The pebbles on the gravel path swam before her eyes as she strode purposefully away from the cliff top where he remained sitting, still as a statue, gazing at the lighthouse in the distance whose whiteness reflected the dying rays of the evening sun.. She would not look back. Not ever. If she did she might weaken and go back. That would be the end of everything.

 

 She had never been so honest with anyone in her life....and yet she had still held something back. It had been five years; five wonderful years. So many laughs. Ok, a few tears as well, but it had been a quarter of her whole life. It was worth the pain just to have had those five years with him. Her mind went back to that first evening.

He had just been another face in the group of lads who hung out in the park on those warm summer nights. Until he singled her out and spoke to her.

“What part of Dublin are you from?”
“Malahide. Why? Have you ever been there?”
“What are you doing up here in the north?”
She noticed he had answered her question with another question. That was supposed to be a characteristic of Belfast people; or perhaps he had just cleverly avoided answering her question. But there was a twinkle in his eye and she was curious. They talked for a while until the others noticed them and began to tease and try to embarrass them..
“Will you be at the hop on Saturday?”
“Yeah! See you then.”

 

They danced together and he bought her a coke. He was quiet but there were no awkward silences. He had a way of looking at you that made you feel that everything you had to say was important and nothing you said would sound silly.  And he had a nice smile.

 

He had  left her home. He seemed to be at ease with her as they walked along under the streetlights and she wondered what would happen when he left her. In the end it was clear that there was a shyness in his nature that she hadn’t noticed before. A quick peck on the cheek on her doorstep and he was gone.
“Boys”, she thought, smiling to herself. “When do they ever become men?”

 

The following week she had left for home and the week after that his first letter arrived. She answered it within days and the week after that she received another. Thus the pattern was established. Week after week the letters came. At first they detailed the events and people in his daily life. They were funny. He could write. As time went on she got to know him better. He began to reveal more about his personal thought and feelings. As the weeks went by she began to look forward to the Friday morning when his letter would drop through her letter box. Months turned into years. They had a few weekends together. He finished school and had been received an offer for college. They had that weekend in early July.  But in her heart she knew something had changed.  This feeling of fondness which she had felt for him – was this what they called “puppy love”? - had deepened into something so intense that it almost frightened her.

 

She knew a decision had to be made, and as ever, in such situations, it was always the woman who made the decision. For all their talk, men are such prevaricators. He had worked hard to get this place in college. He had a clear aim in life. He had his career path marked out; and she could see no place for herself on that path, apart from being an insurmountable obstacle. So she had been strong for both of them. She had held out the hope of some vague future together, but she knew, and he knew, that it was just comfort talk. Deep down she knew that she was wrong for him; and if he were honest with himself he knew it too. She would hold him back. She would end up like her mother, with one at her feet, one in the pram and one at her breast. Love would turn into resentment and they would both waste their lives regretting their wasted years. Of this she was certain.

 

Sitting on the bus on the way home she felt that she had come to a crossroads in her life. She had lost him; of that there was no doubt. And yet, as she felt her heart beating heavily in her breast she imagined that she felt an echo of that heartbeat in the tiny heartbeat within her womb. She had lost him; but the one thing that she hadn’t told him was that there was a part of him that would always be hers.