Although I didn’t win this time around, I was lucky enough to have my short story Lake Isle long-listed for the Write by the Sea short story competition 2025. The competition is part of the Write by the Sea literary festival which takes place in Kilmore Quay in Ireland at the end of September.

I started writing Lake Isle in a workshop at the Doolin Writers’ festival in 2019 – it was one of those workshops where you choose a newspaper headline and write a story based on that.

This story imagines a young Slovak man who lives in Sligo and falls in love with an Irish woman. She gets pregnant, but aborts the baby, and the story explores the young man’s feelings around the abortion.

I linked the story to the famous poem Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats, as well as picking up some of my own experiences of the time when I lived in Slovakia. You can read the story below, and I hope you enjoy it.

LAKE ISLE

Move gently. Breathe.

‘Let go of my wrists.’

Traditions arise; body in the lake, dropping. Good for your health. Get the blood flowing again. Feel something. He wants to feel something, even pain. The shock of hitting the ice-cold water. Like, he can’t breathe. Like, he’s stopped breathing, and it hurts like hell. On his skin. In his blood cells. His body. He might die in the water. But it’s tradition. It’s being a man. Reconnecting to the men in his family.

His grandfather was the first one to take him out on the ice. A long time ago. In Jasov. But you don’t get ice like that in Ireland. People will wonder at him, the weird foreigner, swimming in the lake in the middle of January. They won’t know about traditions or epiphanies. About his grandfather, and the son that never was. They’ll just think he’s mad, and they’ll be right as well. He is mad; angry with her.

Move gently.

He almost lost the plot, when he found out the truth, and not a word spoken about it. What right did he have to know anyway? She’d given him a go, but it’s not like they were serious or anything.

‘Her body. Her decision.’

He understands that, but it still hurts like hell. He would like to have known. To be given a chance at least, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. She’d got rid of it and not said a word to him.

‘Sure she knew I’d find out?’

Sligo is a small place. People gossip. She should have known that. She hadn’t the courage to tell him. She couldn’t confront the issue. Irish people are like that.

***

The last time he sees his grandfather alive is on the ice. He takes him out to Jasov, shortly before he moves to Ireland. For old time’s sake. Reliving the past, and the old man seems happy enough, in his gruff way. Sniffing the cold air, reassured. The lake at Jasov has a timeless quality to it, even if the rest of Slovakia is moving on into the twenty-first century. He parks the car, then they walk the short distance to the lake edge. The surface is frozen and slippery in parts, and his grandfather holds him tightly by the wrist, too much of a man to hold his hand, as he would’ve done when Rian was a boy.

Rian stops at the edge, not planning to go any further, but his grandfather insists,

‘No tak, pod’me.’

The ice looks solid enough, and sure what harm will it do? A soft crunch of feet in the snow, then the smooth body of the lake. Rian gets the same feeling of hilarity that he always gets on the lake. Being free of the land. Balancing carefully and walking on water. Frozen water, but miraculous all the same. He wants to see how far out they can go. Who knows if his grandfather will even be on the lake again? Will anyone take as much care of him after Rian has left?

The old man is slow, and he’s breathing more heavily than usual.

Rian holds on to him, then chides quietly,

‘Jemne!’

But the old man lets go of his wrist and waves him on saying,

‘Nechaj ma!’

Rian leaves him, wobbling a bit, as he moves out further towards the middle of the lake. The ice is changing color. He can hear a slight cracking underfoot, and when he looks back again, his grandfather is sprawled across the frozen surface.

‘Dedko!’

Rian skates back towards him, and when he reaches the old man, what he sees surprises him. He thinks that he’s sobbing at first, but then he realizes that the old man is laughing. There is more joy on his face than Rian has seen in a long time.

***

Viv, Vivian. A veil. Lady of the lake. Glimmer, water lapping, and low sounds. A deep heart.

They meet stacking shelves in Dunnes stores in Sligo town. He’s never met a woman like her before. Maybe that’s it? She’s as strong as any man. Boisterous. One of the lads. He loves her from the minute he sets eyes on her, and she’s the one to give him his new Irish name.

When he tells people in Ireland his Slovak name, Marián, they look at him oddly or burst out laughing. She’s the only one brave enough to tell him:

‘You can’t call yourself that! My aunt is called Marian, for God’s sake!’

Then she stares at him sideways for a minute, before rescuing him.

‘Rian! It’s much cooler.’

It’s been hard adjusting to life in Ireland, in so many ways. The people are strange: always laughing, always making a joke of everything. You can’t be sure when they’re being serious, or when they’re just having a gas. He misses the directness of people in Slovakia. You always know where you stand with people at home.

Viv entrances him, and he watches her quietly, as they fill the shelves. He smiles when she tells jokes in the pub after work, even though he’s got no idea what it is they’re supposed to be laughing about. He keeps his distance on days when she is in a mood. She doesn’t give him much attention at first, but they get used to each other. One day she’s gone from the supermarket, without a word of explanation.

He sees her around again before long. At the Clarence Hotel. In Envy. Walking down the street. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. She’s too distant. Unapproachable.

Their getting together is a bit of an accident. He wasn’t even planning to go out that night, but something had spurred him on. Call it loneliness, or homesickness. She’s drunk before the night even starts, arms around his neck, breathing alcohol in his face.

‘Rian, I’ve missed you!’

Sure he wouldn’t believe it. She hardly knew he existed. But it’s nice to feel something, and her chest is heavy against his arm, her touch arousing him.

He’s sober enough when they have sex. Back at his flat. She giggles at first, then takes him more seriously, as he holds her wrists back behind her head, and rows on top of her.

‘Rian, I…’

They don’t speak much afterwards, and she’s gone in the morning. He watches her, bleary-eyed, as she gets out of bed, searching for her shoes, and stumbling towards the door. Then she ghosts him. No reply to his text messages. She doesn’t answer his calls.

He rings from someone else’s phone, and she answers, then hangs up as soon as she hears his voice.

‘What did I do that was so wrong?’

If only she would talk to him. So he can ask her about that night. So he can understand if they might have a future together. But his pride takes over, followed by anger, as he vows to forget about her.

***

His body gets used to the icy water after a while. His blood pumping, as he moves out across the lake. He’ll swim to the island and back. There’s a ruined cottage there. Like so many other ruins, scattered across the Irish countryside. He wonders what it was that had ruined everything for these people.

He closes his eyes, then dives down. It can’t be far to the bottom. He turns his body, twisting, so he’s on his back. Floating downward with his arms spread out. Something brushes against his skin. He panics and opens his eyes. But it’s nothing. Just a strand of pondweed.

When he closes his eyes again, he can see her clearly. Breasts swelling, she smiles, then turns her back on him.

‘Let go!’

The dream he has. They are in bed, and she has her back to him. He climbs on top of her, then turns her face around, and she is an old woman, her hair strewn across the pillow. He swims to the surface, gasping for air.

Breathe.

‘What’s happening to me?’

He swims to the shore of the island and sits on the rocky beach. A fear has gotten hold of him. The shock of frigid air. The old woman, Ireland, and the mess his life has become. How he misses home so much. How he’d missed his grandfather’s funeral. He wants a better life, not this squalid life.

‘Are you ashamed of me? Is that what it is?’

Her body. Her decision.

His body. The lake.