about leaving him, or when she told him she was moving out of their one-bedroom flat, or when she was noisily packing up her stuff with her mouth pursed, as he sat on the bed, watching her with his arms folded to keep his hands from reaching out to her, until he couldn’t bear it anymore and he went into the living room and stared out the window, hoping to spot the daredevil cat who lived on the fourth floor of the red-brick block across the courtyard, but the cat wasn’t on her balcony and the curtains were drawn behind the shut glass doors, damn it.

     From the doorway, Lacey said, ‘Has the cat gone splat?’

     Tony maintained his distance. ‘Not yet, but I could supply you with updates.’

     ‘I’d prefer you didn’t. I left the keys on the dresser.’

     ‘Hold onto them.’

     She gave him a sad look, said, ‘There’s no point,’ then, trundling her suitcase behind her, she went out the front door.

     A week passed before he called her and asked if she would come home, not to move straight back in, but so they could finally talk things through and make sure she was doing the right thing, for her sake as much as his. ‘What do you have to lose?’

     She didn’t answer, and he had enough experience with her silences to tell she was annoyed by the question and disappointed in him, and he was disappointed in himself, but maybe that was partly because her expectations of him had always been unrealistic.

     He tried again: ‘I know I haven’t told you as often as I should have that I love you but I do. I mean, I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else, and I haven’t given up on you so you shouldn’t give up on me, unless your mind is absolutely made up and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

     His plea might have fallen on deaf ears if a quiver hadn’t slipped into his voice. Lacey couldn’t listen to even the suggestion of crying for long without crying herself and, before either of them could lose their composure, she agreed to see him and ended the call.

     The following day, in anticipation of her arrival that evening, he considered buying her roses or an extravagant piece of jewellery, but she wasn’t big on flowers and he couldn’t afford any jewellery that might count as extravagant, and, besides, he didn’t want it to seem like he was trying to bribe her or do anything that could undermine her view of his seriousness. Then he had the idea of buying a dozen candles, lighting them all, and arranging them around the living room. His eyes and hers would be dilated by the flames and, as everyone was more attractive when their eyes were dilated, this subtle touch might make the difference in convincing her to renew her feelings for him. Except it wouldn’t be that subtle, would it? And the effect might be disconcerting. Shadowy rooms full of candles were associated with the arcane rituals of sex-cults, and weird Latin chants, and blood sacrifices. She might think he had gone mad and her impulse would be to flee from him, beguilingly dilated eyes or not.

     So no gifts or candles, but he did buy two bottles of red wine. Buying one was a no-brainer. They’d both be tense and, as alcohol tended to strengthen his resolve and to loosen hers, it’d help them to meet each other halfway. And if that first bottle went down well, they’d want to keep the good time going. That was what the second was for, and it was emblematic of how he hadn’t given up hope; of how, in fact, he was optimistic.

     He thoroughly, perhaps violently, hoovered the flat, chipping white paint off the wainscoting, and he refused to get frustrated by how the wilfully contortive plastic hose repeatedly detached, then he ran a wet cloth over the living room’s flat surfaces and was surprised by the layers of dark dust that came off. Once the cleanliness was such that he could expect Lacey to notice the effort, he set two wine glasses and one of the bottles on the cleared coffee table – leaving the second in the cupboard in the adjoining kitchen nook, because if both were visible she’d think he was only interested in getting drunk – and he sat on the frayed leather couch, tapping his feet on the carpet, his hands on his vibrating knees.

     She was supposed to arrive at eight but, even when he hadn’t heard from her at nine, he didn’t call or message as he didn’t want to be needy. He opened the bottle and poured a glass. Having one before her arrival would help numb his self-consciousness and free him up to be more empathetic, and empathy, according to Lacey, wasn’t a strength of his, but she hadn’t always felt like that.

     At half nine, his heart was jolted by his phone buzzing and the message was from her. Taking a deep breath, he told himself that she was apologizing for being late and she had probably included a line of witty self-effacement to assure him that she was keen to see him.

     But the message read: I just can’t do this going nowhere back and forth anymore so I’m not coming over and it’s okay for you to be upset with me or to be relieved. I wish you the best, Tony, but it isn’t helping you to be with me and you know as well as I do that we need to move on. I’m sorry.

     He poured a second glass and drank half within seconds, then he wrote: Roger that.

     Regret sank to the pit of his stomach the moment he pressed send. What a punchless, petty reply. And he didn’t message her again, not to apologize or to say he understood or that he’d try to understand. And she didn’t message him back either. Why would she when he had demonstrated his immaturity and how she was wise to end it? By not responding, she could feel smug about how firm her footing was on the high ground.

     He drank and stared at the black TV screen across the room. His reflection was growing murky and slouched. He looked like a troll.

     They met four years ago. She had moved from Philly to Dublin, not knowing a soul here, to take a HR job with an internet company named after a misspelled astronomical number and, on her second night, she came to the club where he was bartending at the time and she sat on a stool at the corner of the bar. She didn’t mind going out alone, content as she was to soak up some atmosphere, to dance if the music was good, and to start conversations with strangers, but that was Lacey: you could drop her in almost any social situation, no matter how unfamiliar the surroundings, and she would find a way to thrive.

     Well, on this occasion, one of those strangers, a bleary-eyed man with unevenly stooped shoulders and rings of sweat under his arms, mistook her openness as an invitation for something it wasn’t. He put his meaty hand on her leg and she picked it up and flung it towards his lap, and he responded by calling her a ‘spitfire’ and trying to put his arm around her. She told him to fuck off and he didn’t and Tony, who had been watching this unfold, told him to get out. When he threatened to, ‘smash yer head in, ya dopey cunt,’ Tony signalled the bouncer, an ex-rugby player who looked every bit an ex-rugby player, and he pinned the charmer’s arms behind his back and roughly shoved him out the door.

     Tony gave Lacey her next gin and tonic on the house as an apology for his disgrace of a countryman, but while they had some friendly exchanges over the rest of the night, smiling when their eyes met, the club was too fucking loud and busy for a proper chat. When Lacey was leaving though, she slid a fiver across the bar and when he tried to return it – ‘We don’t tip here!’ – she slid it his way again, laughed, and, over the din, said, ‘I’ve written my number on it! Call me sometime and maybe you can show me what’s worth doing in your city!’

     She walked out, and he was glad she didn’t look back and see him grinning like an eejit.

     Despite how she had made the first move, calling her would still have been too forward for him, but he did send a text inviting her to go to jail with him – to Kilmainham Gaol, which had been rebranded as a museum, and on the tour she’d be treated to a crash course on the centuries of misery and despair that had made Ireland what it was now. She replied that it sounded like fun!!! and, in a moment of over-enthusiasm, he replied: I’ll bring my handcuffs!

     Then he was panic-stricken for five minutes, thinking he had freaked her out until she came back with: Do! I’ll bring my whip! And my ball gag!

     In the end, neither of them brought any S&M gear on their first date and in the light of day, on the leaf-strewn street outside the haunted grey fortress, she appeared even more vivacious than in the club – her face was softer with less make-up on, her green eyes brighter – and if she experienced second thoughts at the sight of him, she masked them well, greeting him as, ‘the nice guy who saved me from a total dick,’ and she was welcome to think of him as being more heroic than he really was so he didn’t remind her that it was the bouncer who expelled the dick from the premises.

     Her favourite part of the tour was visiting the chapel where the shouty female guide informed them of the star-crossed wedding that took place there between the revolutionary poet Joseph Mary Plunkett and his cartoonist sweetheart Grace Gifford hours before he was executed by a firing squad in the stonebreakers’ yard. Lacey whispered to Tony that it was ‘so damn romantic’ and he agreed, without adding that it might have been more romantic if the groom had been allowed to live. Then, along with the rest of their solemnly curious tour group, they shuffled down one of the cold corridors and, with her arm grazing his, he wondered if she could imagine falling for him and letting him be her Plunkett.

     Afterwards, they went to an old man’s pub and drank Guinness – normally Tony avoided stout because it was too heavy, but he was attempting to live up to the expectations he presumed she had of how a fine example of an Irishman should comport himself – and he regaled her with more historical anecdotes, telling her about the famine and all the withered corpses sprawled in roadside ditches, with only grass and nettles in their shrunken bellies, and the diseased sheet-wrapped corpses that were heaved over the sides of coffin ships into the frothy ocean; and, while his descriptions may have been overly colourful and he maimed a fact or two, he was reasonably sure that her knowledge of Irish history was too vague for her to contradict him, and he insisted, ‘Things have improved by miles since then and I wouldn’t want to put you off from staying. That’s, like, the last thing I’d want.’

     She said, ‘So long as you can promise me that I’ll be spared a firing squad, and there won’t be another famine, and I won’t have to take my chances on a coffin ship, I’ll stay for the foreseeable future.’

     ‘You have my word. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

     She was sitting on a bench against the wall and his chair was on the opposite side of the table. As they matched each other pint for pint, the pub was filling up and becoming rowdier and, after the second time someone squeezing by elbowed his head, she offered to share the bench. He moved over next to her and she touched her fingers to his knee and said, ‘That’s better,’ and he put his hand on the small of her back and they kissed. The kiss was brief, but it felt good and familiar, and they laughed and she continued to rest her hand on his knee and he rested his hand on her hip.

     Even though it was him who kissed her, he couldn’t take too much credit. She had led him to it, giving him looks of steady encouragement and she had kept touching his hand and arm when he was speaking.

     And, at the end of the night, he didn’t deserve much credit for taking the initiative then either. He uttered his invitation to come back to his flat half-jokingly, expecting her to decline, but she said, ‘I will go home with you. I mean, you don’t strike me as a serial killer. You’re not, are you?’

     ‘I haven’t killed three or more people so I don’t qualify, no.’

     ‘All I needed to hear.’

     At his place, they eagerly affirmed they had chemistry, and they were a couple from then on. It all happened as it did because she trusted her instinct that they should be together, and he echoed her decision.

     In the morning, while she was dozing, he held her warm body against his and, with his hand over her hand and his legs fitted to the backs of her legs, he vowed, don’t fuck this up; don’t fuck this up.

     But, yet, fuck it up he did.

     After swallowing the last drop of wine in his glass, he stared through the dark-green bottle, also empty, and sighed. Given how Lacey was supposed to drink half, realize how foolish she had been to think she would be better off without him, and throw herself back into his arms, it had become an object of disappointment, but maybe he had been expecting too much from a nine-euro merlot.

     Grabbing it by the neck, he brought the bottle into the kitchen and washed it out under the tap. Lacey ingrained this habit in him so that empties wouldn’t smell while they were accumulating enough to fill a black bag for disposal in one of the wheelie bins in the courtyard. Before she had moved in, he had hardly noticed any smells from the recycling bins, and it was irritating that, in her absence, he was still doing her bidding. When he stuffed the bottle in the bin for glass, it cracked sharply against the others.

     He took the second bottle of merlot from the cupboard and, in the living room, he poured a glass, removed his shoes, and turned off the lights so he no longer had to face his misshapen reflection on the TV screen. He drank steadily, but his movements were lethargic: lifting his glass to his mouth, swallowing, and refilling all required a concentration of will. His stomach felt hollow, his face had grown heavy, and his mind was unstrung.

     He set his glass on the table, then he pulled his arms and legs to his body, and sank into the couch and into a dark bruising sleep.

     When he woke up, lying tucked against the back cushions of the couch, early-morning light was slicing through the gaps in the blinds. Everything ached, inside and out, and he thought of Lacey smiling and withholding a laugh, and he ached more. He rolled onto his back, and stretched his arms and legs, making fists of his hands and curling his toes, and he yawned the kind of gratuitously loud yawn that only people who are alone permit themselves. Really, it was more of a half-strangled roar and he laughed at himself and wiped tears from his eyes.

     He got to his feet and was repelled by the whiff of the half-inch of stale wine in his glass and by the third remaining in the open bottle. He contemplated whether draining what was left would ease how raw he was feeling, but then, squinting against his cloudy headache, he took the glass and the bottle into the kitchen, spattered the wine into the sink, and, despite a hazy memory of a resolution not to, he washed out the bottle before putting it in the bin.

     To soothe the furry aridness of his mouthfeel, he guzzled water from the tap and, wiping his chin with the back of his hand, he returned to the living room and raised the blinds.

     He scanned the apartment block across the barren courtyard and couldn’t see anyone up and about through the columns and rows of windows. But lying next to a potted plant that had shed its leaves, there was the daredevil cat on her fourth-floor balcony – she was mostly black, but her ears and tail were white-tipped and she had white socks. The sliding glass door was open just enough for her to have squeezed out, the wind lightly ruffling the drawn red curtains, and she was enclosed by blue railings: a grille of three vertical bars crossing ten horizontal ones that curved back on either side to connect to the wall.

     The cat sat up, licked her lips, and, thought becoming action, she hopped up the ladder of bars until she was perched on the top thicker one and from there she surveyed the courtyard sixty feet below. Seeing nothing of interest, she minced her way to one end of the bar, fluidly about-turned, then minced her way to the other end. And she was only warming up. Next, she inverted herself to climb down on the outside of the ladder and, on reaching the bottom bar, she ducked her head under the one above and commenced climbing up, this time weaving her body inside and outside the bars, then she paused, on the outside, because a passing bee was bothering her and, maintaining three paws on three different bars, she swatted at it with her free paw, twice, before the bee diverted its flight path.

     On the top bar again, she eyed the adjacent matching balcony. It was separated from hers by a foot of empty space and, if she fell through that space, there was no landing spot between the balconies and the courtyard’s hard pavement. She shifted to the curved corner of the bar, then extended one front paw across the space, then the other, landing them on the neighbours’ balcony while keeping her hind paws on her own, for five seconds, ten, giving her spine a full stretch across the chasm, before jumping her hind legs over.

     As she performed another set of gymnastic feats, there were moments when her legs shook or she stumbled, and yet, each time, she was quick to regain her balance and her confidence in her abilities never diminished.

     Tony had observed her doing all of this on countless occasions and, before learning to have more faith in her, his heart would race and Lacey used to laugh at him. She said, ‘If the cat hasn’t fallen by now, I doubt she ever will.’

     ‘All it would take is for a gust of wind to come at the wrong time, or if it rains and the bars get slippery.’

     Lacey shrugged, kissed him on the cheek, and assured him again that there was nothing to worry about, and she could probably tell that, if the cat were to fall to her death, he would blame himself for imagining it into happening for real and he would perceive it as an omen of personal doom.

     He asked Lacey if he was ridiculous and she smiled and neglected to answer.

     Of course, he often felt like he was a ridiculous person, but he didn’t want her to think so and it gave him such a boost, early in their relationship, when he shared his aspirations with her and she took him seriously. He was only bartending in a club to learn the ropes and he planned to buy his own club one day and he had lots of ideas for how to make it wildly popular – complimentary shots at the door, music kept at a moderate volume so you wouldn’t need to shout to have a conversation, a secret beer garden behind a wall of fake bookshelves – and he was also the drummer in a rock band called Sexy Jesus and, while he recognized that the lead singer’s voice likely wasn’t distinctive or consistently in tune enough for them to ever be big, he hoped to catch on with a more talented band and to eventually become a famous drummer-songwriter. Then he might use money from album sales to finance his club or, if it was musical success that was slower to come by, his club could be a springboard venue that would attract interest from record labels.

     But, years later, he was still a bartender, albeit in a pub, having realized he didn’t even like clubs and would rather own a great pub instead, one with a secret beer garden. And he was still in a band, but a Nirvana cover band, Smells Like Bleach, and it had been a while since he had written any songs, mainly because of the snobbish insistence in every band he had been in that the drummer’s sole focus should be on keeping the beat and lyrics were best left to the musicians who stand on the stage.

     Lacey said that if he was dead set on owning a pub, club, or whatever, he should be taking business courses, seeking out potential partners, and meeting with bank managers; and, to progress as a drummer-songwriter, he should be starting his own band rather than joining ones with an inflexible songwriter hierarchy. She was right but he kept dragging his feet and it was because of his banal fear that if he gave everything he had to the pursuit of a goal and failed anyway, it would be more embarrassing than if he failed because of a half-assed effort, as that would come with an in-built excuse.

     It wasn’t just her career advice he didn’t take. She thought he was depressed and he should get professional help, and he said that it wasn’t as if he was one of those people who couldn’t get out of bed for an entire day – he had only come close to that when he was monumentally hungover – and sure, since he was a teenager, he could be a moody fucker and he was inclined towards gallows humour, which could be misunderstood, and didn’t most people have a day or two each week where they couldn’t muster a smile and every conversation was a struggle and they felt like they were underwater?

     ‘So on days like that, you’re drowning?’

     ‘No, I’m holding my breath until a sunnier day comes along.’

     ‘This is Ireland, Tony, sunny days are few and far between. You need a new strategy.’

     ‘Right, well I’ll take that under advisement. Anything else?’

     ‘Your gallows humour has become a gallows sensibility, and you’re not as funny as you once were. And you used to be “underwater” for a day or two each week, but now it’s more like three or four. And you’re drinking too much. And I love you.’

     Lacey might have continued to put up with how stuck in the mud he was if she hadn’t missed her period, which she could usually count on to come like clockwork. She was stressing out when she told him and he hugged her and promised that, whether she was pregnant or not, everything would be okay. Then he hightailed it to the nearest pharmacy and bought three pregnancy tests – the promised ninety-nine-percent accuracy of a single test wouldn’t restore his peace of mind. She took two of the tests and when the first indicated she wasn’t pregnant, she was relieved. When the second confirmed the first, she was surprised to feel disappointment and then she became upset because there wasn’t a trace of ambivalence on Tony’s face. ‘You look like you’ve been acquitted of a crime you were falsely accused of.’

     His immediate thought was that she was underestimating his relief – most prison sentences are for no more than a few years, whereas the responsibilities of being a parent can trap someone for the rest of their life. ‘The idea of having a baby with anyone is kind of horrifying to me. It isn’t just the idea of having one with you.’

     Her face fell and he wished he could have chosen a word other than ‘horrifying’. What was wrong with him?

     Watching the cat dancing along the railings of the neighbouring balcony – doing exactly as she pleased, consequences be damned – he envied her fearlessness, but then he wondered if she understood on some instinctual level that life was meaningless and, if so, was her confidence drawn from an indifference to living or dying and was there a freedom in that?

     He pictured himself standing poised on the top bar of those railings, and stepping off. The fall itself and the violent impact with the pavement didn’t scare him. Rationally, he knew he would experience terror followed by pain, however fleeting, but he couldn’t fully imagine either. He just thought of no longer feeling like a cowardly fuck-up with an inadequate understanding of himself and the world around him, and of being rid of the sadness of having lost Lacey. For most of their time together, they had been good for each other, and she would agree, but they had gone as far as they could go. She was right to move on.

     When the cat got bored, she hopped across the void to the railings of her own balcony, then dropped to the floor and sat in her sphinx pose beside the potted plant. She appeared to be looking piercingly at Tony, before she lifted her paw to her mouth, licked it, and looked away.

     It dawned on him that, while his fantasy of falling and dying didn’t fill him with an appropriate amount of dread, the prospect of being forever gone and never having another chance to get better at life did. He decided that he wouldn’t do anything to win Lacey back, and he’d write her an email to tell her how grateful he was for all that they had shared and he’d wish her well and mean it.

     And he’d commit to a healthier lifestyle, foregoing alcohol for a while, or at least he’d drink significantly less, and, with that in mind, maybe he should stop being a bartender. He could be a manager in a café instead. Actually, maybe he should own a café. He’d look into that. And he could start going to a gym. He’d like to be fitter and he might meet a super-fit girl there – it would be exciting to date a gymnast or a ballerina, assuming they spend time in regular gyms. If all of this didn’t help him to feel less underwater, he’d consult a doctor, or he’d keep an open mind about it anyway. What was certain was that he needed to make changes and to firm up his resolve.

     So today he’d write a song, and he could put a drum solo in the middle. Well, maybe he should wait until tomorrow; he was bloody wrecked. No, today. He could write it about the cat, who he should stop looking to for answers. However assuredly she could balance on a balcony railing, she wasn’t a master of the universe and she possessed no great wisdom. By many standards, she was an idiot, and all she knew was how it felt like to be a cat. But that was okay: let the cat be a cat.

     And, by many standards, yes, he had been an idiot too, and that was okay, so long as it was a temporary condition and he aspired to be something more.