Donal is a train enthusiast and his spare bedroom is a model railway concourse. He apologises for the lack of space as he leads me around the tracks and trains covering the floor. This room enchanted me when I was a child. I switch on the concourse and watch the trains chugging, hooting and whistling through junctions and level crossings. Their frenetic activity hypnotises me into a childlike trance and, eventually, when their journey is complete, I fall asleep.

Chapter 29

Jake

What a scene that was. Worthy of their finest battles. It was a long time since he had heard Nadine shriek like that. Like she was riding into battle with a scream on her lips and the knowledge that the making up that followed would be memorable. Not this time, though. This time they knew there would be no reconciliation, no tumbled passion, no shocked, rueful apologies. He even feared, at one stage, that she would carry out her threat and run him over.

A taxi was emerging from the gates of Sea Aster when he returned. He pulled in sharply to let it pass. A glimpse of blonde, her head held erect and away from him.

Her note was pinned to the wooden rim of the chervil mirror.

Jake – I don’t share. You’ve known that from the beginning yet you lied to me about your wife. You may be separated from her but you’re the most married man I know. For that reason I’m ending our relationship.

Don’t contact me again.

What else had he expected? Being with Karin Moylan was to play on thin ice, the chill and the thrill.

She had been holding the keys to his van when he ran back to the apartment to collect them and follow Nadine. He heard the crunch of gravel under the tyres as she drove away.

‘Let her go,’ Karin said, her face blazing. ‘Your marriage is over… unless you’ve been lying to me from the start.’

‘Give them to me.’ He resisted the urge to lunge at her, wrench them from her grasp.

‘What will you do if you catch up with her?’ she demanded. ‘Do you honestly think she’s going to listen? Give her time to cool down. Then we’ll explain.’

‘We?’ He had hated her in that instant, the plump swell of her lip, her accusatory blue stare. ‘This is something I do by myself.’

She let the keys fall from her hand to the floor and walked away when he picked them up.

He parked the van and limped into the kitchen. His footprints left blood on the tiles. Gashed and grazed, his feet throbbed from the pebbles on Coast Road. The water turned red when he soaked them in the bath. He must have looked a sight in his bare feet and boxers. Not that anyone was laughing. He dried his feet and found bandages in the medicine cabinet.

The house stirred with night sounds, creaking floorboards, the gurgle of rusting pipes, and a flapping sound, as if a sail was snapping against its mast. Nadine had mentioned that her bedroom shutter was loose and he had promised to fix it. How long ago was that? A month, at least. When he could no longer stand the repetitive noise he walked around to her apartment. The lights were still on, the front door unlocked. He entered her bedroom and pushed up the window, reached towards the shutter and secured it against the wall. The clasp was loose, as Nadine had said, and would only hold for a while before it slipped again. Tomorrow he would fix it properly. Her overnight bag was open, clothes spilling across the bed. He picked up a paperback on the bedside locker. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.

Revolutionary Road was one of the last films they watched together. The tedium of the suburbs and April Wheeler’s frantic efforts to escape it. Nadine loved it. He had been bored, just as April Wheeler had been bored by her tedious lifestyle. Death was a great solver of insolvable problems. Nadine could have been killed tonight. His skin crawled with delayed shock as he thought about her reckless drive along the estuary.

He had a sudden urge to check drawers, open presses and rummage through her clothes. Who was this woman who had turned his life upside down by demanding a perfect divorce? He thought her knew her, understood her impulses, her moods. She used to say they had formed into a hybrid. She was wrong and he was adrift on that mistake. He replaced the book on the bedside locker and left the room.

She did not return to Sea Aster until the following evening. An hour after she entered her apartment she rang and said she wanted to talk. They sat in her kitchen, no coffee, no wine – a formal meeting to decide their futures.

‘I don’t want to discuss what happened,’ she said. ‘Nor do I want excuses for the lies you’ve told me. It’s in the past, like our marriage. I’m going to Alaska with Stuart. I made that decision when I realised the extent of your betrayal. That’s why I called last night. I wanted to tell you I was leaving Sea Aster. You can contact me through email if you want to discuss the children. Contact me through my solicitor Marion Norman should any legal issues arise about the company or our divorce. I don’t know what my future holds right now. My only certainty is that I’ll never forgive you for bringing her here.’

‘I never meant to hurt you – ’

‘Then don’t insult me with platitudes.’

‘Why won’t you give me a chance to explain?’

‘You’ll just lie, as you’ve been doing all along.’

‘Would you have understood if I told you? I wanted to… many times. You were her best friend once. But you’ve never talked about her. Why is that, Nadine? What did she do to you that was so awful… or was it something you did to her?’

‘Why don’t you ask her next time she’s lying naked beside you?’

‘There won’t be a next time. It’s over.’

‘So are we, Jake.’ Her bottom lip whitened as she tugged at it with her teeth.

‘Why do you hate her?’

‘I don’t hate her. All I ever wanted to do was forget her.’

‘Why?’

She lifted her shoulders and released a shuddery breath. ‘She made my life hell. But she wasn’t responsible for how I dealt with it. That was something I did all by myself.’

PART FOUR

Chapter 30

Nadine

I’m cocooned in ice. That’s how I feel when I stand on the deck of Eyebright and look outwards towards the glittering walls. They seem unbreakable until a deep fissure sends an icy shoulder cascading into the sea. At times I want to pinch myself. Is this really happening? Whales surfacing in a torrent of water? Sea lions basking on rocks? Magnificent white cruise liners reducing our boat to toy-like proportions?

Daveth Carew, the owner of Eyebright, is perfectly at ease among the shimmering ice sculptures. He looks older than his forty-five years, his skin tanned and seamed around the eyes from squinting at new horizons. He specialises in tours for small groups who prefer a more intimate cruise than the ones offered by those massive floating cities. Eyebright caters for eight people. It’s spacious with just the three of us on board and easy to manoeuvre. My duties are light, the boat easy to maintain. I email and Skype the family when we dock at night. I’ve had no contact with Jake.

Eleanor rings one morning, nighttime at home, and asks why I ran away from my children? I suspect she’s had a glass or more of wine.

‘Jake won’t tell me anything about you,’ she says. ‘I’ve absolutely no idea what you’re doing.’

‘What’s there to tell?’ I reply. ‘One iceberg is much the same as another.’

‘An interesting observation, Nadine, but quite untrue. Even snowflakes have unique characteristics. This man Daveth… you’re not –’

‘No. We’re not. Goodbye Eleanor.’

Ali phones regularly and talks about Barnstormers, the drama group she joined. Cutting edge, she says. Avant garde and experimental. The artistic director is amazing. She mentions Mark Brewer too many times for objectivity and shrieks in denial when I ask if he has stolen her heart.