Evidence
The morning I finally take the tickets out again, I do it like I’m handling evidence.
They’ve been living in the back of my handbag for months, wedged behind receipts and lip balm, as if hiding them could make them less real. Two names printed in neat black type. Two seats. Two weeks in Venice. A honeymoon that never happened because my fiancé left before the wedding and the world kept moving as if heartbreak were a weather system.
I sit at the tiny kitchen table in my flat above the shop and lay the tickets down between a chipped mug and a bunch of wilting tulips. The light in Dublin has that grey, water-washed look it gets when it can’t decide whether to brighten or give up. I stare until my eyes burn.
Siobhán said I should go. “Not because you’re meant to be brave,” she’d snapped, spooning sugar into her tea like she was sharpening a knife. “Because you already paid, and because you’re allowed a few days where you’re not surviving.”
Surviving. That’s what I’ve been doing: opening the shutters, arranging roses, smiling at customers, going home alone. Making myself small enough to fit inside the shape of what I lost.
I pick up the tickets and my thumb finds the crease where I folded them the first time. I remember the hotel confirmation, the itinerary my fiancé printed, the way he said we’d eat our weight in pasta and then walk it off along the canals. I remember the way his hand squeezed mine at the thought of it.
And then I remember the week before the wedding, the careful voice he used when he said he was leaving, and the sound my mother made when I finally told her it was over.
I stand abruptly. The chair scrapes. My hands shake. I can’t do this.
Except — there’s a second thought, quieter, stubborn as a weed between paving stones. The truth is I don’t want to let the tickets rot in a drawer like a relic. I don’t want my whole life to be a museum.
I walk downstairs into the shop. The air is cooler there, heavy with greenery and damp paper. Camden Street hums outside with buses and footfall, the city’s indifferent heartbeat. I take a breath and start pulling buckets forward, checking stems, pretending I’m not on the edge of something.
The bell over the door rings.
“Morning, Clare.”
Eamon Kelly steps in with a roll of brown paper under his arm and sawdust in the seams of his hands. He’s been fixing shelves for me in a way that’s almost annoyingly competent, turning up when he says he will, refusing half the payment, looking at my shop like it matters. He smiles and the whole place feels a fraction less cold.
“Morning,” I manage.
He nods toward the back room. “I’ve cut the new brackets. If you’ve a minute, I’ll show you.”
A normal sentence. A normal day. But my eyes flick to the tickets on the counter where I left them, bright and impossible against the dark wood. Eamon follows my gaze without asking, because he’s not the kind of man who fills silence to prove he’s alive.
“What’s that?” he says, gentle.
My throat tightens. I could lie. I could tuck them away again. I could go back to being the woman who makes herself small.
Instead I exhale, and the words come out raw.
“It’s a honeymoon,” I say. “Or it was meant to be.”
His face doesn’t change in pity. Thank God. He waits, steady.
“I can’t… I can’t bear to waste them,” I add, and the confession feels like betrayal and rescue at the same time. “And I can’t go alone.”
Silence. Outside, a bus hisses past. Somewhere in the shop, water drips into a bucket.
Eamon’s eyes hold mine. “Right,” he says, like we’re discussing shelves or paint. “Tell me what you need.”
I swallow. “I need someone to come with me,” I say, and my voice shakes on the last word. “As a friend. As a… stand-in. To make it possible.”
He studies me for a long beat, and I brace for refusal, for awkwardness, for the world reminding me it’s not built to hold women who are both grieving and wanting.
Then he gives a small, crooked smile. “Venice, is it?”
I nod.
He taps the brown paper roll against his palm as if thinking. “I’ve never been,” he says. “But I can pack light.”
My heart does something stupid and hopeful. I hate it. I need it.
“Are you sure?” I whisper.
Eamon steps closer, careful with the space between us, like he understands it’s sacred and fragile. “I’m sure,” he says. “And Clare — no one gets to tell you you’re not allowed a bit of beauty, even if it’s borrowed.”