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My life goals were definitely different from Eileen's. Every year I wrote goals on the first page of my diary. I wrote goals for twenty years' time, ten years' time, five years' time, and twelve months' time.

"To restore a beautiful house in an exotic country near a lake or a river and fill it with interesting things from antique markets" had been on my list of "to dos" since I was twelve years old. I taught my kids to do the same, to set goals without restraint. To think of a life without limits. Luca's were always simply to draw and learn everything. Izzy wanted to be an actor, but a specific type.

"I want to tell stories on TV and in movies, not on stage, and I don't want to be famous."

"Well, being a successful actor on TV usually involves fame. Maybe look at other careers in the industry behind the camera: a director or a writer perhaps?" I suggested, and with encouragement she got a camcorder from Santa that Christmas and soon decided directing wasn't for her. She didn't want to write the stories she wanted to tell the stories of others—she needed to be an actor. There were no acting schools where we lived, so she studied movies, pausing each scene, taking notes, and watched Inside the Actors Studio over and over, James Lipton quizzing top actors about their acting methods and techniques.

When she was sixteen, she landed herself a small part in a soap opera. As she was a minor, I needed to chaperone. This meant leaving the house at 5:30 a.m. to drive two hours to Dublin, sit around the studio all day, and then drive the two hours home when she was finished. She'd always thank me and I'd joke, "No need to thank me. You can just buy me a villa in Italy when you are a successful non-famous actor."

This kept both our dreams alive.

While things like "Own a camper van," "Restore a house," "Be a photographer," "Learn languages," "Travel the world," and "Do yoga" were on my goals list, having babies never featured. I thought it might happen someday, but it wasn't a "goal." As soon as I met Ronan, I knew he was the one. He looked a lot younger than his age, which turned out to be sixteen years my senior. He had great stories and experiences that guys my age didn't have. I wasn't looking for a baby maker; I was only twenty-two and had a backpacking trip around the world planned to within an inch of its life. He was a photographer and a painter, and I was an aspiring magazine publisher.

He was the first guy I went out with who had a car; a Renault 4 van, with the lid of a biscuit tin covering the rusted hole in the floor of the passenger side and moss decorating the window surrounds. It didn't have a key, just a button he had rigged which, along with a tap of hammer under the hood at a very particular point on the engine, jump started it. He put off meeting my family for months with the excuse that he didn't want to be embarrassed having to get the hammer out to start the engine. Instead, when he dropped me home I would have to jump out of the car while it was still edging along. But it was a car, and Ronan knew great places to explore: forests, beaches, old ruins.

We'd escape to a deserted caravan his family used to use for holidays near the sea, and he'd cook pasta bakes with lemon and hollandaise sauce; introduced me to Ayurvedic cooking for the first time, which he'd learned while training to be a transcendental meditation teacher in Kent twenty years previously.

We'd paint and write and visit antique markets. He went through a phase of buying old radios, the big clunky ones with veneered casings, and rigging them all up together to make a surround-sound system for the caravan connected to his CD player so he could blast the Beatles even louder than usual. It worked well until one day we went for a long walk on the beach and came back to a smoldering heap where our little love shack used to be, the radios with connecting wires still blazing.

CHAPTER THREE

After a year of being together as a couple, I parked my Work Your Way Around the World book on the top shelf and replaced it with Pregnancy and Parenting. The thought of having kids with Ronan was really exciting; we were both impatient creatives and couldn't wait to see what our combined recipe would produce. It took Eileen six years to conceive, so I presumed, being her sister, it would take me some time too.

Bingo! We conceived the first time we tried.

I wasn't expecting that. I thought we'd have a longer time having fun trying; at least a few years. I was in shock. This was serious; it was no longer an airy-fairy idea. This was a lifelong project that I wasn't sure I was ready for. The idea was great, but now that it was real, I was having serious moments of doubt: Was I ready for this? Was I mad? Did I jump into this too soon?

Ten weeks later, the day after we told my parents about the pregnancy, I woke up with cramps and bleeding. We lost our baby. It was like the universe had listened and said, "That was a trial run. Here's your opportunity to change your mind: Are you really ready yet to handle the soul we have lined up for you?" To which I answered, "One hundred percent, yes."