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He would be hungry, too. She scanned through the list of rules on the laminate sheet until she got to the one regarding the kitchen.
There is a small kitchen at the end of the second floor, beside the fire exit, available for use for all residents, who are part of the emergency housing scheme. The kitchen consists of a small fridge, a cooker, oven, toaster and microwave. All cups, plates and utencils must be washed up after use and kitchen MUST be cleaned after use.
Please note that no microwaves, toasters or hobs are allowed in your hotel room or bathroom.
Ruth walked over to her handbag and took out a Sharpie, then circled the word ‘Utensils’. If you are going to the trouble of laminating rules, at least make sure they are correctly spelled! And who on earth would put an electrical item in a bathroom? Sometimes the stupidity of people amazed Ruth. She hoped the kitchen was clean. Not having her own kitchen was going to cause her a lot of problems and was perhaps the hardest challenge she would have to face.
While she waited for DJ to return she scanned the other rules once again.
No running in the hallway.
No guests in your room.
A communal room is available on the ground floor. Guests ask reception for the key.
No hanging laundry on the balcony.
No smoking in the room.
No hanging of pictures on the walls.
Parents must look after their own children. No babysitting of other guests’ children allowed in hotel.
A thump in the corridor outside made her jump. She got off the bed and walked to the door, peeping out the small glass hole.
‘Hey, Jason, hey, Barry,’ DJ said, high-fiving the two boys from earlier, who were still running up and down the hall.
Ruth marvelled at how quickly he had made friends in the space of a few hours.
‘Where have you been?’ Ruth asked, when he walked into their hotel room.
‘Nowhere,’ he answered, flopping down onto his bed.
‘Well, that’s impossible. You must have been somewhere,’ Ruth said.
‘Exploring,’ he mumbled. ‘You OK again?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ Ruth looked at her son and tried to gauge how he was doing. She was not good at reading people’s emotions. ‘Are you OK?’
He shrugged.
‘Does that mean you are OK?’ Ruth asked.
‘I’m OK. But hungry. Can I watch TV?’
‘I will go to the shop, buy some groceries and make us something to eat,’ Ruth said.
‘What are we eating, and please don’t say mashed potatoes?’ DJ said.
‘Depends what choice there is in the shop down the road. But noted on the potatoes.’
DJ turned back to the football match that had just started. As Ruth reached the door, he called out, ‘Just remember to say hello if anyone speaks to you. And take the sunglasses off when you are inside. You’re not one of the Kardashians.’
‘I could think of nothing worse. No potatoes. Speak. Sunglasses. Got it,’ Ruth replied, with more confidence than she felt. She threw the sunglasses onto the bed to avoid temptation.
It was her brother, Mark, who gave Ruth her first pair of sunglasses when they were kids. Her classmates had begun to call her a weirdo. Mark did not like other kids making fun of her. Not because he was worried about Ruth, but because he was worried about how it would reflect on him.
‘People think you are being shifty, hiding something, if you don’t look at them. And then they think that you don’t like them,’ Mark explained.
‘I am not hiding anything,’ Ruth said. ‘And I like them all. Except for Mary Lawlor and Tadgh D’arcy, who laugh at me a lot.’
‘Just try eye-balling them when you are in conversation with them. Look at them for five seconds, then you can be all weird and look at the ground again.’
‘But I do not like eyeballs,’ Ruth said.
‘Don’t look at their eyes then. Jeez, Ruth, help a guy out here! Cheat. Look in that general direction. It will be grand,’ Mark said.
‘I can do that. I will try it,’ Ruth said.
And try it she did. It went spectacularly wrong. When Mary Lawlor asked her for help with page 190 of their maths homework, it was the perfect opportunity to try out her new skill. People often asked her for help at maths and she was happy to do so. She liked solving problems. Ruth looked up at Mary, who was a few inches taller than she. She lowered her gaze to avoid eye contact and hoped for the best.
‘You big fat lesbian!’ Mary Lawlor screamed. ‘Did you see that? Ruth Wilde is looking at my breasts!’ She covered her chest with her arms, delighted to see that she held the class’s attention.
Ruth did not know what a lesbian was. She suspected it was not said as a compliment.
Mark was not happy when they walked home together after school. ‘How on earth did you manage to make them all think you were a lesbian in the space of only a few hours? I can’t leave you on your own at all, can I?’
‘What’s a lesbian?’ Ruth asked.
‘Ask Mam,’ Mark replied, making a face.
So when she walked into their kitchen, she asked Marian, ‘Mary Lawlor said I was a lesbian. Am I a lesbian?’
Marian’s face told Ruth that she’d done something wrong again. ‘In the name of all that’s good in this world, what is wrong with you, child? Are you trying to kill me? That’s all I need on top of everything else.’ Then Marian sighed again.
And that was why Mark bought Ruth a pair of sunglasses. That was the thing about her brother. He spent most of their childhood ignoring her or making fun of her. But every now and then he surprised her with a random act of kindness.
Twenty minutes later, armed with a small bagful of groceries, she made her way to the kitchen for the first time. She crossed her fingers that it would be empty. Her hopes disappeared when muffled sounds of fellow residents creeped out into the corridor as she approached. She braced herself for interactions and hoped that the people in the room were friendly. She reminded herself that she was actually a good communicator. She could enjoy a conversation for an hour or two at a time. Unless it was boring, of course.
A sign on the door stated:
Please avoid prime times in the kitchen:
8–9 a.m., 1–2 p.m. and 5–7 p.m.
As it was now four o’clock she hoped that meant it was a good time to make their dinner. A man and a young boy were sitting down at the kitchen table, tucking into fish and chips. A woman stood at the hob literally watching water boil in a pan. Then another woman stepped out from behind the door and said, ‘Don’t get any ideas about skipping the queue. I’ve been waiting nearly ten minutes already.’
Ruth shook her head quickly and took two steps away, until her back hit the wall.
‘Leave her alone. She’s the new one I was telling you about,’ the man said. ‘I saw you arriving earlier. I’m Kian. This handsome young fella with me is Cormac, my heir apparent.’
Ruth nodded in his direction. She did not recollect seeing him in the lobby earlier. She was pretty certain it was empty. She would learn that Kian was like a silent ninja. A pro at hiding in places he was not meant to be.
Kian continued, ‘One fridge, one cooker, one microwave, ten families and five hundred bleeding rules about how you can use them all. Welcome to the kitchen.’
This made the woman beside Ruth laugh, but hob woman replied in a tone that was decidedly frosty, ‘Rules that some in this establishment don’t seem capable of following. I’m Ava, in room 124. That’s Aisling hovering to your right.’
Say hello, remember to say hello.
Kian saved her by continuing his rant. ‘Bleeding bureaucratic bullshit. There’s more rules on the lists in The Silver Sands Lodge than in a bleeding jail. What gets my blood boiling is that they don’t make sense at all. I mean, take a look at the notice on the door. The so-called rush hours to be avoided create rush hours in the quiet times. Do you get me?’
His little boy, who looked no more than eight or nine, started to laugh, delighted with his dad’s rant.
‘Ignore our resident ray of sunshine,’ Ava said. She threw a look of disdain in his direction. He happily threw an equally disdainful one back at her, then scoffed the last of his chips.
‘They need to add a new rule to the laminate. No stealing food. That way I wouldn’t have to be here. Cooking again,’ Ava said loudly.
Kian pretended to play the violin behind her back, making Cormac snort with laughter. Aisling looked uncomfortable with the conversation between them both.
‘When Brian hears that someone has stolen our food again, he’s going to lose his shit. There should be cameras in here to catch the thieving bastards,’ Ava said. ‘I wouldn’t mind but I used extra-lean mince in that lasagne. It was bloody lovely.’
Aisling turned to Ruth and said, ‘I wish I could say it’s not like this every day. But …’
Ruth felt like she had stepped into an episode of a bad daytime soap. And she did not like it one bit.
Aisling continued, ‘I’m sorry if I sounded snappy when you walked in. It’s just I’ve left my daughter, Anna, on her own. We’re in room 127 down the other end of the corridor. Her asthma has been playing up this week and I don’t like leaving her.’
Ruth could not imagine what that must be like, dealing with a sick child on top of everything else. She felt Aisling’s eyes on her, waiting for a response. She looked up and quickly scanned the room. Damn it. They were all staring at her. She had forgotten DJ’s advice.
‘Hello hello hello hello,’ Ruth burst out in one breathless sentence to each of them, one by one. She looked down at the floor again and hoped they would stop talking to her.
‘Hello, hello, hello, hello to you, too,’ Kian said. The room swelled with merriment and Ruth felt her skin prickle with heat.
She was messing this up, like she always did.
But to her surprise Aisling moved a little closer to her and said with warmth, ‘I won’t be long. I’m only frying up a few sausages for Anna. Her favourite, and you’d give them the world when they’re sick, wouldn’t you?’
Ruth nodded to Aisling’s pretty pink pumps. She had small feet, dainty. Which looked at odds with her large frame.
‘Here, Aisling, I’ve finished with the second hob. You can cook beside me.’ Ava shuffled over to make room for the woman. Aisling pulled a frying pan out of the cupboard beside the cooker and stuck it on the heat. She sprayed the pan with Frylight, coating the base. The sausages sizzled and spat as soon as they hit the pan. The smell made Ruth nauseous and reminded her of Saturday mornings when her mother cooked the full Irish fry-up for them when all she wanted was porridge.
Ruth was two seconds away from breaking rule number six and running out of the kitchen and down the corridor back to their room. They could eat rice cakes for their supper, with bananas on top. She felt the eyes of the kitchen on her. She wished she had left her sunglasses on, ignoring DJ’s advice. She could not win. You got looks from people if you wore sunglasses indoors; you got looks from people if you preferred to keep your eyes to yourself. People were tricky. People passed judgement all the time.
People are fierce judgemental. To hell with people, that’s what I say.
Ha! You’re funny, Odd.
I’ve been told that once or twice before.
Me too …
Kian and his son, Cormac, stood up, the sound of their chairs scraping the floor bringing Ruth back from her chat with her imaginary friend.
‘Will I do the dishes, Da?’ Cormac asked.
‘Do, son,’ Kian replied, then they both sniggered some more when Cormac threw their paper plates into the bin.
‘A regular double act, those two,’ Ava sniffed, keeping her back to them. ‘I queued for an hour yesterday to use this oven. And the large lasagne I made was supposed to last for two days’ dinner.’
‘Did someone take it off yer?’ Kian asked, his face a picture of innocence.
Ava ignored him and said to the others, ‘It’s not good enough. I’ll be sending an email of complaint to the council and Erica when I get back to my room. Some people have a bare-faced cheek.’ She thumbed towards Kian, who whistled as he walked out of the room, his sidekick right behind him.
‘Did you see the cut of them both? The fecking bastard! I know it was him,’ Ava spluttered out. ‘We’re eating in our room tonight. And so help me, if there is any leftovers, it’s going in the bin.’
‘They looked a bit shifty all right,’ Aisling reluctantly agreed. ‘I’ve seen Cormac running in and out of here a lot, checking to see if the kitchen is empty. I gave up leaving yoghurts in the fridge months ago. Always swiped. He’s a divil for those.’
Ava nudged Aisling as she turned the sausages over, nodding towards Ruth. ‘You don’t say much.’
‘Hello,’ Ruth said again. They continued to stare at her, so she added, ‘I am not here to steal anyone’s food or to skip any queues.’
Aisling and Ava laughed in response and Ruth breathed a sigh of relief.
‘My son and I arrived at 12.07 p.m. today,’ Ruth answered. ‘It has been quite the day.’
Aisling reached out to touch Ruth’s arm in a gesture of support, causing Ruth to jump back and knock one of the chairs onto the floor.
‘Sorry,’ Aisling murmured. The room went quiet, except for the sound of water as it reached boiling point and the splash of pasta as Ava threw it into the water with a slosh. Steam filled the air around her. ‘It’s fresh, not dried, so I’ll be done in a jiffy.’
‘Fresh pasta is 3.45 times more expensive than dried,’ Ruth stated.
‘Well, I like fresh. And for the sake of a few cent …’ Ava said.
‘Assuming you eat fresh pasta twice a week, then your saving per meal for two people, is 0.94 euro. Over a year that will be just under 98 euro,’ Ruth replied, eyes still on the ground.
Ava and Aisling looked at each other, then back to Ruth again, a little startled by her quick maths.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice if, for once, we didn’t have to be thinking about things like the cost of every little thing we need to buy?’ Aisling said. ‘I spent a day yesterday trudging around Penney’s, Heaton’s and Tesco, comparing prices on a tracksuit for Anna. And everywhere I looked I saw all these cute outfits in, ready for Christmas. I’d have given anything to buy her a whole new wardrobe.’
‘Anna always looks beautiful,’ Ava said with kindness.
‘Hand-me-downs. Thank God for my friend. She sends down a bag of clothes every six months or so. It’s like Christmas for Anna.’ Tears threatened to spill from Aisling’s brown eyes as she flipped her sausages again. ‘Just once, I’d like her to have her own outfit. Brand new with labels. Chosen just for her.’
Ava squeezed Aisling’s arm in sympathy.
Ruth wanted to say to them both that she knew what it was like to juggle her finances so that she did not have ‘too much month at the end of her money’. She wanted to tell Aisling that she needed to do a similar exercise to find DJ new tracksuit bottoms and trainers. But the words were getting jumbled in her head again, the way they did. She was making a terrible first impression but she felt powerless to change it. They would see her continued silence as an insult and she did not want them to think she was rude.
Tell them you are shy. Be honest. People always respond well to honesty. This advice was given to her over a decade ago by her doctor and it often popped into her head. Funny how some words stick while others disappear into nothing. Maybe it was time to take this advice.
‘I am shy, not rude,’ Ruth blurted out.
‘Ah, I’ve a younger sister like that,’ Ava said, nodding in understanding. ‘Crippled with shyness, has been ever since she was born. She spent most of her childhood hidden behind Mam’s skirts!’
‘And there I was, thinking the cat had your tongue! I’m sure it’s been a tough day for you,’ Aisling said, smiling.
‘I never thought I would end up in a place like this. In this situation,’ Ruth said.
They both understood that.
‘Hotels are meant to be about leisure, rest, holidays. But this is hell on earth,’ Ava said, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Maybe this will be your month to get a house,’ Aisling added, patting her hand.
‘We said that last month and the month before, too. When we moved into this hotel, we thought it would be temporary. Couple of weeks, max. Six months later it’s getting harder to be upbeat,’ Ava replied. She pulled the pot of pasta off the stove and drained it over the sink. ‘I don’t think my husband, Brian, can cope much longer.’
‘It will be your turn soon, you wait and see,’ Aisling said.
‘That is most unlikely. Twenty per cent of those on the housing list will remain on it for five years,’ Ruth interjected in an effort to join in.
Ava and Aisling both turned towards her, Ava in distress, Aisling in irritation.
‘Read the room!’ Aisling said. She made a face, nodding her head towards a tearful Ava.
Ruth looked at the floor, wishing she was an Aisling, someone who knew automatically what to say, how to make Ava feel better. Why did she always find her voice just in time to say the wrong thing?
11
RUTH
Then
The past couple of months had been difficult, the worst of Ruth’s life. First of all, the man she loved, Dean, disappeared. She missed him. She refused to give up hope that he would return. But the realisation that she was pregnant brought a whole new world of trouble. And telling her mother, dealing with her reaction, was the start of the end for them both.
‘A baby? No, that’s impossible,’ Marian had said, picking up her cigarettes.
‘Yes, Mother. It is quite possible. I am twenty weeks pregnant.’
Her mother’s eyes dropped to her abdomen and Ruth automatically placed her hands over it. And then her mother did something that she’d never done before. She threw her cigarettes at Ruth and screamed at her. The box bounced off Ruth’s hands. The blow did not hurt, but the rage behind her mother’s actions did.
Things had not improved since then. Had Marian told Ruth’s father about the baby? She did not know. She guessed her mother called him to complain that there was an even bigger inconvenience on the way.
It was Mark who came to her rescue during those awful few weeks after her announcement, unlikely ally though he was. When her mother called him to garner support in her tirade of abuse about the pregnancy, he stood closer to Ruth while Marian ranted and raved.
‘You can’t have a baby!’ Marian said. ‘Tell her, Mark. It’s preposterous.’
‘Why not?’ Ruth asked. ‘I am perfectly healthy.’
‘What if it’s like you?’ Marian replied with a shudder. At that damning question, silence fell over the room.
Mark broke the silence. ‘Have you listened to yourself, Mother?’ His voice was low and gruff.
Ruth looked at him in surprise. He sounded angry.
Mark continued, ‘Seriously, have you actually listened to the fucking shit that comes out of your mouth?’
‘How dare you speak to me like that?’ Marian screamed, horrified at Mark’s words.
‘How dare you?’ Mark replied.
Ruth and her mother both looked at Mark in shock. He had never stuck up for his sister like this before.
Marian found her voice and screamed, ‘Get out. Get out. Get OUT!’
‘With pleasure,’ Mark said. Then he turned to Ruth: ‘If I were you, I’d get the fuck out of here, too.’
Three days of non-stop abuse from Marian followed.
That boy Dean used you. A cheap and easy tart, who fell for his lies.
You have really gone and done it this time.
You ruined all our lives when you were born, and this pregnancy will be the final nail in my coffin!
Ruth would block out her cruel taunts by looking at a slip of paper with a fortune printed on it. A memento from her lost weekend with her soul mate. He had loved her. He would be back. Her old friend Odd whispered to her that she must always hope and persevere. But nevertheless, conclusions had to be made.
Dean was not coming back to rescue her.
She was having this baby on her own.
She needed to do as Mark had said and get the fuck out. Not just for her sake. But for the sake of her unborn child.
She moved from the village where she grew up and hitched a lift to Wexford town. Fate was on her side, because Pat from the arcade in Curracloe pulled up beside her in his beaten-up Jeep. Ruth did not have any friends, but she had gotten to know Pat over the many summers she had spent on Curracloe beach, buying ice cream from him in the arcade. He did not waste her time offering raspberry or chocolate syrup, as he did with the other kids. Or sprinkles or hundreds and thousands. He took the time to know she liked hers plain, in a tub, not on a cone. That was her way.
And Pat liked Ruth. She was a good kid once you took the time to get to know her. Not like her older brother, Mark, the little prick. He was forever in the arcade kicking the machines, trying to get them to cough out money. Trouble. Always looking for trouble. And he watched other kids pick on Ruth, letting them call her names. That’s no way to be about family. Pat had had to step in once or twice.
As Ruth climbed into his jeep, Pat realised that she wasn’t a kid any more. Short cropped hair, not a scrap of makeup on, wearing oversized dark sunglasses. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her without them. They’d been too big for her for many years, like she was playing dress-up with her mama’s things. But now they suited her perfectly.
‘Where you off to?’ he asked.
‘I am pregnant. I have to leave home.’
And Pat felt heart sorry hearing this. He remembered all the times Ruth had put coins into the fortune-telling machine in the arcade. He wasn’t sure what she hoped would come spitting out of it. But if Pat could rig it so that it gave her whatever it was her heart desired, he’d do it. He told her he would take her anywhere she wanted to go.
‘I am going to Mark’s in Wexford.’
Pat was pretty sure that Ruth was jumping from the frying pan into the fire, but he held his counsel. Before she said goodbye he pressed a fifty-euro note into her hand. ‘Come back sometime with the baby to see me. Always an ice cream for you and the little one in my arcade. OK?’
She nodded but she had a feeling that she would not be licking ice creams in the arcade any time soon. She made her way to Mark’s flat, which was at the end of Wexford Quay, opposite the railway tracks. She had been there just once before, when he first moved in and had asked her and their mum around. But he had never asked her to visit since and she was not sure how he would react now.
His response – ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ – when he answered the door was problematic. She stepped inside, taking it as a good sign that he had not told her to go away.
‘I have left home,’ Ruth said to his Nike trainers. They were new and brilliant white. He usually wore Adidas.
‘Good for you. Didn’t think you had it in you,’ Mark replied.
In the end, he let her stay. He did not have much choice, she supposed. She loved Wexford town. A place that was big enough that she could get lost in it, where she could go days without meeting anyone who knew her or thought she was strange. She liked that. She liked that a lot. His flat, without the oppressive disapproval of her mother, was a welcome relief.
For the first time in her young life, Ruth felt like she was in control. And it was a feeling that she very much approved of.
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