Dearest Alice – just a quick note to say the wedding was very beautiful, and we’re on the train heading for Ballina as we speak. I always forget Simon is in essence (though he denies this) a politician, and therefore knows literally everyone in the country. He is currently in a long conversation with some random man I have never seen in my life while I sit here typing this message. It’s making me think about what you wrote in your email about beauty, and how difficult it is to believe that beauty could be important or meaningful when it’s just random. But it brings some pleasure into life, doesn’t it? You don’t need to be religious to appreciate that, I believe. It’s funny that I have only two best friends in the world and neither of them remind me of myself at all. In fact the person who reminds me most of myself is my sister – because she is completely insane, which I also am, and because she makes me so angry, which I also do. She looked very beautiful yesterday, by the way, although her dress was strapless, and I know you disapprove of those. The random man who’s talking to Simon is now sitting down at our table and showing him something on his phone. I think it might be a picture of a bird? Maybe the man is some kind of bird enthusiast? I don’t know, I haven’t been listening. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing you. I think I had an idea in my mind about beauty, or about the wedding, or about you and Simon and how you don’t remind me of myself, but I can’t remember what the idea was. You know the first time I went to bed with Simon was almost ten years ago? I sometimes think it would have been a nice life for me if he had done the Christian thing and asked me to marry him then. We could have had several children by now and they would probably be sitting on the train with us at this very moment, overhearing their father’s conversation with a bird enthusiast. I just have this sense that if Simon had taken me under his wing earlier in life, I might have turned out a lot better. And even he might have, if he’d had someone to care for and confide in all that time. But I’m sorry to say that I think it is too late to change the way we have turned out. The turning-out process has come to an end, and we are to a very great extent what we are. Our parents are getting older, and Lola is married, and I will probably continue to make poor life decisions and suffer recurrent depressive episodes, and Simon will probably continue to be a highly competent and good-natured but emotionally inaccessible person. But maybe it was always going to be that way, and there was never anything we could have done. It makes me think about the first day I ever saw you, and I remember the knitted green cardigan I was wearing, and the hairband you had in your hair. I mean the life we’ve had since then, together and not together – whether it was already there with us that day. The truth is that I really love Lola, and my mother, and I think that they love me, although we can’t seem to get along with one another, and maybe we never will. In a funny way maybe it’s not important to get along, and more important just to love each other anyway. I know, I know – she goes to Mass a couple of times and suddenly she wants to love everyone. Anyway, we’re already at Athlone so I should probably stop writing this email. Just remind me that I have an idea for an essay about ‘The Golden Bowl’ that I want to run by you. Have you ever read such a juicy novel?? I threw it across the room when it was finished. Can’t wait to see you. Love love love. Eileen.