New Year's Eve 2013

New Year's Eve 2013 is the turning point at which Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan’s relationship becomes publicly visible: at midnight in a crowded Kelleher’s, Connell kisses Marianne and tells her he loves her. The declaration gives public form to a bond shaped by secrecy and separation, while the evening also brings Marianne closer to the warmth of Lorraine and the Waldron family.

Christmas at Foxfield

Lorraine personally invites Marianne to stay for Christmas, and Marianne accepts because she trusts Lorraine to know what is right. On the drive from Dublin to Foxfield, Marianne and Connell talk continuously, joking and using funny voices; in retrospect, Marianne wonders whether they were nervous. The house’s coloured lights, fire, Christmas tree, and steady flow of relatives offer a striking contrast with the unease that has marked her family life.

The holiday is busy and domestic. Relatives arrive late at night with wrapped biscuit tins and bottles of whiskey, children run through the house, and Connell stays up playing FIFA with a younger cousin. Marianne and Lorraine spend much of their time in the kitchen, rinsing glasses, opening chocolates, and refilling the kettle. When someone in the front room asks whether Connell has a girlfriend and another person answers that she is in the kitchen, Marianne and Lorraine exchange a look. The exchange makes Marianne’s place in the family newly legible to others, even as the shy teenage boy who comes to see her retreats without meeting her eyes.

Encounter with Denise

On New Year’s Eve, Marianne and Lorraine see Marianne’s mother, Denise Sheridan, in a supermarket. Denise, dressed formally, walks past without speaking. In the car afterward, Lorraine reaches back to squeeze Marianne’s hand. When Marianne asks how people in town see her mother, Lorraine says gently that she is considered a little odd. Marianne has not heard this before, and the answer gives her a new perspective on how Denise appears beyond the family.

Connell wants to go to Kelleher’s because everyone from school will be there. Marianne suggests staying home, but he tells her she should come. She jokes that she will not disobey an order; he agrees. Their exchange carries an echo of the dependence and power that have shaped their relationship, but the evening’s public setting will make their closeness visible rather than concealed.

The public declaration

Kelleher’s is packed, and the old school circle is there: Karen, Rachel Moran, Eric, Lisa, and Jack, among others. The noise makes ordinary conversation impossible. People greet one another from a distance, and the group gathers around the dance floor, where most stand talking rather than dancing. Connell carries Marianne’s drink while she removes her coat, a small act of attentiveness within a crowd that keeps drawing their acquaintances’ attention.

At midnight, as everyone cheers the new year, Connell takes Marianne in his arms and kisses her. Marianne feels the others watching. She considers that they may have doubted the relationship, retained curiosity about its former scandal, or simply wondered at the attraction between two people who repeatedly return to one another. The kiss changes the meaning of their presence together: what had been private is now unmistakable to their former classmates.

When they draw apart, Connell looks at Marianne and says, “I love you.” She laughs, her face red, and understands that he has acted publicly in a way she believes he chose to please her. Her sense of being redeemed by his choice is bound up with a more unsettling recognition: she feels under his control, yet also finds dependence ordinary. She reflects that nobody can be wholly independent of other people, and no longer doubts that Connell loves her.

Significance

The New Year’s Eve kiss makes the relationship’s private history visible to the community whose judgment once mattered so much to Marianne. The crowd’s gaze does not undo the past, but the scene reverses the older pattern in which Connell’s public choices could leave her unacknowledged: this time, he chooses her in full view of their peers. The ending holds both agency and dependence in tension. Marianne experiences Connell’s declaration as a choice that restores her, while also recognizing how completely she has entrusted herself to another person.