1

In other words, the writer was back.

2

Four years previously, he left Ireland for Nova Scotia, and now he and his wife were living in his childhood home in north Kildare.

3

While they wanted to rent in Dublin, this was trickier than it sounded, because within an hour of being posted on Daft.ie, a listing, give or take, would have a thousand views or more; within the same amount of time, a hundred applications, easy. It was a lottery, whose outcome was, all things considered, ironic: not a bolstering of your bank balance, but a decimation, an emptying-out. As a result, he and his wife enabled push notifications, so that whenever a listing appeared under their chosen and saved parameters they could apply within a minute. Alacrity, so went their reasoning, was the surest way to get invites to view. But experience quickly taught them that the price of most Dublin apartments rarely matched their grubby interiors, that those which did were often exorbitant, and that the rare few in budget and between whose walls you could actually see yourself living – just because, sadly, they were only modestly damp – went to happier, richer, craftier couples.

4

The writer day-jobbed part-time as an SEO strategist; his wife was a biology research assistant at the nearby university; the writer’s mother cared for adults with intellectual disabilities, and the writer’s father, at sixty-five, all but counting down to retirement, did twelve-hour shifts as a cook at the village nursing home. And yes, working sucked, as virtually all work must suck, but they were alive and well and lucky. Which was more than you could say for their neighbours, the Donnelly family.

5

The Donnellys lived at the front of the housing estate, in a four-bed semi-d. This wasn’t why they were unlucky, nor even why you could call them neighbours. The Donnellys were unlucky because Mr Donnelly was dying of cancer. Prior to the diagnosis, his family worked too: Mr Donnelly was Head of History at the nearby university; Mrs Donnelly ran the local charity shop, a St Vincent de Paul; their eldest was a doctor; their middle child a primary teacher; their youngest a solicitor fresh out of King’s Inns. But when the cancer was at its worst they didn’t work much at all.

6

After eight months of treatment, Mr Donnelly was admitted to Beaumont, where every day for a month friends and family came and went, saying goodbye if they knew how or sitting quietly by his side. Although he wouldn’t live to see it, he was enthusiastic about the future. In particular, he was hopeful that the Irish rugby team that October would progress further, at long last, than the quarter-finals at the World Cup. The team’s Grand Slam victory at the Six Nations the previous spring had been a welcome distraction during his endless bouts of chemo. In the end, too exhausted to talk, he held the hands of all his loved ones while his breathing shallowed and slowed. It didn’t matter he couldn’t speak. His family knew what really mattered. That he loved them and always did and that they in turn loved him and that long after he died, and even after they died themselves, they would always be a family who’d made the most of their time on Earth.

7

Mr Donnelly died close to midnight on 21 August 2023. He was fifty-nine years old.

8

The wake was three days later, between 4 and 7 p.m. The writer’s family were among the first to visit the Donnelly house. They knew wakes were always busy, sometimes busier than funerals themselves, especially in a semi-d where it can be harder to host a crowd. Because at the very least, with a funeral, you have the space a church affords you; with a wake you’re limited to wherever you happen to live. Things are tight, people generous, but there’s only so much room: apple tarts and pasta bakes and casseroles soon multiply. Stacked, they fill the fridge. They fill the freezer. Then they spread. And with no other place to go they find new and various homes atop the stove, by the kettle, beside the sink, above the washing machine. Sometimes they secure the island, beside the trays of triangular sandwiches, all of which wait patiently behind cellophane and tin foil for hungry hands to find them. This scene was no different for the Donnellys. The only difference was what they wanted: for a steady flow of people to file quickly from garden to hallway, from living room to kitchen, from back garden to side gate and away off home with them. There would be refreshments in the kitchen to which all were welcome to help themselves. But otherwise, Mrs Donnelly said, given the crowd they were all expecting, they had asked people to linger in the garden only if they must.

9

Off the kitchen, in the living room, Mr Donnelly looked appalling. The writer had seen his share of corpses. But Mr Donnelly – it was worth repeating – looked well and truly appalling. Of course, the man was dead, you weren’t supposed to look your best. Yet the pallor and the slenderness of his hands, the writer thought, and the gauntness of his fingers, and the angularity of his temples brought to mind his earliest fear: a ventriloquist’s doll who was only pretending to be asleep.

10

Soon his family up ahead were offering condolences to the Donnellys, who were Mrs Donnelly and her three children and Mr Donnelly’s two sisters. The writer was distracted by the memorabilia in his peripherals. An Irish Rugby polo and a Man United jersey. A bouquet of green-red flowers. Preoccupied as he was, however, by the things about the room, it was now his turn to sympathise with the family at the top of the queue. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. He had never been comfortable with the phrase I’m sorry for your loss. In the past, whenever he said it, he felt as though he were spitting marbles. Better, he thought, to tell someone that all of this – the preceding illness and present death and the future and everlasting heartache – was plain and utter shite. But in most instances this wasn’t entirely appropriate, the present one included, so he played it safe and opted for silence and gave Mrs Donnelly a big hug. And fortunately for him, this seemed to provoke the desired response; when Mrs Donnelly pulled away, she had tears and what looked like gratitude shining in her eyes. Then squeezing his shoulders she said, ‘Thanks so much, Dec, for agreeing to mind the house. It means so much, really.’ The writer had no idea what she was on about. Minding the house? When? She pulled him in for another hug and he was limp at first. Confused. But the intensity of the moment – not to mention his mother’s gaze turning carefully, now, towards him – made him hug Mrs Donnelly back and say, ‘Ah, don’t mention it, Margaret. It’s the very least I could do, like.’

11

Back in their own semi-d, the writer’s family prepared a toast. The writer fetched the garden chairs from the cramped, longstanding shed, his wife poured gin on ice and topped it up with lemons and tonic, his mother nabbed the crisps, which despite being made from lentils were inordinately delicious, and his father pulled two Peronis from the crisper of the fridge. Once everyone took their chairs in the corner of the garden, his family drank quietly to the memory of Mr Donnelly. Bees buzzed. The sun shone. Flowers wavered on their stalks. Then the writer took a breath and said, ‘Mam, what exactly have you signed me up for?’ His mother shifted in her seat. ‘Did you hear about the funeral break-ins during Covid?’ she said. ‘When the two of you were in Canada?’ The writer hadn’t, nor had his wife, and so his mother filled them in.

12

The next day at noon, on a scorching August day, the writer walked the fifty metres under oaks and limes and beeches to the redbrick wall of the Donnelly house, where he and his neighbours stood and waited for the pallbearers to convey the coffin to the sleek black hearse parked neatly in the driveway. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, the writer felt very much at peace. He was where he needed to be: outside the Donnelly house, wearing black denim shorts and a black t-shirt and black Vans, at one with his fellow mourners. He had a backpack in which were his laptop and two books. He was prepared for his funeral duties and, by extension, felt purposeful. The sun heated his bones. Once again, a smell of fuel, a smell he had always loved, blew down from the nearby garage. Time was almost standing still.

13

The writer had zero plans to work during his time in the Donnelly house. He’d brought his laptop solely for show, so that when Mrs Donnelly returned he could pretend that he’d been working. In reality, he planned to read. He’d written for two hours that morning, adding 730 words to a manuscript he was prematurely calling his third novel, and he was looking forward to the silence. Once inside, he locked the door. Then he went into the living room to see if the windows there were shut and, repeating the process for every room, he found that everything was locked. Now the only thing left to do, he thought, was to ensure no one broke in.

14

Listen.

15

Soon the writer took a seat in the corner of the kitchen, in a crimson wingback chair that offered a view of the front door. He put his elbows on the armrests and imagined men in balaclavas jimmying the lock with silent precision. He thought of waking from a slumber in the cosy wingback chair only to see men in whose hands were tyre irons and knives and hurls and baseball bats. He tried to conjure compelling dialogue that would ensue between them all, though the only things he could muster were ‘This is a robbery!’ and ‘Stop! Freeze!’ None of which he could imagine pouring forth from an Irish mouth. Then he pictured an alternative scenario in which the lot of them said nothing: in which the burglars let their sense of menace slowly infect the room, and the writer gradually sank further into the swamp of his wingback chair.

16

As the afternoon passed, his mind produced an array of outcomes for similar break-in scenarios. He wondered what he would genuinely do in such an instance. In some he squirmed and begged; in others he screamed and fought. In one he was left unharmed; in another he was grievously wounded. But he settled for the longest time on a sequence in which he won: in which the burglars, surprised to see him, dropped their weapons and tried to flee, but then the writer, bolting after them, scooped up a wrench and threw it, striking one burglar’s head with such force as to become wedged in it. The man fell, his comrades deserted him, and the writer decided to let him die. He didn’t listen to the man’s pleas as he bled onto the Donnellys’ carpet. Nor did the writer care for the man’s scripted appeal for mercy. That his name was Seamus Rafferty; that he was married and had two kids; that Josie and Kevin and Saoirse would be beside themselves if he died: none of this succeeded in moving the writer in his wingback chair. He pushed aside Seamus’s backstory, predictable in its way, about how he only started burgling when Russia invaded Ukraine and the rising cost of energy meant he could no longer heat his home. The writer cared only for the mess that Seamus was making of the carpet. Which, now that he thought of it, he wondered if he might be expected to replace.

17

Moving into the kitchen, he quickly forgot his daydreams by filling the kettle with water and switching it on for tea. While it boiled, he collected dishes and slid them into the dishwasher. When it was full, he found a tablet and turned on an economy cycle. The few things that wouldn’t fit – two stemless wine glasses and a cast-iron dish big enough to roast a chicken in – he set beside the sink. The kettle clicked. He found a mug. It was smaller than it was large, azure in colour, light in weight, and on it were chestnut leaves and their dazzling erumpent flowers; their cerise-pink burst and creamy petals made him smile, just as they did each April when they bloomed and made him happy. In the mug he threw a teabag, over which he dumped hot water, then he fetched the milk and poured a glug and watched the umber become gold, a tornado swirling to sunset, and gave his teabag a final squeeze and spooned it deftly into the compost. When he breezed towards the island, he keenly studied the treats on offer: Jacob’s USA, Cadbury’s Milk Tray, McVitie’s, Fox’s. And tempting as they all were, he was captivated by the homemade goods on paper plates at the island’s edge. On one was rocky road. On the other, caramel shortbread. There was absolutely no question: it would have to be the shortbread. He found a plate and took a slice and swiftly returned to his wingback chair. Then he sat and savoured his tea and his luxurious caramel shortbread.

18

He was doing extremely little reading. However, he was enjoying himself. And perhaps this was of greater worth to his craft and constitution. He could get used to this way of living. He hadn’t been this relaxed in months. He drank his second mug of tea and ate three chocolate digestives, content in knowing that, if he wanted to, he could open Sara Baume’s Handiwork or Geoff Dyer’s But Beautiful, or, should the outrageous feeling arise, could even add further sentences to the manuscript he was prematurely calling his third novel. Life was currently in his favour. But he didn’t want to be too facetious. A family friend, he reminded himself, whom the entire neighbourhood had loved, the very man whose house he was minding, had died. He shouldn’t be so cheery. So he set down his plate and mug and pushed back in his wingback chair and, closing his eyes, he did his best to pay his respects to Mr Donnelly. Somehow, this involved Mr Donnelly coming back to life: the writer cast him by the kettle and tried offering him tea and biscuits, yet unlike with Seamus Rafferty, the writer’s version of Mr Donnelly was reticent to the point of belligerence. The man wouldn’t open his mouth. He simply stared at the writer for ages and then left the kitchen for greener pastures.

19

The writer was selfish – the writer is selfish – and in the wingback chair he surrendered himself to one of his favourite pastimes: worrying about his current work and its future publication. This was something he did daily, probably a thousand times a day, to the point where his wife had called a moratorium on book talk. Earlier in the year, he’d published a novel to modest acclaim; meanwhile, there was his second, which in reality was a novella and which, four months in, was dying slowly on submission; but otherwise there was this: the manuscript he was prematurely calling his third novel, in which a writer minds his neighbour’s house for the length of her husband’s funeral, only the neighbour and her three children fail to ever come back, so that the writer fails to leave since he promised to protect his neighbour’s house at all costs. The first night, he sleeps on the couch, alarmed that Mrs Donnelly has not returned to relieve him of his duties. The following morning, while eating porridge, he answers the door to other neighbours, who want to know how he’s holding up. He says he’s committed to minding the house, they say he’s doing an honourable thing. All the while, nobody knows where Mrs Donnelly and her children have gone. The writer continues to mind the house. When eventually he runs out of food, he orders more online. He exercises in the back garden. He does all his work from home: his freelance SEO employers understand the situation; he writes his daily 500 words. He receives deliveries of books from independent Irish bookshops. He keeps in touch with his family, who appear daily in the front garden but are tactful enough not to enter the Donnelly house: they wouldn’t want to intrude, they say, on the writer’s worthwhile duties. The writer doesn’t leave the house. Nobody knows where the Donnellys are, nobody knows when they’ll return. The writer persists. A year passes. And then another. He doesn’t leave. His sense of time is not unlike what he’s experienced on flights to Canada: suspended for such an interval, it no longer seems to exist. But it does. Years pass. Recession hits. He runs out of money. But the community and his family buy him groceries and pay his bills. He publishes a book about his experience. It’s a hit. Time falls apart. He persists. His parents die. He stays inside. He attends their funerals in the form of a digital avatar. His only sister is furious that he’s still minding the Donnelly house; she calls on the Irish Government to locate the various Donnellys so that her brother can leave their home. But both her efforts and the Government’s are ultimately unsuccessful. The writer continues to mind the house. And in between or long before this or shortly after – time doesn’t exist – the writer’s wife makes the tough call to divorce him and return to Canada. She can’t stress enough how much she loves just what he’s doing – it’s probably the most selfless thing he’s ever done, she says – but she just can’t continue with their marriage under the circumstances. He is devastated. But he understands. Years pass. He falls sick. The local GP visits, though only as far as the front garden, but even so, he suspects the writer has developed some form of cancer. However, due to the agreement the writer made years ago with Mrs Donnelly, the doctor insists he stays put. ‘Because if you left for treatment now,’ he says, ‘and the Donnellys returned, how negligent would that look on your part?’ The writer agrees. He dies. His ex-wife attends his wake, which takes place in the same room where they both stood over Mr Donnelly. She thinks it feels like only yesterday they were standing here together, and notes that little in the room has changed. She leaves the house. The final lines: ‘Off the kitchen, in the living room, the writer looked appalling. The town had seen their share of corpses. But the writer – it was worth repeating – looked well and truly appalling.’

20

I—

21

The writer understood that his literary problems were trivial. The real problem was that he and his wife could find nowhere to live in Ireland other than with his parents. As with book deals, so with housing: he worried about it incessantly. He was loath to say he had anxiety – since anxiety, he thought, was an intrinsic part of being human, and saying you had anxiety was like the average four-year-old telling you they had hair or teeth or toes – but his neuroses had become clinical a long time ago. If filing his taxes, for example, even through a registered accountant, he feared he’d make some tiny error by which to end up in jail. If at a literary event among other writers, he was sure he’d say something silly – Isn’t so-and-so a fucking nonce? – only for so-and-so to be behind him, tapping his toes, scowling. Wherever possible, he catastrophised. You might say it was his biggest hobby. Oftentimes, for no reason, his hands shook and his body froze. There were many times during which he felt the clichéd yet wholly accurate wave of panic assail him, after which for several minutes he would shiver with such intensity that his wife or his friends, or whoever he happened to be in the company of, would express such concern that made him want to call an ambulance. Naturally this only compounded his anxiety. And so earlier this year he finally accepted his circumstances and told himself that, yes, whoop-de-do, he had anxiety.

22

At present, however, in the comfort of his wingback chair, he was unusually at ease. Because he knew he should be worrying, in no particular order, about acquiring a second book deal and a twelve-month lease; knew he should be directing his anxieties towards the thing that soothed and stoked his nerves in equal measure; knew he should remove from his front left pocket his decrepit iPhone 7, to see if on it were either notifications from Daft.ie or a missed call from his agent; knew he should unlock his phone’s screen and thumb towards Gmail and hope as his inbox loaded that it would finally be there, an email from his agent containing news of a second book deal: he knew he should do all these things because, for years, he completed them hourly, and yet he hadn’t completed any of them since entering the Donnelly house. He also knew, however, that he didn’t want to be on his phone; he wanted to enjoy the wingback chair and the delicious quietude of the moment. To that end, he listened, and he heard a clock he couldn’t see, and he noted his foot tapping along to its steady beats. Then he realised it was his heart pulsing loudly in the silence, at sixty-odd beats per minute, and he laughed. You couldn’t write this. Or, if you did, no one would believe you were telling the truth. But here he was, in the house of the dead, his heart beating at a pace that currently told him he was free from worry. Then he opened his eyes.

Finally.

Had you forgotten they’d been closed too?

Then, rewarding himself, he removed his phone and awoke its sleepy screen.

23

Instantly, his eyes widened, not because of a notification, but rather because of the time. It was gone three o’clock. He’d been in the house for three hours. Had you asked him before he checked his phone to estimate how long he’d been here, he’d have said forty-five minutes. An hour tops. But three hours? This was absolutely outrageous. He hadn’t read a single page from either of his books – how could the time have passed so quickly? He shook his head and bounced his phone lightly upon his fingers, as though testing a flat rock he was soon to skim across the sea. When he returned it to his pocket, his adrenaline started to calm. But as the high petered out, a worry began to blossom. And as he ruminated further, the thought besieged his brain: a thought as serious as only one from a catastrophiser can be.

24

What if I’m living the novel I’ve written?

25

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mr Donnelly said, popping into the kitchen once again. This time he appeared not from thin air but from the utility room in the back.

‘I thought you’d left?’ the writer said. ‘Via the hallway? I watched you.’

‘No. You thought you’d watched me. In reality you were too busy making the world in your own image.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Mr Donnelly laughed. ‘It means you writers are fucking mad. Because if you’re not wallowing in self-importance, you’re comparing yourself to others and then wondering why you’re depressed. Honestly, you’re insufferable.’

‘That seems a bit mean. Is it so much to want a career? What I want is no different to the likes of you once wanting tenure.’

‘Say that to me again, Declan, when you can admit what you’re really after.’

The writer was silent a moment. He thought of reaching for his phone. Then, twitching his nose, he said, ‘But I can. I want to make good art and own a home and have a family. However, none of these things seem particularly possible at the moment.’

‘Then do what everyone else in your position does and work.’

‘I’m trying.’

‘What are we doing here?‘

Mr Donnelly’s non sequitur caught the writer off-guard. Already he was flustered by the man’s peculiar ghost.

How should I know?’ the writer said. ‘It’s your house.’

‘No. Why are we here, Declan? On Earth. Alive.’

‘But you’re not alive. You’re dead?’

Mr Donnelly shook his head and trudged angrily towards the hallway. ‘You’re hopeless. I can’t help you. You haven’t a chance of figuring it out.’

And as Mr Donnelly crossed the room, the writer knew better than to ask him to elaborate. As if hearing his thoughts, however, Mr Donnelly stopped by the door and, with one foot in the hallway and the other in the kitchen, he turned around and shouted, ‘For the love of Christ, open your eyes!’

26

The doorbell pealed. The writer jolted awake in the wingback chair. His eyes were open. No. Had they been shut this whole time? He blinked. He had no idea. He stood up and checked his phone and remembered how, a few hours ago, he took no notice of the removal of Mr Donnelly’s coffin. Had he blacked out again? He saw from his phone it was almost four. Time was far from standing still.

On the front porch was Shea, Mrs Donnelly’s older brother, as well as the Usher Woman from the wake, whose name the writer couldn’t remember. ‘He’s in the living room, lads’ was the sole thing he recalled. That and how she ushered the writer’s family towards the coffin. Now, though, the writer thought, Shea and herself resembled Gardaí who had awful news to share but didn’t know how best to break it.

‘The man himself,’ Shea said, clapping the writer’s shoulder sternly. He and the Usher Woman filed through. ‘Any trouble?’

The writer didn’t know. He remained a little dazed. He was certain he hadn’t slept.

‘The finest,’ he lied. ‘It was quiet. Nothing doing.’ Then to the Usher Woman he raised a hand and said, ‘I’m Declan, by the way.’

‘Denise.’ She smiled. But didn’t extend a hand. ‘Marvellous day out,’ she said.

‘Isn’t it just? We’re spoiled.’

The writer was grateful for the solidity of their small talk in the moment, but when Denise half-closed the door the three of them stood in the house awkwardly.

‘Anything else before I go?’

‘No, no. Sure, that’s why we’re here. To relieve you of your duties.’

Shea’s laughter sounded nervous.

‘Grand, so,’ the writer said. ‘Just grab my bag and I’m off.’

And a moment later he was outside in the thirty-degree heat. And pale as he was, and without sun cream to boot, he was delighted to find himself in the sun’s torrid rays.

27

At his childhood home he unlocked the door. The house-alarm beeped. He punched in its code – his birthday – which prompted an automated voice to declare, ‘System unset.’ Though his parents and his wife weren’t back from work yet, he knew they wouldn’t be far behind. He closed the door and moved for the kitchen and opened the back door and slid outside. He removed the lawn chairs from the shed and then positioned them around the table in the corner of the garden, on which the sun would shine long into the evening. Once all of this was done, he returned to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the crisper of the fridge. Then he found an opener and popped the cap to a smell of hops and went outside.

28

He had just about sat down, and hadn’t even sipped his beer yet, when he felt his phone buzz. He set the bottle aside to check it. It was a push notification from Daft.ie, listing an apartment that matched his and his wife’s saved parameters. The listing was a one-bedroom apartment. Not inclusive of utilities, it was €1,800 a month. The location was Cabra. It was fine, though undesirable. But he had reason to believe the pictures were five to ten years old: the apartment, in reality, was probably a piece of shit. Still, he moved for his Notes app and copied his stock response. It read:

Hi there, my wife Laura and I really like the look of your apartment! We’re two young professionals with over a decade of tenancy experience. We’re currently based in north Kildare and are commuting to Dublin for work. Could we see the apartment at your earliest possible convenience? Best wishes, Declan

Most of this stock message was a lie. All the same, the writer returned to Daft.ie and pasted the response into the query form and pressed send and locked his phone.

29

Once he’d returned the phone to his pocket, he grabbed his beer and took a sip, and he studied the empty chairs in front of him and to his side. He was happy that very soon they would be filled with those he loved. But as he waited for his family to join him for an end-of-summer drink, he looked from chair to chair and flower to flower and sky to sky and he couldn’t help but wonder how the child he’d been at three and five and eight and twelve in this garden was now a thirty-year-old man whose grasp of time was increasingly slippery. He took another sip of beer and waited for clarity to find him. The front door would open soon. His family would file through. There would be laughter in the garden. ‘You writers are fucking mad,’ he’d hear.

30

An airplane passed overhead, probably coming from North America. A lawnmower buzzed. He basked in the sun and finished his beer. A car door shut and he imagined his family out front. Here we go, he thought, whether or not his guess was correct, whether or not this was around the time his family carpooled home from work. He stood and moved towards the house. His father’s roses smelled of heaven.

He might fetch another beer, or possibly even a bowl of peanuts, but he wouldn’t go so far as to swipe a fresh pack of the inordinately delicious, cheese-and-onion lentil crisps.

He would wait for his family to join him before opening those.