By Thursday night, the café smelled like sugar and damp coats and panic.
Declan wiped a streak of hot chocolate from the counter with the heel of his hand and checked the clock again. Ten past seven. Committee meeting officially “starting” at seven, which in local time meant half past if you were lucky and eight if Mrs Doyle got talking in the queue at Dunnes.
“You’ll wear a groove in the floor,” his sister Orla said, dropping a stack of chipped mugs onto the counter beside him. “Stand still a minute.”
“I am standing still,” he lied, shifting from one foot to the other.
“You’re vibrating.”
“It’s my natural charisma.”
“Your natural anxiety, more like.” Orla nudged him with her hip. She had the same dark curls as him, tied up in a messy bun, and a tea towel thrown over one shoulder like a general’s sash. “You’ve done this a hundred times. Why are you in bits now?”
Because she’s coming, he didn’t say. Because the last time she stood under those lights, I helped set up the stage.
“Council are circling,” he said instead. “Feels different this year.”
Orla’s expression softened. “They’ve been circling since we were teenagers. Remember the time they tried to cancel the youth club and Mam threatened to chain herself to the gate?”
“She still would,” he said. “Don’t tempt her.”
“Then stop looking like you’re going to faint at the sight of your own clipboard, and maybe she can have a night off.”
He grunted, failing to look less like he was going to faint. The back room of the café had been cleared of tables for the meeting; mismatched chairs ringed the space, and the whiteboard he usually used for daily specials now held a hand-drawn diagram of the square. The marker squeaked when he’d written TREE in all caps in the middle.
Against the far wall, a trestle table groaned under the weight of biscuits, fairy cakes, and a mountain of Tayto. Declan had learned long ago that people would sit through all manner of rows and budget talk if there were crisps involved.
Orla followed his gaze. “If this doesn’t bribe them into volunteering for everything, nothing will.”
“Don’t talk to me about volunteering.” He shook his head. “If one more person says, ‘Ah you love all that, Decks, sure you don’t mind,’ I might actually combust.”
“You do love it all.”
He paused. “That’s not the point.”
The bell over the front door jingled and voices drifted in—neighbours wrapping their coats tighter, stamping off the cold as they came through the café.
“Back room!” Orla called. “Committee’s in here, confession’s on Sundays.”
Declan snorted. “Don’t advertise. We’ll have Father Byrne asking for a slot.”
Within minutes, the back room was full of familiar faces: Mrs Doyle with her knitting bag, Brian from the chipper, two of the school teachers, one of the youth workers from the club, a mam from the GAA under-12s, the lad who ran the stall that sold knock-off football jerseys every year, and three teenagers hovering near the biscuits with the casual air of people pretending they’d been forced to come.
“Glad to see the youth wing’s in attendance,” Declan said, nodding at them. “Very civic-minded of you.”
“We’re only here for the Tayto,” one of them, Liam, said, not even pretending otherwise.
“Honesty,” Declan said. “We love that in a volunteer.” He clapped his hands. “Right, folks. Grab a seat.”
Chairs scraped, coats were shrugged off. Mrs Doyle claimed the one nearest the biscuits. Orla perched on the edge of the counter, arms folded, ready to referee if necessary.
Declan took his place at the front, whiteboard behind him, heart tapping faster against his ribs. The only empty chair was the one to his left, the one he’d placed a clean notebook and pen on like a peace offering.
The one he was trying not to stare at.
“She’ll come,” Orla murmured from the counter, like she’d read his mind.
He shrugged, exaggerated. “Didn’t say she wouldn’t.”
“You’re doing the neck thing.”
“Which neck thing?”
“The giraffe one.” She stretched her own neck and peered towards the front of the café. “Like that.”
He rolled his shoulders back and fixed his gaze on the room instead. “I’ll give it another five minutes.”
As if summoned, the bell over the front door jingled again. A gust of colder air moved through the café, carrying the smell of rain and bus exhaust.
Declan didn’t move straight away. He heard a familiar voice in the front—Niamh, low and polite with Siobhán at the counter—and felt his own shoulder muscles tighten.
“’Scuse me,” he said to the room, trying for casual. “Just going to rob more hot water for the tea.”
“Sure, we’ll try not to unionise while you’re gone,” Mrs Doyle said, already halfway into a packet of Custard Creams.
He slipped out into the main café, heartbeat thudding.
Niamh stood by the till, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her navy coat, hair pinned up in a twist that had started the day neat and was now losing the fight against gravity. Her glasses had fogged slightly from the change in temperature; she pushed them up with one finger, then pulled them off to wipe them on the hem of her sleeve.
She looked exactly like herself and nothing like herself at the same time.
“Jesus, Declan,” Siobhán said from behind the counter, spotting him. “There he is, the man of the week. She won’t stop talking about you.”
“I—what?” Niamh spluttered. “I won’t—”
“I said you called him a catastrophe with legs,” Siobhán went on blithely. “That counts as talking.”
“That was confidential.”
“Nobody’s confidential in my café,” Declan said. “That’s our slogan.”
“It should be ‘we overfill the teapots and ruin your life,’” Niamh muttered.
He smiled. “Bit long for a sign, that.”
For a heartbeat, they just looked at each other. The last time they’d been in here together without half the neighbourhood present, they’d been arguing over whether her mam should be volunteering at the cake stall with her dodgy knee. Before that, it had been—
Don’t go there, he told himself.
“Tea?” he offered. “Coffee?”
“I’m grand,” she said, because of course she was. “If we start with tea we’ll still be here at midnight.”
“She’s trying to run meetings like it’s the High Court now,” Siobhán stage-whispered, leaning on the coffee machine. “You’re in trouble.”
“That’s what I brought her in for,” Declan said.
Niamh shot him a look that said: I heard that and I am filing it away.
“Back room’s ready,” he said, gesturing. “You’re very welcome to the circus.”
“Is there popcorn?” she asked.
“Biscuits.”
She sighed. “Half measures as usual.”
He held the door for her as she passed through to the back. The smell of biscuit sugar, fresh coffee, and damp wool wrapped around them.
When she stepped into the room, the noise dipped for a second. Not much, not enough that anyone would’ve admitted it, but enough that Declan felt his hackles rise on her behalf.
“Here she is now,” Mrs Doyle said brightly, filling the gap. “Our legal eagle. We’re saved.”
“Define ‘saved,’” Niamh said, recovering quickly. “Because that letter looked like a death notice to me.”
Laughter rippled around the room, tension easing. Declan exhaled.
He gestured to the empty chair beside him. “Seat of power.”
“Seat of suffering,” she muttered, but she sat.
Orla slid a notebook towards her. “Agenda,” she said, tapping the top page, where she’d written in big letters:
Council letter / money
What we actually want
Who is doing what
Biscuits
“Strong priorities,” Niamh said.
“Learned from the best,” Orla replied.
Declan cleared his throat. “Right. Thanks for coming, everyone. I know it’s freezing and the telly’s showing three different versions of the same Christmas film.”
“Not as entertaining as this will be,” Brian from the chipper said. “I brought a notebook to keep track of the rows.”
“You’re taking minutes,” Declan told him. “Congratulations, you’ve been promoted.”
Brian groaned. The room laughed. Good. Humour was air in rooms like this.
Declan nodded towards the letter on the table. “You’ve all seen some version of this. Council’s reassessing funding for community events, especially ones that don’t make a profit on paper. They’ve given us one last year as we are, and after that they want… changes.”
“Changes meaning the end of it,” Mrs Doyle sniffed. “They never say the thing straight out. Always envelope it in fancy language.”
“That’s why we have a solicitor,” Declan said. He turned to Niamh. “You want to translate?”
A dozen pairs of eyes swung her way. She didn’t flinch.
“What Declan said,” she replied. “With more spreadsheets.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. She sighed, and went on, more serious.
“The council’s under pressure too,” she said. “They’ve cut arts funding, sports, anything that looks like ‘extras’ on a balance sheet. If they can point to a line that says ‘Northside Winter Festival: net loss,’ it makes us an easy target.”
“Except it’s not a loss,” the GAA mam said. “We get half our training kit money from the stall fees.”
“And the club gets their extra room painted every January with leftover funds,” the youth worker added. “The kids call it the Santa grant.”
“That’s the problem,” Niamh said. “Most of the benefits aren’t on the festival’s own books. They’re spread out. Which makes it harder to argue for on a single spreadsheet, but not impossible if we’re clever about it.”
Declan watched the room as she spoke. They were listening properly now, leaning forward, hands wrapped round mugs.
“What do we need to be… clever?” Mrs Doyle asked.
“We need actual numbers,” Niamh said. “Not ‘ah sure, it’s great’ and ‘people love it.’ We need to show them how many local businesses rely on the trade, how many clubs and schools use the funds, how many people come through the square over the three weeks. We need photos, testimonials, stats.”
Liam, the Tayto teenager, raised a hand halfway. “Like a project?”
“Exactly like a project,” Declan said. “Except if we fail, nobody gets a certificate and the lights go out for good.”
“Cheery,” Orla murmured.
Niamh tapped the table, thoughtful. “We also need a proposal for how we tighten things up. Better budgeting. Maybe a small ticket price for certain events, if we can keep the main square free. Sponsorship that doesn’t involve flogging the naming rights to some crowd who’ll plaster a betting logo over the grotto.”
The room made a collective noise of disgust at that.
“We’re not having Paddy Power’s Christmas Wonderland,” Brian muttered.
“Exactly.” She glanced at Declan, then back at the group. “The council likes words like ‘sustainable’ and ‘community-led.’ If we can show them we’re not just throwing money at a snow machine, we stand a chance.”
“Snow machine’s broken anyway,” Declan said. “Liam nearly electrocuted himself with it last year.”
“I only nearly,” Liam protested. “That doesn’t count.”
“Put that in the minutes,” someone said. “Youth heroism.”
Then she pushed off the wall and walked into the square, into the noise and the light and the mess, into the part of December she had sworn off a long time ago without factoring in that some promises had to be broken if you ever wanted to feel your own heartbeat again.
"Fine," she told the empty lane. "We'll try it your way."
She exhaled, slowly.
Within seconds: I would never. (I absolutely will.) Meet you by the café stall? 15 mins? I'll bribe you with something seasonal and questionable.
She waited.
Send.
I'm at work. I have an hour. Don't make me regret it.
Her thumbs moved almost of their own accord.
The square was still around the corner. The lane still held her in the half-space. Her past and future were apparently both being managed by men who didn't know when to stop talking.
She snorted, the sound surprising her in the quiet.
Sorry. That was a lot. You can tell me to get lost. I won't, but you'll have the moral high ground. D.
Another message landed before she could decide what to do.
She stared at it for a long second. The urge to throw the phone into the nearest bin wrestled with the part of her that had, apparently, walked all the way down here just to listen.
Hi. It's Declan. Magnus gave me your email. I have Questions about risk assessments and cables and maybe therapy but mainly cables. Any chance you'd meet me for a coffee and explain why the inspector looks like he'd rather eat his clipboard than speak to me?
Her phone buzzed again. This time it was a message from an unknown number.
A gust of wind whipped down the lane, bringing with it the smell of coffee and sawdust and damp cobbles. Her eyes stung, but that might just have been the cold.
"This is ridiculous," she muttered. "You're a grown woman. You can walk into a public square without bursting into flame."
Instead, she leaned her shoulder against the cold brick and allowed herself to stand in the almost-place between avoidance and brave.
She did not step out. Not yet.
She could hear hammers. Someone swearing lightly as something metal clanged. A burst of laughter. And under it all, the distant sound of music—someone testing a speaker with a scratchy version of an old pop song.
By the time she reached the mouth of the lane that led into the square, her stomach was doing that old, familiar swoop. She stopped there, just out of sightline, listening.
It was a fifteen-minute walk to the square if you weren't trying to race your own heartbeat. She could feel her feet wanting to speed up, muscle memory dragging her along corners she'd taken a thousand times growing up. Every few steps she told herself she could still turn back. Every few steps she didn't.
She turned right instead.
The sky was low and the air had that damp, clingy weight to it that promised rain or snow or both. She could have turned left towards the big shops and their blaring music, the safe route where Christmas was generic and impersonal.
At lunchtime, instead of eating at her desk like she usually did, she put on her coat and walked.
She closed the window before she could throw her mouse at the screen.
The message whooshed away into the digital ether, a small flare against a larger sky. Nothing exploded. No one rang to tell her she was ridiculous. A little notification popped up instead a few minutes later: out-of-office reply from one of the council officers, cheerfully informing her that they were "currently away until the New Year" and "looking forward to engaging further in 202X".
She hit send.
"This isn't the whole of you," she told herself quietly. "It's just one fight."
By mid-morning, she'd drafted and redrafted an email that walked the line between polite and pointed. She attached the latest set of signatures from local residents, double-checked the dates, then hovered over the send button for a second longer than necessary.
When he left, she let herself exhale properly. It was easier to read planning jargon than to sit with the idea that someone in the building might actually be rooting for her in this.
"She's a powerful woman," he said. "Don't underestimate her."
"I'll put that on my CV," she said. "Endorsed by Dara's aunt."
"Fair enough," he said. "If you manage to pull a rabbit out of that hat, you'll make a lot of people very grateful. Including my aunt who still rings Liveline every time they change the bus routes."
He eyed her for a moment, then shrugged.
"Occupational hazard," she said.
He snorted. "They'll do what they like. They always do. You'll give yourself an ulcer."
"I wouldn't call it a crusade," she said lightly. "I'm just making sure they don't concrete over half the good bits of the northside without asking anyone who actually lives there."
"Good woman," he said. His gaze flicked to the folder on the corner of her desk. "Still at that crusade of yours?"
"I am," she said. "I'll have a draft ready for you by Wednesday."
"You on the Murphy file this week?" he asked.
"Morning," she replied.
She looked up. Dara, one of the senior partners, leaned on the frame with his coffee like a man permanently posing for a photo.
"Morning," a voice said from the doorway.
She could have underlined those words in half a dozen other letters. Each time she did, her jaw clenched a little tighter.
"no formal decision has been made"
"consultation remains ongoing"
"in keeping with the heritage of the area"
When she finally sat down and pulled it towards her, she did not let any of them talk. Instead, she took out a pen and started underlining phrases in the latest council response.
The file on the square sat in the corner of her desk, a bulging folder of minutes, maps and correspondence. Every time she opened it, time folded in on itself a little. Thirteen and nineteen and thirty-one all tried to speak at once.
On her to-do list for the day, in amongst lease reviews and a note to call a client about a boundary dispute, she had scrawled in smaller handwriting: Email council re: revised plan.
Her office was small but hers, a glass panel on one side, a window on the other that looked down over a side street where a florist had set up a display of winter wreaths. Someone had stuck a paper snowflake to her computer monitor at a jaunty angle. She removed it gently and set it on the desk.
Niamh stared at the numbers above the door as they ticked upwards and reminded herself that she was good at this part. Contracts. Deadlines. Letters that started "we act on behalf of". The language of things that could be fixed with signatures and stamps.
"Everyone needs therapy, too, but I'm not giving her that either," the first one shot back.
"Mugs are practical," the other argued. "Everyone needs a mug."
"I'm telling you, Siobhán will cry if you get her a mug," one insisted.
On the way up in the lift, two associates from another team discussed Secret Santa with the kind of intensity usually reserved for high-stakes litigation.
"She'd organise a union," Niamh replied, which made the receptionist cackle.
"Bring your mam," the woman suggested. "She'd liven it up."
"I've a whole fortnight to come up with an excuse," she said.
"Morning, Niamh," the receptionist called. "You all set for the Christmas do?"
Her office was in one of those glass buildings that tried very hard to look like they didn't belong to any particular decade. Too clean, too smooth. The lobby always smelled faintly of coffee and printer ink. Reception already had a small fake tree up, silver tinsel reflecting off the polished floor in a way that made her eyes ache.
Her stop came up sooner than she wanted. She pressed the bell, murmured a quiet "thanks" to the driver out of habit, and stepped off into the sharp morning air.
The bus lurched. An elderly man in a flat cap caught the rail just in time. They exchanged the brief nod of strangers acknowledging each other's continued existence.
Now she knew. They were evidence. A paper trail leading to the day she'd been too tired and angry to keep pretending the square was someone else's problem.
She'd clipped the first article about that project months ago, physical scissors and everything, like her mother saving recipes. The clippings lived in a folder at the back of a kitchen drawer, along with notices about water charges and school fundraisers and the receipt for the new washing machine. She hadn't known why she'd kept them at first.
On the seat in front of her, someone had abandoned a free newspaper. The headline was about a storm in the west, fields flooded, pictures of tractors half-submerged. Beneath it, a smaller piece mentioned the proposed redevelopment of their square, blandly titled "Consultation Continues On Local Regeneration Project".
Niamh shoved the phone back into her bag before she could start composing a lecture about ungrateful teenagers and the sanctity of instant gravy. The truth was, she was secretly pleased. Deirdre sending her to the butcher instead of going herself was a tiny, quiet acknowledgement that she trusted Niamh not to fall apart in that particular shop.
Also bring decent gravy granules. Rosie says the ones I bought are "an insult to boil water". Child needs a hobby. x
Another message came in immediately.
She smiled despite herself and typed back: They fear you. We'll get the full bird.
Don’t forget to pick up the turkey this evening. And DO NOT LET THEM TALK YOU INTO A CROWN. We are not a crown family. Mam x
Her phone buzzed in her hand. A message from Deirdre.
Across the aisle, a toddler in a bobble hat gnawed on the ear of a stuffed penguin while his mother scrolled, one hand automatically reaching out every few seconds to stop him sliding off the seat. Two schoolgirls at the back compared nail polish and exam stress. A man in a suit conducted an entire negotiation about a "Q4 deliverable" at a volume that made everyone else silently hate him.
On the upper deck of the 46A, Niamh sat by the window and watched Christmas happen to other people.
The pavements had been power-hosed within an inch of their lives after the latest storm, but a thin film of grit still clung to the kerbs. Bus shelters were plastered with posters for pantos and supermarket offers, cartoon reindeer grinning down at commuters hunched into their coats.
On the first Monday of December that year, the city tried to pretend the weekend's weather hadn't happened.
***
The laughter loosened something in Declan’s chest. This was what he loved—the way they could go from hand-wringing to slagging in two minutes flat and still get things done.
“Right,” Niamh said briskly. “First question: what do we actually want? If they offered to keep the funding at the same level but told us to cut the market to one weekend, would you take it?”
“No,” Mrs Doyle said, scandalised. “Two at least. Some people only get paid in the middle.”
“What if they said keep the market, but no stage?” he asked. “No performances.”
“The school would riot,” the teacher said. “That’s half the kids’ one experience of being on a microphone that isn’t TikTok.”
“Okay,” Niamh said. “So the square, the market, and the stage are non-negotiables. Good to know.”
Declan watched her as she scribbled notes, her handwriting small and precise. She was in her element now: problem to solve, people to protect. The tightness around her mouth eased when she was focused like this. You could almost forget this was the same person who’d once refused to walk past the square in December.
Almost.
When they moved on to practicalities, he took over. Stalls, rota, storage. Who had fairy lights in their attic. Who could fix the leaky generator. Which acts to woo back, which to quietly drop.
“Can we ban that lad who does the clown balloon thing?” Orla asked. “The one who keeps calling the teenagers ‘princess’ and ‘buddy’ and thinks consent is optional?”