The Forgotten Waltz

Shortlisted for The Orange Prize for Fiction 2012.

If it hadn’t been for the child then none of this might have happened. She saw me kissing her father. She saw her father kissing me. The fact that a child got mixed up in it all made us feel that it mattered, that there was no going back.

It is the winter of 2009 and snow covers Dublin. As the city outside comes to a halt, Gina Moynihan recalls the bewildering speed of attraction and her irreparable slip into longing for Sean Vallely, a married man and ‘the love of her life’. Gina remembers the days of their affair in one hotel room or another: long afternoons made blank by bliss and denial. As the memories of her desire unfurl, so too do the complications of Gina’s choice and the price she must pay for her love.