Assembling Ailish: Some Secrets Are Too Hard To Hold. They Fester. They Break You – Guard, Sharon

Maybe this is a marriage of economy … But. The music starts. I turn my head. All my dreams are blown to tiny colour-bright shards. In her wedding dress Sarah is breathtaking. Raw silk skimming tanned shoulders, tight to the waist. Curls artfully escaping her bun, the veil, falling softly on the precise construction of her neck. Neat pointed shoe-tips peeping from a full skirt. A Disney Princess come to life.

Brendan walks his smiling daughter up the aisle to the heartbreaking sight of Michael’s side profile, soft and nervous in response, smiling and in love. I forget to breathe. Inhale sharply. Exhale. A sound that translates almost as a sob. * * * I have played this wedding out in fantasy a million times over.

Adjusted the script, the lighting, the setting, the sound, as Barbara, oblivious, channelled new titbits of information my way. ‘Lilies. In her bouquet. I thought lilies were for funerals. Is that a Spanish thing, d’you think?’ ‘A DJ, not a band.’ ‘The Bridge House. Nearly three hundred guests. Thank God Brendan has pots of money, that’s going to cost a fortune.’ ‘A harpist in the church. Did you ever?’ ‘One bridesmaid, but six flower girls and pageboys.’ Small details, insignificant, brushstrokes on a canvas, creating a picture in my head.

The bits I added myself. Originally: I’d imagined it in the farmhouse. Our first meeting, the first time to lay eyes on each other, since. Before the wedding. A family meal. Looks. Longing. Mutual. An accidental-on-purpose encounter in the yard. Moonlit. Eyes connecting, hands brushing. Adjustment: Our first meeting. In the church, as I take my place three pews behind.

Him turning. Eyes connecting. Knowing. Truth. ‘Do you take this woman …?’ the priest would say. ‘I don’t. I can’t,’ he might say. His voice choked with realisation, emotion. Adjustment: The first time I see him in the flesh, since, is here, here and now, and here and now he can. Here and now, he can take this woman. Here and now, he does. He takes this woman with delight, a whoop of encouragement, of joy, rippling through the congregation.

‘You can clap if you like,’ says the priest. And they do. As Michael kisses his bride, they cheer. As he walks her down the aisle, they forget they are in a church at all. Some even whistle. And he whistles past me. Without so much as a look. * * * Mulled wine and jewelled colours and Christmas tree twinkles. Spotlights. Hairspray. Perfume. The heady sweet sweat of hangover. Laughter. Young flesh mixing with tired mixing with old. Elena’s mother, wheelchair-bound, staying at the hotel in the care of Elena’s older sister, Ana.

Careworn, mannish.

and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Published 2025 by Poolbeg Press Ltd. 123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle, Dublin 13, Ireland Email: [email protected] Sharon Guard © 2025 © Poolbeg Press Ltd. 2025, copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook. and cover image. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78199-677-5 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or re- trieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condi- tion that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.poolbeg.com 1kitap1.com/en About the Author Sharon Guard was born in Dublin in 1968, where she still lives and works in the pharmaceutical industry. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick in 2023. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in New Irish Writing, SWERVE Magazine, The Ogham Stone and the Washing Windows anthologies. She won the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award in 2020 and her story, Artifice, was shortlisted for the RTÉ Short Story Competition 2024.

Assembling Ailish is her first novel. 1kitap1.com/en For Jonathan 1kitap1.com/en She hesitates. She who is told not to break, who is asked did she break or why did she break. Go for it, I tell her. TEACHING MY DAUGHTER HOW TO BREAK AN EGG Victoria Kennefick egg / shell Carcanet Press (2024) 1kitap1.com/en ‘Shall we begin?’ the woman says. ‘Where do we start?’ ‘There’s no right or wrong place.

Somewhere that feels natural.’ ‘A random memory?’ ‘Specifics are better.’ ‘From my childhood? Or more recent?’ ‘Something clear. Something calling.’ You pick up the water. Sip. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it?’ you say. ‘The problem?’ ‘They’re all clear. They’re all calling.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Everything has equal weight. Equal pull. Now she’s gone. There’s no new version to figure out, to argue with.

To fix. The memories are set. In aspic.’ ‘Not in aspic.’ ‘I can’t change them.’ Your voice in your ears sounds small. Weak. Pathetic. ‘You can change your perspective on them,’ the woman says. ‘A story I can live with?’ ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’ ‘I suppose it is.’ A rush of adrenaline – you might have predicted it – catches you unawares. * * * My mother was a small-boned woman.

Raptor-like, with fluttery hands … ‘What? You said I couldn’t get it wrong?’ ‘It’s not wrong. Nothing is wrong,’ the woman says.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “Assembling Ailish: Some secrets are too hard to hold. They fester. They Break you” by Guard, Sharon, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 897ca3a5aa191df2
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,098,301 bytes (3.908 MB)
• Title: Assembling Ailish: Some secrets are too hard to hold. They fester. They Break you
• Author: Guard, Sharon
• ISBN: 9781781996775
• Pages: 188
• Language: English (en)
• Digital Edition Created: 2026-03-09T19:11:30+00:00

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 270.74 minutes
• Total Words: 54,148
• Total Characters: 305,875
• Average Words per Page: 288.02
• Average Characters per Page: 1626.99

Most Frequent Words

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Table of Contents

• Page 9: 1
• Page 18: 2
• Page 26: 3
• Page 35: 4
• Page 49: 5
• Page 55: 6
• Page 59: 7
• Page 63: 8
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• Page 70: 10
• Page 74: 11
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• Page 82: 13
• Page 91: 14
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• Page 113: 18
• Page 120: 19
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• Page 167: 26
• Page 170: 27
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• Page 176: 30
• Page 179: 31
• Page 181: 32
• Page 183: 33
• Page 4: About the Author
• Page 187: Acknowledgements

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