Chapter 1 :: Page 2

and cooking pans, quietly placing them with efficiency. Before I had finished buttoning my shirt, I could smell the first strips of frying bacon and oil.
   The room was warm with heat from the radiator and I turned the dull white plastic handle to the “off” position. Green carpet lined the second floor hallway to the stairs. I occupied a room at the back of the house on the second floor. The hallway lights were seldom left on. Light illuminated the corridor byway of spilling over from other rooms if their doors were open or through the large window over the front door on the first floor. The hallway extended across the second floor where other rooms branched off making a perfect cross with the stairwell that was centered in the middle of the house. A toilet flushed in a room down the hall and the shower within a washroom turned on.
   I had been living in Mrs. O’Malley’s house for almost four years. I had written down the exact date, but the date vanished when I lost the note I had written it on. It was a boarding house, a place of temporary lodgers that paid daily or weekly depending on the length of visit or if their homes were ready for them to return. Oftentimes, local Irish from Dalkey or nearby stayed at the house. Sometimes, they only lived blocks away. I didn't know the people that stayed here, the Irish or the foreign visitors, the tourists, businessmen. Mostly men stayed. They came and they moved on through.
   I paused. "Good, morning," I said through the kitchen doorway.
   "Good morning. Up again early, are ya?" Mrs. O'Malley barely turned towards the door as she spoke. She wore an ankle length blue skirt and leather shoes, the soles soft padded. She moved with a feline ease, but always with a certain determination. As the matriarchal head of household, Mrs. O’Malley’s responsibilities were great and she accomplished her multiple tasks in the most efficient manner.
   I nodded with a tired half smile and walked out the door. My footsteps creaked on the wood stairway down to the front walkway. I turned down the sidewalk. On the side of the house was an ancient thorny shrub rose called Henry V. It was black bare and gnarled without color or smell. Standing about seven feet high, even in the summer the plant was an eyesore, but Mrs. O’Malley didn’t want it cut down. In the drab winter as it appeared now, brown and dull green, it looked almost menacing.
   The air was frigid and my breath showed, intermittently clouding my view of the dark sea out to Howth Head. Dalkey was quiet now, but latter, tourists from Dublin would pass through. Not too many. March. It was too early in the year.
   Dreary clouds hovered silently over Howth Head. The weather changed constantly during the day in winter. Sometimes it turned cold or

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