Chapter 17June 1996
I did not want to go to Orla’s birthday party.
It was more than the knowledge that Orla’s seventeenth birthday two years earlier had changed the course of my life entirely, for better or for worse, and it was more than my inescapable dislike for those that she invited. The weeks leading up to the Leaving Cert passed by in a daze, allowing me to ignore my break up with Julia, but as it reached its end and my time in school came to a close, I was faced with the startling realization that the rest of my life was due to begin. It was easy to decide what would come next—a couple of phone calls, a few drawn-out conversations, and I was moving to London. Even before things fell apart with Julia, I knew that planning the move would come soon and in many ways, our breakup came
