Rose felt like a child on Christmas Eve, wishing for the big day to come faster because that meant she'd be one day closer to seeing Ron again. The meeting on the shore on Boxing Day could not come quickly enough.

After making final preparations for Christmas day, Rose had excused herself to bed early, the fact she'd have to be up early the next day for present opening and the preparation of the meal providing the perfect excuse.

Like the night before, Rose feigned sleep when she heard Michael enter the bedroom an hour or so after her. She figured this was a ploy should could play for the maximum of the next couple of nights, and the thought of what she'd have to do after that made her stomach turn.

It wasn't that she hated Michael of course, but more that she felt herself to be somehow betraying Ron being with him. This was ridiculous of course, she told herself, how could it be a betrayal to be with your own husband? But still, the notion lingered.

Oh how she wished there were someone she could talk to about this. Vera would've been perfect, but she couldn't bring herself to phone her sister and tell her something so huge, not when everything still felt so up in the air. It also wasn't the kind of thing that could be said when the only access Rose had to a telephone was at the Post Office surrounded by inquisitive ears.

When she heard Michael breathing steadily beside her, Rose decided it was time to try and switch her brain off and sleep for the night.

Christmas morning in the Coyne house was as jolly as ever. Kate came and woke her parents at some ungodly hour, so excited to see what Father Christmas had left for her. Throughout the gift opening, Rose unconsciously found herself twisting the diamond ring Michael had bought her around her finger.

Christmas lunch over, it was time for the family to scatter.

"I'm off to see Andrew," Emma declared as she slipped on her coat. Rose looked up from her place of reading by the fireplace.

"Don't come back too late!" she shouted, only hearing the slam on the front door as a response.

"Mum, can Seamie and I go out too?" Francis asked. Rose sighed touching her hand to her brow.

"Alright, just make sure you're back before it's dark."

"We will, thanks mum," Francis replied as he and his friend too headed out the front door.

"And make sure you wear a coat, you'll catch your death!" Rose shouted to the boys, who she noted took her advice and quickly snatched their coats from their pegs before heading out of the front door.

The sitting room fell oddly quiet, Kate being up in her room playing with her doll and poor exhausted Kettie having a lie down.

"Rose, I...I want to apologise," Michael began unsurely. "The way I handled this whole thing with Vincent and the deed, it wasn't right."

"It's OK," Rose said giving the slightest of glances up from her book, doing the best she could to sound as normal as possible, although even she heard her voice tremble under the strain.

"I had been drinking the other day and I shouldn't have… When Christmas is over I'm going to try and talk to him again, see if maybe there is something we can work out," Michael sighed.

Rose nodded vigorously, her eyes closed and her face still turned downward to her book. "That sounds like a good idea."

"I know this has upset you and I'm sorry, I never meant for any of this to happen."

Rose nodded, blinking back tears as she opened her eyes and looked up to meet her husband's gaze, "I know."

Michael nodded and swallowed hard. "Right", he said standing to his feet. "It's time for me to go and open the pub, while I can anyway."

Smiling, Rose nodded, "OK, I'll see you later. Be sure to wish everyone a happy Christmas."

"I will," Michael replied as he bent down and kissed her lips briefly before adding, "I love you." Rose didn't have a chance to respond before he was gone.

Looking back at that moment, Rose would wonder if he purposefully left before she could return the words, perhaps worried that she may not knowing something wasn't right. However, all Rose could do at the time was whisperer, "I love you too", in an uncertain tone to an empty sitting room.

That was the problem of course, because Rose did love Michael. He wasn't romantic and brooding in the way Captain Dreyfuss was, but he was loyal and stoic, and he loved her in his own sober way.

Rose could still so vividly picture Michael sitting on the seafront bench the day that they'd met 18 years earlier. She'd found herself instantly attracted to his good looks, his appearance fitting perfectly into the category of tall, dark and handsome. She had decided to sit next to him with her book, reading quietly until he'd broken the silence with a simple, "Beautiful weather today isn't it?"

They had made general light conversation after, with Rose asking whereabouts he was from and Michael telling her, along with the information he was currently recuperating from an operation at Southlands Hospital. After a few minutes, silence fell between them and Rose busied herself reading, feeling sure that was about the extent of the conversation she was going to get from her benchmate.

It was a good 20 minutes later when Rose noticed Michael getting up to leave. Looking up, shielding her eyes from the bright midday sun, she had said goodbye, but instead of responding, Michael paused.

"Would you like to come out with me on Saturday night?"

Taken aback, Rose stuttered her reply, "I… Yes, that would be lovely."

"Meet me here around 7?"

Rose nodded, and Michael replied with a simple nod and slight smile before turning and walking away.

Rose watched him walking out of sight, but not once did he look back, something that Rose would reflect on in later years as being so telling of his character. He was stolid, sure and decisive; not a romantic dreamer in the way she was, or at least used to be before living took over.

Their first date had been pleasant. They had gone to the pictures at the Coliseum to see a Charlie Chaplin movie entitled The Gold Rush. Michael, ever the gentleman, had kissed her goodnight on the cheek.

They continued meeting up every weekend for the next several weeks, even sometimes seeing each other on weekdays. They were sitting on the seafront, on the very same bench where they had met, one late summer's evening, when Michael announced to Rose that he had come to the end of his stay at the hospital. Her stomach lurched.

"Oh," was all Rose could think to respond with. Michael swallowed before taking Rose's hand in his.

"But the thing is Rose, I don't want to leave you," he said as he looked into her questioning eyes. "I know it may seem quick, but I'd like to ask you if you'd come back with me. What I'm trying to say is..."

Rose blinked silently as she watched Michael drop down on one knee.

"I'd like to ask you to be my wife," he said seriously his hand still in hers. "I don't have a ring or anything right now…" He glanced away, chastising himself, before looking squarely into her eyes. "But the thing is Rose, I think we could have a good life, maybe even a great one, together in Moybeg. I know it's probably not where you expected ending up..."

Rose silenced Michael by pressing her lips to his. "Yes," she smiled. "Yes, I'll marry you."

'So what if it was fast?' Rose told herself. She knew she loved Michael, and he was strong and dependable with a solid plan for the future; on only their second meeting, he had eagerly told her of his plans to buy a cottage in his hometown and make a future there.

The idea of a life in the lush Northern Irish countryside too excited Rose. It would be different from what she knew, but she felt she could make it work. In the romantic recesses of her mind she imagined their life together being like a Brontë novel, with days spent out on the rolling green countryside and nights warming themselves in their quaint cottage.

They married a mere week later. The ceremony was a small and perfunctory one at the local registry office, there being no time to arrange anything bigger in Rose's parish church.

While Rose's parents had their reservations about their daughter entering into such a seemingly hasty union, they conceded that Michael was a good man (who, Rose later discovered, had even gone to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage before his proposal).

Vera of course had no such reservations, thinking the whole thing terribly romantic. While she made it clear she had no intentions of settling down quite so soon ("But Rose, there are so many boys I haven't even kissed yet!" she'd said to the mere suggestion from her sister that she too could meet someone to marry), Vera knew Rose to be a romantic, someone who hoped to find the person she'd spend her life with young and then settle into a happy family life, perfectly content to say goodnight to the same man for the rest of her days.

Two days after the wedding, Rose bid farewell to her family before taking the ferry to her new life.

Rose was content with Michael in the small fishing village. Michael's cousin Vincent had bought the local pub and wanted Michael to run it, so together he and Rose took on the task. Rose was surprised at just how easily she adapted to serving the local customers, and soon she and Michael took on the added task of running the local shop connected to the bar. When the chance came to purchase the large house adjacent to their places of work, they grabbed it with both hands.

Emma was born in 1927, Francis following in 1933, and Kate in 1936. It was after Kate was born that Rose took on yet another role as school mistress. She was so busy some days that she barely had chance to catch her breath, but as long as she kept busy she had no time to think of the romantic notions she'd held as a girl and how Michael, no matter how much of a good man, wasn't quite the Heathcliff she'd dreamt of after all.

It was only when Captain Dreyfuss had come along that Rose had paused and contemplated, that she'd acknowledged the nagging voices in the recess of her mind.

She had to reluctantly admit to herself that Michael was right when he said he didn't "entirely fill" her "inner space", that he could never reach those parts of her, parts that she newly realised she so longed to be touched. Indeed, no matter how he tried, and through no fault of his own, Michael simply wasn't that person.

Even though Rose was a romantic at heart, she didn't think she believed in the notion of soul mates; she believed more that some souls could be so akin that they could almost swap, each person gaining new insights from the others experiences, all the while growing together in love. Although Rose had quietly given up on the idea of finding a soul so similar to hers, with Ron it seemed she had found it.

The thought of hurting Michael made her ache, so Rose tried to push what was an inevitable consequence of her actions to the back of her mind, deciding it was easier to just take things one day at a time. Right now, she was focused on little but the clock ticking by enough for her to go to bed, where she'd likely get little sleep with thoughts of her 7:00 am scheduled meeting with Ron

They could work something out together, over time, she supposed. When Ron had said they'd think of something, she believed him implicitly. That was how he made her feel, like he could sort out all the ills of the world, or at least of her own private one. It was with that reassuring thought that Rose comforted herself as she drifted off to sleep, Michael's arm draped across her body an aching reminder of her betrayal.