Do I still go on believing in it?

I used to think it was like a secret garden, hidden amid the sharp corners of an urban landscape, concealed until the appointed hour when you and your lover met. A beautiful place where happiness and laughter and trust and friendship and respect and comfort could all be found, and much more besides. And you sought out this garden of your birthright because you believed in it, because someone had been there and had brought back news of its wonders, because you believed that in this garden you would discover not just one thing you needed but everything you needed, because you believed that when you found it and sank into its enfolding arms, the abraded pieces of your life would soften and melt into a soft light, a halo illumining everything in its path, and you would become like the vanishing cracks of a crossword puzzle, melting into bliss. Is this such a naive dream?

Wednesday, 22 June, afternoon

I'm in the Law Library staring over my desk into a giant square space where wooden bookshelves containing ancient law reports line the high walls, where brown desks overflow with documents, where barristers in suits or in the court-ready mantle of wig and gown shout into cellphones, study at their desks, flit in and out or congregate in small groups, and all around is the murmur of voices well-spoken or keen to be well-spoken, broken by the occasional curt blast of names over the PA.

I'm trying my best to concentrate on a statement of claim concerning a dubious action against Dublin Corporation where the plaintiff (a local drunk according to my solicitor) alleges he fell into a badly flagged hole near Sandymount Green. If the award is made, it could keep him in booze for the rest of his life. Just think.

I don't feel like this, but if I don't keep up with the work I'm afraid my solicitors will stop sending me their briefs.

I'm depressed.

For reasons which you can, at this stage, imagine. But I'm depressed for another reason: because I have committed a particularly dumb mid-summer blunder. I went home just now and I discovered Max on the balcony.

Dead.

Nearby are a number of younger barristers who strut around like they are soon to be top-earning senior counselbut in actual fact most of them are working for less than a dishwasher's wages. They get round this acute difficulty through various potential-enhancement mechanisms: posture, accent, mannerism, hairstyle, garment, head-tilt, or speech content touching on private wealth, vocation, relative in the business, insinuation. Another effective solution is simply not to hang around and be seen in a state of well-dressed unemployment, waiting for cash to arrive in the form of briefs, which may or may not hit their postboxes depending on whether or not solicitors choose to regard them as non-existent entities.

I've got a thudding headache, and my heart feels like it's got a knife stuck in it and I can't pull it out. I should be in bed, but I've too much to do. I also have a drink-driving case to prepare for next week, a statement of defence to dictate into my Sony for my secretary on the panel, mail to open...

I hate people today.

What do you bet someone will come right up to me and say hello? There's so many sociable people in the place I swear it'll drive me to early retirement.

On a sudden crazy impulse I grab my mobile and input. Seconds later I hear Ronan's voice and this screeching noise in the background. "Where are you?" I demand.

"I'm outside Dublin airport, about to get into a taxi. I can barely hear you, Julie, with that aeroplane."

"Are you alone?"

"Sorry?"

Of course he's not alone.

"Scumbag," I shout.

"Sorry, Julie, could you speak up?"

"So you've decided to come home? What makes you think I've worked out my frustrations?"

Slight pause.

"Oh yes, the note."

The screeching background noise dies down.

"How are you anyway?" he asks, fatigued-sounding.

"Terrific," I reply. "I've just rented an apartment."

"I didn't know you were getting into real estate."

"I'm not getting into it: I'm using some of it."

A car door slams in the background. Must be the taxi door. Now two further slamming noises. Must be the cabbie's car door. And Nicole's car door.

"You're using, are you?"

"I'm presently residing in a new apartment."

"Presently."

"I've moved out," I snap.

Through the mobile you can hear what sounds like a bus rumbling to a halt.

"That's interesting," he says finally.

"Interesting."

"That's wonderful for you, Julie, what do you want me to say? Congratulations!"

I grit my teeth until my neck hurts.

I look up. On the bench, three desks up from me is a female barrister tuning into my conversation: she's leaning right over in my direction, her head in her palm, pretending to read some papers.

"Is that all you can say?" I whisper.

"What do you want me to say?"

I punch off, stand up and walk straight out of the Law Library, through the corridors and atrium of the Four Courts and out to the River Liffey across the road where I fill my lungs with its vaguely dietary reek. I sit down on the low wall and stare into the giant green moving snake.

My phone rings. It's Sylvana. Inquiring as to my health.

"I feel terrific, thank you. Truly marvellous."

"Good."

"Except for one thing."

"What?"

"The cat."

"What cat?"

"Max."

"Prudence, you mean."

"Max."

"What about Max, Julie?"

"He died."

She fails to reply.

"I knew you'd react like this."

"Did I react? Tell me some more."

So I tell all.

I returned home this lunchtime in order to free Max from his cage. On the way home I bought him several tins of the best cat-food brand I could find, with a choice of flavours from salmon to beef to tuna to rabbit to turkey. He had gone without food and water for close on thirty hours and I felt that the least he deserved was a banquet.

I twisted open the knob on the french windows, guilt-rotten. I stepped out on to the veranda and approached the cat box, apprehensive on account of there being no sound from within.

I opened the lid.

I understood immediately what had happened: Max had fried in sunlight all day yesterday and all this morning. In brief, he'd died of heat exhaustion.

I was devastated.

Although there was anguish, too: I now had a body to get rid of.

"She deserved it," Sylvana declares, after a brief hiatus.

"Who? Nicole?"

"The cat."

"It's a he."

"Okay, he deserved it."

"He did nothing wrong, Sylvana. He was just a cat."

"He was Nicole's cat," she argues.

"So what you're really saying is that Nicole Nicole deserved it?" deserved it?"

"Okay, Julie." She sighs. "Have it your way."

"I will. Nicole deserved it, but the cat himself did nothing wrong to deserve death in the cat box on my veranda."

Redrawing of breath. "What do you want me to say? That you are a malicious, bloodthirsty animal slayer?"

I consider this interesting and peculiarly valid point. "Yes, Sylvana. I'd like it if you said that."

"Anyway, where is it now?"

"He has a name."

"Prudence."

"Max."

"Max. Where is Max?"

"Still on my balcony, in the cat box."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"With him, Sylvana, with him him."

"No Julie: it. It is dead, remember? What are you going to do with it? it? " "

"I thought you might have some ideas, Sylvana."

"You want want me to dispose of the body?"

"Are you offering?"

"When's your next garbage collection?"

I don't believe I'm hearing this. "You really do think Max is garbage, don't you?"

"I do."

"What am I going to tell Nicole?"

"Don't beat about the bush. Tell her you suffocated the cat. Tell her you crucified it. On purpose."

"You actually believe that, don't you?"

"Julie, will you calm down, it's only a cat."

I raise my eyes from the green water of the Liffey and focus on the Ha'penny Bridge way downriver, curve-spanning the channel like a delicate ice-cream wafer.

"You think I suffocated the cat on purpose."