I found Nail Heaven easily. Not only was it on the corner of Arizona and Third, just like Lara had said, but it had a pink-neon hand in the window and a blue-neon sign that said ‘nails, nails, nails’ (only the ‘n’ wasn’t lighting properly so what the sign actually said was ‘ails, ails, ails’, but what harm?). Down a couple of steps and in I went.

It was run by Taiwanese girls, Lara had said. The best. Behind a desk sat a beautiful, doll-like receptionist, whose name badge said ‘Lianne’. As I explained myself to her and apologized for not having an appointment, I was distracted by her nails – they were about two inches long and each one was individually painted with the stars and stripes. All at once, a wealth of nail-related possibilities opened up – maybe I’d get mine done the same!

‘You don’t need appointment,’ Lianne said – just as Lara had promised – then she grasped my hand and bent over it to examine it. ‘Ooohhh,’ she breathed, sounding quite shocked –and suddenly I saw what she was seeing; the uneven, crooked nails, the scraggy cuticles, the general air of neglect. I’d never thought it had mattered before. How wrong I was!

Just in case I wasn’t already feeling ashamed, Lianne began to laugh – childish, sweet hee-hee-hees – before lifting her glossy head and excitedly summoning her colleagues to have a look. In seconds I was surrounded by slender, white-coated girls, high-pitched garrulous chatter and lots more laughter as they examined my hand, as if it wasn’t attached to me, but was a strange object found abandoned in the street.

‘On vacation?’ one asked.

‘Yes. From Ireland.’

‘Ah,’ she nodded, like it all made sense now. ‘Iowa.’

Quick-fire questions in Taiwanese began to hop between the girls and the word ‘Mona’kept appearing. Finally, when some conclusion had been reached, Lianne said, ‘Mona will do you.’

‘Which one of you is Mona?’ I asked, looking from blossom like face to blossom-like face, and for some reason this question was enough to start the laughter all over again. I could sort of understand why when Mona emerged from some back room, a heavy-set lady quite a bit older than the other beauticians.

‘She very goo’,’ one of the young girls whispered respectfully to me.

‘She rike a charrenge,’ whispered another.

Mona examined my fingernails. ‘The feet too?’ She leant over for a look at my toes poking through my sandals and all but winced.

‘I’m not sure I have the time.’

‘We do them same time as hands. One girl hands, other girl feet,’ she said scornfully.

‘OK then.’

She summoned one of the younger girls, and in no time they had my hands and feet soaking in soapy water.

‘You need the hot wax. It’s goo’ for your skin,’ Mona said.

‘Fine.’ If the job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, right?

Just then a tall, well-kempt woman stalked in, wearing a beautifully cut trouser suit and an air of panic. She had a quick word with Lianne, who shouted a few urgent-sounding imprecations around the salon and within moments people were rising from their work stations and gravitating to the front of house. There was an atmosphere of importance, of professionals falling into well-rehearsed roles, and for some reason it reminded me of the time, years ago, when I’d had to go to Accident and Emergency with a badly sprained ankle. I’d been in agony, my foot had swollen up to the size of a football and I was whimpering in pain, when out of nowhere gurneys were rattling past me, bearing bodies that were losing blood hand over fist. Paramedics were running beside them, holding drips and shouting stuff like, ‘He’s still breathing.’ Apparently there had been a terrible car crash on the Stillorgan dual carriageway and my sprained ankle, painful though it was, was suddenly (and rightfully) bottom of the priority list.

From the minute the well-dressed woman had rushed into Nail Heaven, there was the same attitude that this was a real emergency. While she told the terrible story of her ‘prize nail’ and how she’d got it caught while changing a toner cartridge, Mona rose to her feet, followed by her assistant, and a path opened up for them.

‘Oh, Mona, thank God!’ The woman thrust the injured nail at her. ‘Can it be saved?’

When Mona had taken stock and eventually concluded, ‘It’s bad. I’ll do what I can,’ I almost expected them all to start scrubbing up and donning green gowns and masks.

While the worthier woman was being fast-tracked to full nail health, I sat abandoned, my hands and feet in basins of soapy water. Some kind-hearted soul placed a magazine on my thighs, but, on account of my hands soaking, I couldn’t turn the pages. Then I moved my foot a fraction and the magazine slid off my knee and down into the basin of water that my feet were in.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered, as the same kind-hearted soul retrieved it and shook out its swollen, pulpy pages. I wondered if she’d bring me another.

She didn’t. I looked at the two other women there who were having their hands and feet done. Neither of them had let their magazines fall into the soapy water. What was it about me that I sometimes felt I’d been born without life’s rule book?

Eventually, after she’d saved the prize nail, Mona returned to me bringing her helper and they set to work, filing, buffing, pushing back cuticles, rubbing at callouses, and then it was time for the hot-wax treatment. A basin of molten wax was placed on the floor in front of me and I was told to put my foot in. But the second I came in contact with the wax, I hopped my foot right back out and yelped, ‘It’s much too hot!’

‘But it’s goo’ for your skin,’ Mona cried, clamping a vice-like hand around my knee and trying to force my foot back down into the basin.

‘But missus… Mona, it’s too hot.’ We struggled for a few seconds, me pushing my knee up, her pushing it down, then Mona cheated by standing up and giving herself extra leverage. Right away my foot was plunged back into the scalding wax.

‘It hurts,’ I begged.

‘It’s goo’ for your skin,’ Mona repeated, her hand steady on my quivering knee.

All the other girls were in convulsions, shrieking with laughter behind beautiful hands.

After a short but agonizing wait, I was allowed to lift my foot out. But as soon as a layer of wax had cooled and whitened around my foot, she plunged me back in again. The laughter started anew. In, out, in, out went my foot. The pattern was repeated four or five times, each time as painful as the first.