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SEVENTY-FIVE

The car park at Bangate Cove is completely empty and the sun shines milky white through a thin veil of clouds, while the air is full of salt and promise.

A new year, a new start. No more, I think to myself, no more running away.

No more women. I’ve learned my lesson. I will dedicate the rest of my life to making Martha happy.

And somehow, and I do not know how, we will find a way to make this dream come true, this dream of both of ours.

And then it will be me who turns heads when I walk into the establishment, me who causes people to say, “It’s Alistair himself.

” There will be photographs of me in lifestyle coffee-table books, pictures of me and my beautiful wife and our beautiful daughter in our iconic beachfront café and flower shop.

And fuck everyone else. Fuck all of them, especially the Swann family.

They can keep their money and their house and their restaurants and their perfect lives.

I have one last parting gift to the Swann family and it’s in a letter posted yesterday, addressed to Aisling.

Fuck them. Fuck their dreams and fuck their self-delusion.

I wait for Martha to get out of the passenger seat, and then I close her door behind her and hold my hand out to her. She smiles and lets me take it. Together we walk through the path between the dunes and onto the beach.