Caoimhe Kildare

Celebrity Romance

A Key Before a Ring Fair Play

Caoimhe Kildare

Crown & Clover — The Brighthelm Saga

The Key The first photograph arrived while Maeve Devlin was buttering toast with one hand and signing a consent form with the other. It was not, strictly speaking, how constitutional crises were meant to begin. There should have been a bell somewhere, a man in a grey suit, a folded paper on a silver tray, perhaps a storm beating itself stupid against the palace windows for atmosphere.

Celebrity Romance

A Measure of Forever

Caoimhe Kildare

The first barrel Ronan Byrne ever loved had his grandfather's handwriting on it. Not the neat signature the tourists admired on old photographs in the visitor centre, but the private hand: black ink slanting uphill, a stubborn flourish under the B, and one sentence chalked on the head of the cask as if it were a blessing or a warning. Wait until it tells you.

Celebrity Romance

A Star Comes Home

Caoimhe Kildare

The gold star fell off Maeve Hart’s coat in front of three hundred cameras, which was rude of it, considering it had survived thirteen years of press tours, airport lounges, hotel carpets, bad boyfriends, worse managers, and one stadium encore in the rain. It hit the wet pavement outside the Royal Emerald Hotel with a tiny click nobody should have heard. Maeve heard it anyway.

Celebrity Romance

After They Call Cut

Caoimhe Kildare

THE LAST SCENE The last thing Maeve Callaghan ever said as Eilidh Kerr was not written in the script. It was not supposed to be said at all. The script had given her silence. After fourteen years, eight seasons, three wars, two fictional children buried and four fictional grandchildren born, a shipwreck, a hanging narrowly avoided, one revolution, a fever that had taken six weeks to film and roughly ten minutes to survive on screen, and more mud than any actress should reasonably be expected to swallow for art, Eilidh Kerr’s final instruction was simple.

Celebrity Romance / Film-Set Family Romance

Backlot and Bedtimes

Caoimhe Kildare

Celebrity Romance

Before the Interview

Caoimhe Kildare

Ninety minutes before the country began pretending it had not been waiting for him to fall apart, Jamie Vale stood in a disabled toilet off Studio Three and tried to remember the order of ordinary things. Water first. Face after. Breathing somewhere in between.

Celebrity Romance

Fake for the Craic True as Rain

Caoimhe Kildare

Crown & Clover — The Brighthelm Saga

The first lie Maeve Devlin ever told Rowan of Brighthelm was that she had only agreed to the tour because the palace had asked nicely. It was a ridiculous lie, for several reasons. The palace did not ask nicely. It issued invitations in cream envelopes thick enough to stop a small draught, with embossing that looked as if it had been pressed by a man who believed democracy was a passing fever.

Celebrity Romance

Highland Hearts

Caoimhe Kildare

Highland Hearts · Book 1

The first thing Sorcha Byrne noticed about Ewan MacLeod was that he had learned how to make himself smaller. It was ridiculous, because there was nothing small about him. Not his height, not the breadth of him in the dark wool coat he had not bothered to take off, not the quiet pull he seemed to exert on every person in the holding room without offering them so much as a smile.