Carmel Harrington - A Thousand Roads Home

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.

Now

Bette Davis growled at the two kids who stopped to snigger at the sleeping Tom, who lay on his park bench, in his sleeping bag.

‘Bum!’ they jeered, until Bette growled a little louder and they ran away laughing. The dog moved closer to her best friend, keeping guard while Tom dreamed some more …

When one of Tom’s patients died, a young mother who had been battling breast cancer for years, Cathy was the only person he wanted to see. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to analyse why it had happened. He just wanted to be with her. And Cathy instinctively got that. She simply fed him, held him and asked no questions. The following day, one of her day-care patients lost his temper and threw a chair through the patio window to the garden. Tom drove over to help her clear up the mess. While he understood that there were times that things happened that were beyond your control, he was terrified that she might ever be in danger. This terror clarified everything for him.

There were no longer any questions in his mind. He loved this woman and he wanted the world to know it. He plotted and planned the perfect proposal. He wanted to make it memorable, worthy of the woman he loved. But in the end, all his plans fell in disarray back in the deli aisle of Tesco where they’d first met.

‘This is where it all started!’ Tom said, looking at their single trolly this time.

‘One clash of our trollies and that was it,’ Cathy remembered with a smile.

‘You could never resist me. Me being such a charming fecker,’ Tom joked.

‘That is true,’ she answered, kissing him lightly. ‘Now, goat’s cheese-and-spinach pizza, or the triple meat feast?’ She held them both up, waving the goat’s cheese one in front of his face, which he duly pointed to.

‘Marry me,’ he blurted out. He couldn’t for the life of him see the sense in hanging around one more moment.