Where is he going? Does he have a home?
Then a car behind them blasted its horn, impatient to get on with its journey. They all jumped in unison, including the dog, who stopped suddenly, causing the old man to crash into it. Like a deck of cards, he tripped and fell to the ground, his rucksack spilling its contents onto the road.
‘Probably pissed,’ the Uber driver said, looking with annoyance in his rear-view window at the car behind, whose driver continued to blast the horn.
‘His dog tripped him up,’ Ruth said, feeling the need to defend the old man. She watched a red-and-white flask escape his rucksack and roll towards their car.
‘Where you going?’ DJ asked in surprise when Ruth opened her door.
‘To help.’ She ran over to the flask and picked it up before it disappeared under their car.
‘That’s mine!’ the old man shouted at her, back on his feet again.
Ruth shook the flask gently to see if it had broken, relieved to hear only the swoosh of liquid inside, not broken shards.
‘It is unharmed,’ she said, handing it over to him. His boots were brown. Scuffed and worn. Like him.
He stuffed the flask back into his rucksack, looking at her curiously. Was she imagining it or did he look surprised? Without any further comment, Ruth counted the steps back to their Uber.
‘I don’t know why you bothered, love. His kind would stab you as soon as look at you,’ the taxi driver said. ‘Only last week I saw one of his lot robbing a handbag from a woman. Witnessed it from this very car.’
Ruth glanced towards the man still standing on the side of the road, watching her intently, his head tilted to one side. For a split second their eyes met and he raised his hand and saluted her. And in that gesture, Ruth had the strangest feeling she knew him. She had seen that salute before, she was sure. The memory teased her but refused to show itself. It was gone. And so was he when he turned away and walked in the opposite direction, his dog by his side. Her imagination was playing tricks on her.
‘Why did you do that?’ DJ asked.
‘Because it was the right thing to do,’ Ruth replied. She nodded towards the back of the Uber driver’s head. ‘Do not write off people based on how they present themselves to the world. You should know that better than anyone. Everyone has a story, if you take the time to listen.’
As their car moved on, the old man disappeared from her view but not from Ruth’s mind. She supposed he could have a home. But something about the way he retrieved his fallen items and put them back into his rucksack made her think that his home was in that bag. His face looked weathered in a way that suggested it had been exposed to the outside elements twenty-four-seven. Had life changed as quickly for this man as it had for her and DJ? In only four weeks, they had gone from home to homeless. Four short weeks that had been the longest of her life. When their landlord, Mr Kearns, gave them notice to leave their two-bedroomed flat, he set their life into a tailspin. Ruth was never late paying the rent, even by a day, which meant some months were leaner than others. But Mr Kearns did not care about that.
He had walked into her kitchen and opened up a cupboard above the sink, two months previously. Then pulled out a mug, laughing as he said, ‘It’s a mug’s game, this landlord malarkey. I’m getting out. Selling up.’ His eyes narrowed as he turned to look at Ruth. ‘Make me an offer if you like. Can’t say fairer than that.’
Ruth knew when someone was making fun of her. She recognised the tone, one that she had heard many times in her life.
‘I can’t maintain the rent. Not at the levels they are at,’ Mr Kearns said, in a manner that implied he was talking about the weather, not their eviction.
‘You raised the rent by twenty per cent only a year ago,’ Ruth interjected.
‘You can blame our government for the mess they’ve landed us all in. I can’t raise the rent for another two years, because of these new laws they’ve made,’ Seamus replied, picking up cushions on their sofa and examining them, before tossing them back.
Ruth had been relieved when she’d read about the changes to the Irish rent laws. Naïvely, she believed it meant that she would not have to worry about a further increase until 2020. By then she would have a council house. Only she realised now that although they were on the housing waiting list with Fingal County Council, they were as likely to win the lottery as they were to get a house. Ruth had heard the phrase ‘You are only two pay cheques away from the streets.’ As it happened, for them, the number was one.
Ruth felt panic begin to mount inside her once again, as she sat in the back of the car. Then Odd Thomas’s voice whispered to her, as it had done for over a decade whenever she needed help, calming her, supporting her:
Perseverance is impossible if we don’t permit ourselves to hope.
It was his name, ‘Odd’, that made her choose the book in the first place at her local library in Wexford. She had been called that on more than one occasion in her life. For different reasons from his, she found out soon enough. Odd could see and talk to dead people, and used this skill to help the Chief of Police in Pico Mundo to solve murders. Odd’s world in the USA became as real to her as the one she herself lived in in Ireland. She read the book in one glorious sitting the first time, then picked it up to read again the following day. Then something extraordinary happened on a damp, grey morning in spring. She watched her classmates playing basketball in the school yard, chatting in groups of twos and threes, happy cliques. A thought crept into her head, insidious and mean. If she disappeared, faded to nothing, who would miss her?
And that was when Odd Thomas spoke to her for the first time. Be happy. Persevere.
That very line was one of her favourites from the book. And she knew immediately what it meant. Ruth would have to work extra hard to be happy. But if she never gave up hope, she could find happiness. Thank you, Odd.
And so their friendship began: she trying her best to be happy; he reminding her that perseverance was necessary to achieve that end. Of course, Ruth knew that Odd was not real. She was neither stupid nor delusional. Just alone.
She looked across the seat to her son. For him, she would fight. She would find them a home again. He would never feel alone.
Bette Davis nuzzled Tom’s hand again, her apology for knocking him off his feet earlier. ‘It’s OK, girl,’ he said to his dog, ruffling her coat behind her ears, the way she liked. He leaned back into the curve of his park bench. His home now, he supposed, as it was where he spent most of his nights. Bette rested her head on his feet. Tom closed his eyes. His breathing slowed down and his lids flickered, heavy, until every sense lost its place in the now and went back in time to his dreams, to his happy place, to his home …
Tom stretched his aching muscles upwards, knowing that a locum was a priority. He couldn’t keep this pace up for much longer. His bones ached, older than his forty years. His small general practice had grown to the point that Tom had to turn new patients away. And patients were beginning to complain that the usual twenty-minute waiting time for their appointment was stretching towards an hour. That didn’t