‘Of course I help, I just don’t do any marathoning,’ I say.
‘And your man Marc, did he help when you were together?’
‘If you are trying to find out what Marc was like I will tell you everything,’ I say, astonishing myself.
I am telling him nothing, surely?
‘But I’m only going to tell you because we are friends, nothing else – so if you are enquiring because, well –’ I stop. Suddenly I didn’t know where I was going with this. If I was about to say,because you were trying to fill his position, that would sound very big headed of me.
So far,Finn hadn’t shown the slightest romantic interest in me. Bizarrely, I trusted him. What was not to like?
I make one of what Vilma calls my ‘executive decisions’.
Whynottalk about the past. That’s normal behaviour, isn’t it?
‘Marc and I were very lazy,’ I admit. We didcanal-bank walks and he once – briefly – was in a gym with a climbing wall, but he fell and fractured his wrist, so it put him off.’
‘Poor guy,’ says Finn.
‘I did karate for a while but I had to leave because I whacked the instructor over the head with a pole when he was showing us how to block blows.’
Finn stops and bends over, he laughs so much. ‘Really?’
I nod. ‘He wanted me to hit him so he could demonstrate blocking – I’d only started. So I bashed as hard as I could and – well, he wasn’t ready.’
I can still remember the man swearing at me as he clutched his head and howled.
‘I did point out that the whole point of martial arts is that people don’t announce they’re going to hit you with a pole.’
Finn is still laughing. ‘You are priceless. A tiny ninja.’
‘Still a ninja,’ I say proudly. ‘I never learned karate but I have my own moves.’
And then we’re both giggling and it’s lovely: up in the clear, fresh mountain air giggling with a nice man who is funny, kind and doesn’t make me in the least scared.
‘Ivanna, my most recent ex, who came after Mags, was very into the gym, never hiking,’ says Finn, when we’re back walking. ‘I like a bit of gym work but I love swimming, especially wild swimming when I can manage it, but I swim in a pool several mornings a week. This, though, is like meditation. You can see for miles.’ He gestures at the broad expanse of the Wicklow mountains around us, strewn with gorse and heather, the odd mountainy sheep still grazing and giving us beady eyes.
We stop and admire the view.
‘You liked different things,’ I say.
‘Yes.’
‘Marc and I liked a lot of the same things,’ I say. ‘We liked cheap restaurants and box sets.’
‘Partial to both of them myself. So, what went wrong?’
Given how comfortable I feel with Finn, I answer.
‘The things we liked turned out to be different after all,’ I say, ‘so he moved out. What about you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘She turned out to be tricky. I’m not dissing her. I genuinely thoughtshe was fabulous. But my friends called her Ivanna the Terrible.’
‘Were they your male friends?’ I say, in an accusatory voice.
‘Yes, but also one of my best friend’s wives: Marin, who is a real woman’s woman, or so people tell me.’
‘Another woman dissed her?’
