We came in over the sea, we came in the morning, just after the sun, coming low out of the east across the flat sea, on time, the two of us. We watched boats scratch the surface, we put our seatbacks in the upright position, we called for more drinks, but they were having none of it, they were cross with us - they wouldn’t let us toast your first sight of Dublin.

We crossed the panel sea, the grey blue web of waves and routes and trawlers, across the humming radioactive sea, over submarines and the drowned, over the cables and the pipes and the deep connections, and we craned our necks and looked for the city. It came at us as islands, small islands which I could not name, and the two pencil thin chimneys then, which I had forgotten, and finally the bulk of it, split by the river, a huddle of colours and a shadow in the foothills, a gathering of times, a city on the edge of Europe, on the edge of the world, a city from the back of our minds, shot suddenly forward, in front of us, offered in the early sunshine, the clouds rolled back for us, the whole place gazing upwards for us, waiting.

I told you that I wanted to set my watch, and you misunderstood, thinking that I was confused about time zones and had over estimated the distance we had travelled. But that is not what I meant. I wanted to set my watch. I was coming home to see how I had changed, to see what you really looked like, sounded like, to find out how wrong I’d been. But I couldn’t tell you this.

We descended over housing estates and motorways that I had never seen before. We skimmed the tops of call centres and warehouses, distribution networks and technology parks, software development clusters and the green belts tightened by a future that I had missed.

The plane hit the ground.

"Welcome home" you said, your hand on mine, your accent sounding suddenly wrong, sounding wrong for the first time in five years. As they made announcements and we tried to remember the last time we had seen a living farm animal, I thought that at last we were on my territory, that at last I knew more than you did, that at last I could place you. Which sounds cruel, and it was cruel, and it was cruel enough for me to wonder whether I could get away with actually leaving you at the airport, abandoning you there to fend for yourself, with your half English and your appalling sense of direction. I was amused at the thought of it, but decided that it would be better to get you nearly settled first, almost confident, with the first tender hint of security. And do it then.

In the baggage hall though, I had to stop myself, as you perched on the edge of the carousel, your arm dangling, as if you were sitting on the edge of a lake, testing the water. I could so easily have headed for the bathroom and turned instead for the green channel, for the arrivals hall and the waiting faces, and gone out into the sun and found a taxi, and just left you there, with your plastic bag and both our suitcases, frantically looking for the section in your phrase book which covered the reporting of missing persons.

So I found a trolley instead, and told you to watch that you didn’t get dragged into the machine, that you didn’t loose an arm to the revolution, at which point you sneered at me, and told me that I was not to boss you now, now that we were in my place instead of yours. Which made me think. About how much you knew.

No one waited for us. No one knew we were coming. Which is what I wanted. I wanted to get my bearings and loose my boyfriend before going for a pint with the locals. Not that you understood this. You complained about the expense of the hotel I had booked, which was a laugh. We had flown to Dublin via Bonn, of all places, and London, so that you could take care of some unspecified business and leave me to wander and plot. You owe me more money than it is possible to count. And that is only money.

Our taxi took us on roads which I didn’t recognise, past homes and businesses which I didn’t fully see, so perplexed was I by the traffic and the look of the people and the voices on the radio, all familiar, somehow, but altered as if by special effect, which is I suppose, what time may be. My confidence that I had the measure of you here was a little dented, until we reached the city centre and I saw that, fundamentally, although the streets were crowded and the sun was out, and the faces were healthy and varied and the money was obvious, fundamentally I knew where I was.

At the hotel I made a point of talking quickly at the reception desk, and of using words which I had not used in many years, wondering not, for example, if there was a shop nearby, but whether there was a newsagents in the vicinity. I asked about the times for everything, knowing that you were not good at time, and about the hotel itself, whether it was busy, how new, etc, and whether, flirting a little now, it was a good place to work, all the time aiming for a vocabulary which you did not posses. It made the receptionist and I best of friends, and left you silent and a little wide eyed. Which was lovely.

Our room was from the book of rooms, taken straight from a Habitat catalogue and placed three floors above a clogged street, with a glimpse of a cathedral and a three inch ration of river. You liked it. Immediately you turned on the television and concentrated on the meaning of things here, while I showered and wondered how exactly to proceed. I thought it would be polite to pay the hotel bill for a few days in advance. Or rather, I though that kind of politeness would be a nice touch, a tiny little twist which you might not notice but which would give me a minor, private glow. Standing naked under the water I plotted your abandonment. I weighed my options, I caught the water in cupped hands pressed to my chest, I held it briefly and I let it go and I did it several times, and thought of whether or not a note would be good. What would it say? What language would it use? Mine, I decided. My language. I was reminded, showers being what they are, of other times, and I allowed myself, in my six square feet of rain, to go over tiny patches of the past, as if to steel myself, or to reassure myself, or to overcome the noise of you from the other room, flicking through the channels, repeating phrases in English that you would never use, like "an area of low pressure" and "separated egg whites."

We met in the cranked up part of ourselves, on a beach I think, or a road near the sea – outside certainly, and away from the city, close to the edge of something, in ourselves I mean - water in the air, salted skins, passing through and halting. I think it was France. I know it was France actually, but pinning these things down is so difficult, not difficult in the way of putting my hand to the facts, but difficult in picking them up, holding them, setting them out in a row. Everything seems so meagre.

I liked your body. You liked my manner. I bought you food and drink. You made me laugh. A series of small exchanges like that, and both of us were so placed, so poised, that such deals, such trade-offs, were enough to mesh us. Interlace us. I thought again, with the water hitting my shoulders and my back, with the water running off me, about how that might have happened, how I had been so easily filled by you. What was it about that place? What corner of me had that fled to?

I followed you home. I trailed after you across half the continent, splitting something in two, mostly me I think now, giving you money, learning your language, making myself small enough to fit in your pocket. Where I was warm and eyeless and content. Until I somehow noticed the time. Without really having thought about it before. I realised that we were five years into it. Five years. Into it. Which is too long for a seaside romance with a man you hardly understand. And I entered the counting room - located somewhere between the heart and the stomach – that dour, fearful little place where the books are kept, where the tallies are made and the sums done and the imbalances are justified, and where the present is divided by the past to give the future. And other formulae follow. And there I tried to make sense of you and couldn’t. I pored over the ledgers and the receipts and I tried to make us solvent. And all I found was an accumulation of debts and promises and failures and dodgy practises, and I came to the conclusion that we had been simply an accounting sleight of hand, a convenient, unexplained statistic, a false item, a fraud. That we were not a couple at all - we were a category, a sub category, a ghost heading, a non-existent overhead, created to cover the siphoning off of five years of my life into the slush fund of your own. Thus was the finding of my audit.

You came into the bathroom wondering what "compliments" there might be, and I chose not to understand your English and let you lapse back into your own watery native tongue. Complementary toothbrushes, soaps, shower caps – that was what you were after. You paid no attention to my naked body dripping on the fretted mat, and rummaged in the presses instead, testing the softness of towels and the scent of shampoo sachets and the size of the soap. You asked me what the water pressure was like in the shower, and wondered then whether you mightn’t take a bath instead, looking at yourself in the mirror, yawning, asking where I planned to take you that night, what part of my home did I think would impress you? I told you to take a bath, and as I left the bathroom you kissed my cheek, and I ran my hand along your shoulders, and it meant nothing to either of us, having as much value as words of parting or greeting, habitual, ancient, semaphore, an old dead language, entirely ceremonial. And I would not have thought of it if I was not busy recording it, jotting it down, tucking it away. Before I closed the door I had a sight of you undressing, unbuttoning your shirt in front of the mirror, your eyes on yourself. If there was any doubt in my mind I do not remember it. But there was regret, I’m sure, and sentimentality, and five years of clutter. You caught my eye, and said in my language "What?" and I said in yours, "Nothing", and I closed the door on you and looked for something to write on.