lizabeth sat on the end of the staircase and looked out the frosted glass window to the front garden. The clock on the wall said 7:30 p.m. Ivan had never been late before and she hoped he was OK. However, her sense of anger was rather more active at that moment than her worry for him. His behavior on Saturday night gave her reason to think that his absence was due more to cold feet than foul play. She had thought about Ivan all day yesterday; about not meeting his friends, his family, or his work colleagues, the lack of sexual contact, and in the dead of the night as she battled with finding sleep, she had realized what it was that she had been trying to hide from herself. She felt she knew what the problem was; Ivan was either in a relationship already or unwilling to enter into one.

Any niggling feeling she had along the way she had ignored. It was unusual for Elizabeth not to plan, not to know where, exactly, their relationship was going. She wasn't comfortable with this big change. She liked stability and routine, everything Ivan lacked. Well, now it could never work, she thought, as she sat on the stair waiting for a free spirit, just as her father was. And she never discussed her fears with Ivan. Why? Because when she was with him, every little fear dissipated. He would just show up, take her by the hand, and lead her into another exciting chapter in her life, and while she was reluctant to go with him at times, often apprehensive, with him she was never nervous. It was when she was without him, moments like now, that she questioned everything.

She decided immediately that she was going to distance herself from him. Tonight would be the night she would discuss it with him once and for all; they were like chalk and cheese, her life was full of conflict and as far as she could see, Ivan ran so far so fast just to avoid it. As the seconds ticked on and it moved into his fifty-first minute of being late, it looked like she didn't need to have the conversation with him after all. She sat on the stair in her new cream trousers and shirt, a color she would have never worn before, and she felt foolish. Foolish for listening to him, believing him, for not reading the signs properly and, even worse, for falling for him.

Her anger was hiding her pain, but the last thing she wanted to do was to stay home alone and allow it to surface. She was good at doing that. She picked up the phone and dialed.

"Benjamin, it's Elizabeth," she said rather quickly, speaking before she had a chance to backtrack. "How would you like to get that sushi tonight?"

"Where are we?" Ivan asked, strolling down a darkly lit cobblestoned street in inner city Dublin. Puddles gathered in the uneven surfaces of an area that consisted mainly of warehouses and industrial estates. One red-bricked house stood alone between them all.

"That house looks funny there, sitting all on its own," Ivan remarked, nodding toward the house. "A bit lonely and out of place," he decided.

"That's where we're going," Opal said. "The owner of this house refused to sell his property to the surrounding businesses. He stayed here while they sprung up around him."

Ivan eyed the small terraced house. "I bet they offered him a fair bit. He could probably have bought a mansion in the Hollywood Hills with what they would have paid him." He looked down at the ground as his red Converse runner splashed into a puddle. "I've decided cobblestones are my favorite."

Opal smiled and laughed lightly. "Oh, Ivan, you are so easy to love, you know that?" She walked on, not expecting an answer. Just as well, because Ivan wasn't sure.

"What are we doing?" he asked for the tenth time since they had left the office. They stood directly across the road from the house and Ivan watched Opal viewing it.

"Waiting," Opal replied calmly. "What time is it?"

Ivan checked his watch. "Elizabeth will be so mad at me." He sighed. "It's just gone seven p.m."

Right on cue, the front door to the red-bricked house opened. An old man leaned against the doorway, which appeared to act as a crutch. He stared outside and looked so far into the distance he seemed to be seeing the past.

"Come with me," Opal said to Ivan and she crossed the road, passed the old man at the front door, and entered the house.

"Opal," Ivan hissed, "I can't just enter a stranger's house." But Opal had already disappeared inside.

Ivan quickly skipped across the road and paused at the doorway. "Em, hello, I'm Ivan." He held out his hand.

The old man's hands remained clinging to the doorway; his watery eyes stared straight ahead.

"Right," Ivan said, awkwardly moving his hand away, "I'll just slide past you so, to Opal." The man didn't blink and Ivan stepped inside. The house smelled old. It smelled like an old person lived there, with old furniture, a wireless, and a grandfather clock. The clock's ticking was the loudest thing in the silent building. Time seemed to be the essence of the house, a long life lived listening to those ticks. Ivan found Opal in the living room, looking around at all the framed photographs cluttering every surface of the room. "This is almost as bad as your office," he teased. "Come on then, tell me what's going on."

Opal turned to him and she smiled sadly. "I told you earlier that I understand how you feel."

"Yes." Ivan nodded.

"I told you I knew how it felt to fall in love." Ivan nodded.

Opal sighed and clasped her hands together once again, almost as if she were bracing herself for the news. "Well, this is the home of the man I fell in love with."

"Oh," Ivan said softly.

"I still come here every day," she explained, looking around the room.

"The old man doesn't mind us just barging in like this?"

Opal gave a small smile. "He is the man I fell in love with, Ivan."

Ivan's mouth dropped open. The front door closed. Footsteps slowly made their way toward them, over creaking floorboards. "No way!" Ivan hissed. "The old man? But he's ancient, he must be at least eighty!" he whispered in shock.

The old man wandered into the room with a hacking cough, which stopped him in his tracks and caused his small frame to shudder. He winced from the pain and, slowly, leaning his hands on the arms of the chair, he lowered himself into the seat.

Ivan looked from the old man to the youthful-looking Opal and back, with a disgusted look that he tried unsuccessfully to hide from his face.

"He can't hear you or see you. We are invisible to him," Opal said loudly. Her next sentence changed Ivan's life for good. Nineteen simple words he heard her say every day, but never in that order. She cleared her throat and there was a slight tremor in her voice as she said between the ticks of the clock, "Remember, Ivan, forty years ago when he and I met, he wasn't ancient. He was as I am now."

Opal watched as Ivan's face displayed many different emotions in a matter of seconds. He went from confusion, to shock, to disbelief, to pity, and then as soon as he had applied Opal's words to his own situation, to despair. His face crumpled, he paled, and Opal rushed toward him to steady his swaying body. He held on to her tightly.

"That's what I was trying to tell you, Ivan," she whispered softly. "You and Elizabeth can live together perfectly happy in your own cocoon, without anyone knowing, but what you forget is that she will have a birthday every year and you won't."

Ivan's body began to shake and Opal held on to him tighter. "Oh, Ivan, I'm sorry," she whispered, "I'm so, so sorry."

She rocked him as he cried. And cried.

"I met him in very similar circumstances to how you met Elizabeth," Opal explained later that evening after his tears had subsided.

They both sat in armchairs in the same living room as Opal's love, Geoffrey. He continued to sit in his chair by the window in silence, looking around the room and occasionally breaking into horrendous coughs that made Opal freeze and rush to his side protectively.

She twisted a tissue around in her hands, her eyes and cheeks were wet as she told her story, and her dreadlocks fell around her face.

"I made every single mistake that you made." She sniffed and forced herself to smile. "And I even made the one you were about to make tonight."

Ivan swallowed hard.

"He was forty when I met him, Ivan, and we stayed together for twenty years until it became too difficult."

Ivan's eyes widened and hope returned to his heart.

"No, Ivan." Opal shook her head sadly and it was the weakness in her voice that convinced him. Had she spoken firmly he would have retaliated in the same manner, but her voice displayed her pain. "It couldn't work for you." She needn't have said any more.

"I didn't think," Ivan said sadly. "I was so happy about Elizabeth and me, her aging never even crossed my mind."

"I know," Opal said kindly. "But why would it? It's something we never have to think about."

Ivan studied his surroundings while he tried to allow what he had learned tonight to sink in. "He seems to have travelled a lot," he remarked, looking around at the photos of Geoffrey. Geoffrey in front of the Eiffel Tower, Geoffrey in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Geoffrey lying on golden sand on the shores of a faraway country, smiling and looking the picture of health and happiness. "At least he moved on and managed to do those things alone." He smiled encouragingly.

Opal looked at him in confusion. "But I was there with him, Ivan." Her forehead wrinkled.

"Oh, that's nice." He was surprised. "Did you take the photos?"

"No." Her face fell. "I'm in the photographs too, can't you see me?"

Ivan shook his head slowly.

"Oh," she said, studying them and seeing a different picture than Ivan did.

"Why can't he see you anymore?" Ivan asked, watching Geoffrey taking a handful of prescribed pills and washing them down with water.

"Because I'm not who I once was, which is probably why you can't see me in the photographs. He's looking out for a different person, the connection we once had is gone," she replied.

Geoffrey stood up from his chair, this time grabbing his cane, and made his way to the front door. He opened it and stood at the doorway.

"Come on, time to go," Opal said, standing up from her chair and moving out to the hallway.

Ivan looked at her quizzically.

"When we first started seeing each other I visited him from seven p.m. to nine p.m. every day," she explained. "And seeing as I can't open doors, he used to be there waiting for me. He's been doing this every evening since we met. That's why he wouldn't sell the house. He thinks it's the only way I'll find him."

Ivan watched his old frame wobbling on his feet as he stared out once again into the distance, perhaps thinking of that day when they frolicked on the beach or the day on the Eiffel Tower. Ivan didn't want that to be Elizabeth.

"Goodbye, my Opal," his gravelly voice spoke quietly. "Good night, my love." Opal kissed him on the cheek and he closed his eyes softly. "I'll see you tomorrow."