She doesn't approve of my choice of words. "I'm going to paint another original."

"Another original? Nicole, it's a bit late in the day to be laying into the Law of Non-Contradiction, considering it's been around since the ancient Greeks."

"It was your idea," she's urging me.

"What?"

"Don't you remember what you told me in the B&B, after we both returned from Ronan's surgery that time?"

"What did I tell you?"

"You said I could always repaint Chi! Chi! " "

"I did not! " "

"Those were your exact words."

I swallow hard, inwardly punching myself.

I say nothing. Just stare ahead and keep on walking in silence until we reach the main road. I tell her I have to go home now and that I will call her some time, which theoretically means never.

"Are you sure...?" she says uncertainly.

"About what part?"

"Are you sure you don't want a coffee or anything?"

I look out towards the picturesque bay of Sandycove. What is is it about her when she speaks in that dejected voice and pulls that unhappy, lamenting face? It's so annoying. Each time she does it makes me want to stop hating her. "Why? Do it about her when she speaks in that dejected voice and pulls that unhappy, lamenting face? It's so annoying. Each time she does it makes me want to stop hating her. "Why? Do you you want a coffee?" want a coffee?"

"Oh, it was just an idea..."

I make a show of consulting my watch.

"You have your own things to do, Julianne. It's fine..."

I hate this. I hate being undecided. I like to have things straight down the line. How can I stand here and feel sorry for this woman?

But that mournful, lost, irretrievable expression on her mug is eating my heart out: she really does want me to accompany her somewhere for a coffee and chat, and yet the last thing she wants to do is pressure me. This happens to be something I like about her. She doesn't insist. She leaves you free. She doesn't try to manipulate.

This makes it far harder to refuse.

"I don't know," says I, weakened. "Where would you suggest?"

"We could try Renaldo's."

"Full marks for originality."

She laughs, and I'm almost ashamed to admit it but when she laughs in that gay and childlike way she has about her, my heart lightens up as if a leaden plate has just been lifted off.

"I'll walk you to your car, Nicole, and decide on the way."

As we walk, Nicole places her hand momentarily on my shoulder. I throw her a glance, with her long, golden-blonde hair and her pale, slightly freckled skin and the soft eyes behind her shades, and it's very strange, but the familiarity of her hand on my shoulder just now felt oddly natural.

"I went home to my father this morning just after breakfast," she says suddenly. "It was the first time I've been home in four years."

"So long?"

She nods appreciatively. "My father and my stepmother were both in the kitchen. I told him I was sorry for barging in like this but that I needed to come home for a few days because Harry and I had split up and I had nowhere else to go apart from an old B&B.

"My stepmother said what's wrong with the B&Bisn't the standard of B&Bs very high these days? I said it was very expensive and I didn't have a lot of money. My father started shouting at me then, accusing me of looking for money. I could smell the drink on his breath. My stepmother said I was just like my mother, that I had a nerve barging in looking for money and accommodation after everything that happened..."

We're walking along the coast road, the sun momentarily hidden behind a cloud, the air brushing warm against my skin. Nicole is effortlessly exposing her private life to me. Am I missing something here?

"What happened?"

"I was caught with Harry sleeping in my bedroom, several years previously. I put him on the floor in my room only because I knew my stepmother would have had a fit if I put him on the couch downstairs. And I couldn't let him walk home in the dark after the rave, with all the drink he'd taken. Anyway, she just walked into the bedroom at seven o'clock the following morning. She must have seen his jacket downstairs, I mean, it wasn't as if I was trying to hide him. She went and woke Father up and when they both came back Harry was just putting on his shoes and she told Father that she found the two of us sleeping together. I told him that wasn't true. He threw us out. He told me never to come back. It's just what she wanted."

As an afterthought, Nicole adds that it didn't help that Harry referred to her father (to his face) as a 'drunken old fart' mere seconds after the latter had called her a 'little whore'.

"It's so obvious he thought I was a slut." She laughs weakly.

She just leaves this hanging, like I'm supposed to object.

I don't.

"I think he'd been drinking again," she says. "I don't know, I think he must have been very unhappy."

"Nicole," I point out, "some people are simply evil."

"I suppose my mother's death must have affected him."

"Nicole, he was a bad father. Can you say that? On a count to three...one..."

"Okay, he was a bad father, I suppose."

"What do you mean, you suppose? He made your life a misery. He was a creep. Why can't you say it?"

Feebly, she laughs.

"Go on, say it!"

"He was a creep, is that better?"

"Nicole are you totally incapable of being angry?"

After a few minutes she resumes her story: "Harry was marvellous, to give him his due. He really helped me through that time. We both moved into a flat and soon after that I got a job as a travel agent. I know it wasn't exactly the best job in the world. I was just doing basic secretarial stuff..."

She gives me a vulnerable look. "You don't exactly have to be a genius to do that."

"Well, I don't know."

We've just arrived at her yellow Fiat Cinquecento in the car park overlooking the old Dun Laoghaire baths. She invites me to sit in.

Since I have nothing better to do, I sit in.

"Guess how I bought this Fiat?"

"How?"

She removes the steering-wheel lock.

"By giving piano lessons," she replies.

"You play piano?" says I, reddening.

"I love the piano. It's one of the things I missed most when I left home. But when Harry and I moved into Cherbury Court we bought an upright, so I could play to my heart's content. Harry didn't like it, though. He gave it away to charity a fortnight ago because he said it got on his nerves."

I thought he told me he sold it?

"He said he hated all the noise. Imagine! He thought Chopin was noise. He was really good in so many ways, but when it came to things like refinement and culture and art he was completely..."

"Sorry, Nicole, did you just say you played Chopin?"

"I try. I only started on Chopin recently."

Of course she did: she only met Ronan recently.

"Chopin drives me round the bend," I tell her.

"Really?"

"Yes," I reply, starting to feel very shitty again. "It's all the lines and curves and angles and distances."

She nods slowly, as if trying to figure out what I mean. "Do you play piano, Julianne?"

I hearken back to the Cliff Castle Hotel living-room, where I seem to remember wading my way through Beethoven's Pathe-tique Pathe-tique while Sylvana breezed through her vampire book. "I was never much good." while Sylvana breezed through her vampire book. "I was never much good."

"I'm sure that's not true. Can you play by ear?"

"I normally use my hands."

"Playing piano makes you feel so much at peace. There's harmony in music. Will I tell you what I think?"

"What?"

"I believe that harmony is the secret to happiness."

"So do I."

And I do.

"And yet it's so hard to find," she says.

Especially if you're a tropical marine fish.

Or a cat.

"Our minds are in terrible disarray," she explains. "You know, we're being constantly bombarded by information on all sides, distracted by deadlines and plans and timetables. Everything is about control. We control time, we control people, every aspect of our lives is controlled so that we seem to have so little of everything and yet the world is such a huge place with plenty of wonderful things for everyone."

"You're right." I find myself agreeing.

"Constantly we're being told that you won't be happy until you achieve your goals in life, some time in the future..."

She seems really keen for me to understand her point of view.

"But that's ridiculous." She laughs. "It's like in this huge effort to get happy we forget how to be be happy." happy."

I think of how happy I used to be with Ronan.

"I mean, harmony is really simple," she goes on. "It's all about freeing up energy for living. The Buddhists teach us that harmony comes from not constantly striving after things. Have you heard of the doctrine of non-attachment? The Buddhists say you can achieve Nirvana if you stop being so caught up with the things of this world."

Ronan and Nicole will find Nirvana together. And when they discover that it's not all it's made out to be they will, at Ronan's instigation, hurriedly become non-attached. For me, of course, it will already be over.

She's gazing through her open side window, across the bay towards Howth, melancholy. "Love," she says faintly. "That's the most important thing."

Love.

I turn my head and start gazing out of my own window at the round tower in the distance where James Joyce once stayed, perched atop the elevated, jutting peninsula at Sandycove.

Time passes and we talk about everything under the sun: Hollywood stars, the Lotto, facials, a health farm she's been told about, sex scandals in politics, men, the travel business and whether there are any bargain-basement penthouse apartments going at the moment in Figi.

Max gets a mention too. He has a habit of turning up at awkward moments. She asks after his health. Rather than replying that he hasn't got any left, I simply tell her that he has been giving no trouble, which is perfectly true: cats cease giving trouble when they're dead. She offers to pay for the cat food but I won't have it.

We talk on and on, it seems: her family (again), war, holiday moments, whether low-fat yoghurt makes you fatter than you already are, a TV programme she recently saw about a person who wanted to be neither male nor female nor neutral but all three, the constitutional ban on discrimination on grounds of sex, race, creed, coloura pet topic of mine.

She soon cops on to the fact that I'm some sort of lawyer.

But she's discreet and unprying, which I also like about her. So it's not hard to steer her clear of the topic of myself. When you think about it, all she knows about me is that my name is Julianne and my address is 'just around the corner from you'. But it doesn't seem to bother her unduly.

When it's time for me to go home, Nicole offers me a lift. I decline, saying my car is not far away.

She then hesitates, like there's something on her mind.

"What is it, Nicole?"

"Oh, nothing."

"What is it?"