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Sometimes, just before I fall asleep, a light flashes behind my eyes. It’s as though I’ve been sitting in the dark and just as my eyes are growing used to the blackness, someone opens the door and lets light in – bright, blinding light – but it’s only there for a second; not long enough for me to see what else is in the room. And then the door is slammed shut, the room returns to darkness and my eyes have to start to adjust all over again.

When I was a wee lad I used to watch my Da mixing cement. He’d make a pile of orange sand and grey powder and turn it over and over with the water until he got the mixture right. He’d take off his shirt when the weather was warm and I’d see the muscles twitch at the base of his spine as he raised and lowered his spade. He was a small man, my Da, with long, strong arms. I’d sit beside him and look at the thatch of hair in his armpits and think to myself, ‘aye – that’s man’s work alright. That’s what I’ll do when I’m a man’. And I was right.

I live…live? I live in a small town. The name suggests its nearness to the lough. We used to go there, Paula and I. I liked it best on autumn mornings when the mist rolled over the water like something out of another time. She preferred it in spring when the sunlight was strong enough to throw a shaft of silver light through the clouds. She’d lie on her back looking up at the sky and say that when she was a little girl she used to believe that the sun shining that way revealed the path to heaven. She used to believe she was the only one who could see it.

We’d watch the lapwings perform their unhurried tumbling act back and forth between the shores of the lough. She told me how in Holland people used to fight each other for the first lapwing egg of the season, because to find it meant they could bring it as a gift for their Queen. Paula would watch the birds soar and dive and call to one another with that ‘pee-wit, wit, wit-eeze’ and I could tell by the way she looked at them that she wished she could join them. Maybe she did?

Paula was a dancer. It wasn’t what she did – it was who she was. She danced her way through life unselfconsciously, like a child. She couldn’t see any reason not to. She wanted me to dance with her, but dancing wasn’t for me. Whenever I tried, and – ah God, I did try – my feet felt like they were cased in the cement I mixed. Her feet were never entirely connected to the ground, as though she might just disappear at any moment, carried off like a dandelion seed on the breeze – I saw it, but I didn’t know it.

I build houses. I built Paula’s house and then she asked me to share it with her. It never felt like my house, even though I had made it. But I didn’t mind – it was enough that it was hers. It was enough that I had built it for her and that when she was inside those four walls, she couldn’t fly away.

It’s hard to tell you our story. It’s not one of those tales of regret about things said or unsaid. We didn’t part on a note of anger. No – it wasn’t like that for us. It wasn’t like that at all.
That last morning we woke early, earlier than usual, and made love in the way we always did. We drank coffee out on the porch and watched the shadows the clouds made as they passed over the green hills. It was a Saturday and Saturday was market-day.

She wanted to get some fish, she said. She wanted to buy a whole salmon, or a lobster. She’d cook me a special dinner. She promised bouillabaisse or koulibiac. She was a terrible cook, but I couldn’t fault her enthusiasm and I always managed to eat every last scrap.

We drove into town together and she talked about the time she visited Mount Etna. She told me how she’d taken off all her clothes and raced around the gaping mouth of the volcano like some kind of naked nymph. She said that a hornet had appeared out of nowhere and stung her on the thigh – her skin had swelled and puckered, she said, it looked like it had been burnt. She’d known then, that she’d made the god of the volcano angry. I asked her did it hurt. ‘Bloody hell, yes,’ she said and she threw back her head and laughed, showing all her small, white teeth – and I laughed too because her laugh was infectious, even though I couldn’t see what was so funny.

So we were laughing, both of us, when we went round that corner and met the truck coming from the opposite direction. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. She hated to be tied down. I’m glad I didn’t see her go through the windscreen, because the face that I see now behind my eyes isn’t that face.

The doctors say there’s nothing physically wrong. They say the brain is a mysterious and complicated organ and that there is still a lot they don’t understand about it. They say I need to rest and take my time to come to terms with my loss and that then my eyesight will return. But I can’t think what there’ll be to look at.

Sometimes, just before I go to sleep, a light flashes behind my eyes and for a second, just for a second, I think it’s going to show me something that will help me understand.
I haven’t seen it yet.