Читать книгу A Thousand Roads Home: ‘A weepy but important book’ Cecelia Ahern - Carmel Harrington - Страница 9

The day Ruth Wilde and her son, DJ, became homeless was just an ordinary day in Dublin. The sun poked its head through the grey clouds of an autumnal sky. Cars drove by at a snail’s pace, bumper to bumper in their early morning commute.

One, two, three … Ruth began counting steps to herself as she walked down the driveway in front of her flat.

For most, it was just another thank-crunchie-it’s-Friday morning in the suburbs. For Ruth it was a day of despair. Her world, her normal, was falling apart. She was not prepared for the unknown future that lay ahead. With every change that was flung at her, she felt like she was moving closer to the edge of an abyss.

… ten, eleven, twelve …

And for Ruth, who lived her life in quiet, isolated order with her son, the abyss looked impossible to cross. Taking a leap of faith was not in her psyche. Ruth needed to prepare, to understand, to know before she undertook anything new. That way she had time to build a bridge, if you like, that would take her safely to the other side.

… nineteen, twenty, twenty-one …

She looked up and down the road, seeing it with new eyes that told her danger lay ahead.

… twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven …

The end of the driveway. She took one more step, then breathed the last number with relief.

Twenty-eight. As it should be; as it had been for four years now.

Ruth placed two black sacks beside the ugly but serviceable suitcases she’d left there moments before. Not much to show for her thirty years in this world. Running her hands over the cases, she felt a moment of sympathy for them. When it came to the luggage lottery they lucked out. While other suitcases got to travel the world, hers were used only to transport meagre possessions from rented house to rented house. So many moves over the past ten years since they arrived in Dublin. The plan had been to stay here until they were given a council house. Now there was a new plan. She just did not know what it was yet.

Ruth felt her son’s presence before she saw him. He had this weird energy lately that filled the air between them: a mixture of disappointment, anger and, she supposed, fear. None of which she knew how to alleviate.

‘You should be in school,’ Ruth said, watching the patterns of the cracks in the pavement. She had dropped him there earlier this morning, then went for her usual early morning run. She never needed the escapism running gave her more than she did today.

His response was to kick the concrete path with the toe of his scuffed runners. He’d had another growth spurt over the past couple of weeks. School tracksuit bottoms were almost at the point of embarrassment for him, barely grazing the tops of his shoes. She would have to get to Penneys at some point to pick up a pair. And then a thought hit her hard. How will I clean his uniform if we have no home of our own, no washing machine?

She felt guilt flood over her again. She had let him down just as her mother had predicted she would. A spectacular failure of a parent. She cracked the knuckle on her ring finger and felt tension release as she heard a familiar pop, pop, pop.

‘Sorry,’ she said, when DJ made a face. She knew the noise irritated him. But this quirk had been embedded in her for as long as she had a memory. It proved hard to say goodbye to.

‘Why are you looking all weird at the cases?’ DJ asked. He gave the one nearest to him a kick.

‘I feel sorry for them,’ Ruth said, pushing them away from DJ’s feet, which were hell-bent on causing damage right now.

‘That’s weird. You do know that, right?’ DJ asked.

‘Yes.’

You used to like my weirdness. Please do not stop.

‘Is that it, then? We’re really leaving now?’ DJ said.

‘Yes.’ Her culpability crippled her. She had promised him that they were done moving around when they had found this flat four years previously. But she made that promise without the knowledge that eviction lay in their future.

‘I never liked it here anyway. It’s a dump,’ DJ lied.

‘I liked it,’ Ruth answered softly. ‘And while it was not much, it was our dump.’

‘So what next?’ His voice made a lie of his earlier bravado, the tremor showing his truth. He was a scared kid who didn’t want to leave his house, his bedroom, his life.

‘Right now you need to go back to school. We have talked about this. I will collect you later on. After my meeting with the council in Parkgate Hall. I will come and get you. You have my word,’ Ruth said.

‘I’m not going to school today.’ DJ was matter-of-fact, and when she didn’t answer him he turned to her. ‘You can’t make me go in.’

‘Yes I can,’ Ruth replied.

‘Well, maybe, but you need me with you, Mam. You know how you get when you’re stressed. Let me help. Let me go with you to the council.’

‘I will not say the wrong thing.’

DJ had heard his mother rehearse possible scenarios for this day dozens of times. He’d watched her struggle to stay calm, with the sound of her pops cracking in the air, as her knuckle-cracking habit exacerbated. The fear that the council would not have somewhere safe for them danced around them both. But DJ could not give in to that. He was no longer a baby. He had to be strong for his mam. She needed him.

‘It’s not fair to expect me to sit through double maths when all I’m thinking about is you and where we will sleep tonight,’ DJ whispered.

Ruth nodded in agreement. ‘None of this is fair.’

Her reasoning that it was better for him to miss all of this was perhaps misguided. She took in every part of him, from the frown on his face to the hunch of his shoulders, and felt her love for him overtake everything else. ‘Do you need a hug?’ Ruth asked, taking a step backwards.

If he said yes, she would pull him into her embrace and whilst she did so, she would count to ten, before letting him go. That’s just the way it was for them, and on a normal day that didn’t bother him. But today was not normal. For once, just once, DJ wished she would hug him without question. Without a raffle ticket.

‘It’s OK.’ DJ turned away from the look of relief on her face.

‘You can stay with me. I will write a letter for your teacher tomorrow morning,’ Ruth said.

‘Thanks.’ He felt some of his irritation slip away.

Their Uber arrived and the driver jumped out of the car, looking at their luggage with dismay. ‘This all yours, love?’

‘Correct.’

‘We’ll be doing well to fit this in the boot,’ he complained, picking up the black sacks. ‘You should have ordered a people carrier.’

‘Put the suitcases in first and you will have adequate space,’ Ruth pointed out what seemed startlingly obvious to her.

‘Listen to my mam. She’s good with stuff like this,’ DJ said, when the driver ignored her. DJ helped him do as Ruth suggested. With one last shove, the boot closed with a loud bang.

‘Told you,’ DJ said. He liked proving his mother right. Had she even noticed? He didn’t think so.

Ruth and DJ turned to look one last time at the home they had lived in for the past four years. Anger flashed over DJ’s face once more and Ruth shuddered as his features changed. Cold. Angry. Disappointed.

‘Stop staring at me,’ he complained.

Ruth ignored him and only looked away when his face returned to normal.

That’s better. He looked just like his father again. They got into the car and she turned her head to look out the window. Had things been different, if she had never met DJ’s father, his namesake, they might not be in this situation. But then she would have no DJ – arguably a fate much worse, because without her son, she had nothing.

As the car moved away from their old life, she said, ‘I am so sorry.’

‘You keep saying that,’ DJ said.

‘Because it is true.’

DJ sighed, something that Ruth noted he did with increasing regularity. The stress of the past month had made sighing part of his new normal. It was funny how sounds could bring you back to another time. Back to her childhood home where life had been full of sighs. The thing was, despite their regularity, they had the power to cut her each and every time.

The first sigh she could remember was at her four-years-old developmental check-up in the local health centre in Castlebridge, Wexford. Her mother had dressed Ruth in her best dress, a burnt-orange tweed pinafore. She had thick black tights on underneath, which scratched her legs and made her cry. Her mother had sighed and asked, ‘Why must you always be so difficult?’

Ruth did not like seeing her mother upset so she pinched herself hard and tried to make the tears stop. She wanted her mother to look at her with different eyes. With love.

On the way to the health centre, her parents coached her. They were second-guessing what the nurse would ask Ruth. She had tried to listen to her parents’ instructions, determined to succeed, to win, to not be a loser again. But with every question they threw at her and every answer Ruth offered up, she saw her parents throw furtive glances at each other. She could sense that something was not quite right. She wanted to be at home again in her bedroom, wearing her soft pyjamas that were made of pink fleece. She liked how they felt on her skin. They did not itch or scratch like her tights and dress, and they made her feel safe. She wanted to go back to her picture book and read about Angelina Ballerina. Instead she had to sit in a cold waiting room with hard plastic chairs and dirty floors while her parents told her to act like a normal child.

‘I want to go home,’ Ruth decided, and she felt her arms begin to fly. She wished she was a bird so she could disappear into the blue sky. Back home. Back to safety. Back to her normal.

Her mother’s exasperated sigh filled the air with tension. ‘Oh, Ruth, stop that right now. People will stare! Why must you always be so difficult?’

Ruth had sat on her hands, shamed, scared and tearful.

A lifetime of sighs and sorrys. Now her son was in on the act, too.

‘DJ,’ she whispered, and her hand hovered in the centre of the car, in the space between them. Only a few inches away from each other yet it felt like an unbridgeable gulf. She let her hand drop into her lap and she looked back out through the window.