‘I was out playing with Bette. I fell,’ he answered. That chin of his was back out again, daring her to have a go.
‘I specifically asked you to change out of your school tracksuit before you went to the park,’ Ruth said.
‘I forgot.’
Ruth frantically went through the laundry basket that was now beginning to take over the room, searching for a less dirty pair of tracksuit bottoms. ‘Here.’ She threw a pair at him. ‘They will have to do. Marginally better than the ones you have on.’
More scowls as he walked into the bathroom to change again. ‘Why don’t I have any clean clothes any more?’
‘I shall find a launderette today,’ Ruth replied to the slam of the door.
Things had been easier when he was younger. He accepted life as it was presented to him. His questions were easier to answer. And that was saying a lot, because he had some corkers back then.
‘Why is the sky blue, Mam?’
‘Where does colour get its colour, Mam?’
‘What happens to water when it goes down the drain, Mam?’
And now he was still testing her because last night he came home from the park with the one question Ruth found impossible to answer.
‘Where is my dad?’
She tried to shut her mind from that question. But it was becoming increasingly difficult. When she left Wexford she may not have said it out loud, but the reason she chose to go to Dublin was because that was where DJ’s father, Dean, was from. And for the first couple of years she looked for him. Everywhere. She would walk the streets each day taking a different path, pushing DJ in his pushchair. Hoping that luck would be on her side, fate would shine a light on them, and they would bump into each other. What happened after she found him was cloudy. Because if that happened, then she would have to accept the fact that he had never loved her; that their lost weekend was just a fling. Nothing more. But no matter how much it seemed just like that, neither her head nor heart believed it to be true. Dean had loved her. She knew it. She no longer looked for him, but she never lost her hope that one day he would return.
Ruth remembered the day on Curracloe Beach so clearly, it felt like it had just happened …
With an ice-cream in hand, Ruth placed her coins in the slot, then pulled back the red velvet curtain to sit in front of the turban-clad statue that would dispense her fate at the arcade. She had been on the beach reading for the past two hours, the afternoon sun now in the mid-twenties. Ireland was in the throes of a heatwave. It was a universal truth that the Irish sun would come out to play whenever schools returned after their summer break. She crossed her fingers as she heard the machine hum and vibrate as it decided her fate. Be a good one.
The machine hissed and spluttered, then spat out a card.
YOU WILL MEET YOUR SOUL MATE TODAY.
Ruth’s heart began to pound. In all the years she had used this machine, she never had a fortune about soul mates. Never! Ruth traced the words of the fortune with her forefinger. She jumped up and shook her head to banish her mother, letting dreams that she rarely dared to believe take up residence instead. All because of the card in her hand. She pulled back the red curtain and stepped out into the arcade, promptly crashing into someone.
‘Hey!’ a man shouted.
Her ice cream tumbled towards the floor followed by the fortune, which fluttered to the ground in slow motion, finally resting in a puddle of vanilla ice cream.
‘I’m so sorry!’ The man was quick to apologise, seeing the look of dismay on the young woman’s face.
Ruth’s eyes never left the card on the ground, the fortune’s black ink beginning to melt away. ‘It was my fault. I was distracted.’
‘You OK, Ruth?’ Pat’s voice shouted over from the ice-cream counter. ‘I’ll make you another. Don’t fret. On the house.’
Ruth kneeled down and picked up the sodden fortune. The man with shiny, black, lace-up shoes inched closer.
‘Was it a good fortune?’ Shiny Shoes asked.
Ruth peeked through her sunglasses, taking in the man dressed in a grey suit and red tie, which looked like it was strangling him, the sleeves of his shirt cuffed on each arm. His attire jarred with the beach. Jarred with her.
‘What did it say?’ he asked, trying to make out the words, which were now almost melted to oblivion. ‘Meet …’
Ruth replied, ‘It said that today I would meet my soul mate. I have never had that fortune before. It was a most excellent fortune.’
‘Most excellent indeed,’ Shiny Shoes acknowledged. He pulled out some change from his pocket and said, ‘Maybe it will come out again. Let me try for you.’
Ruth shook her head. ‘The odds of that happening are highly unlikely.’
He pushed his coin into the machine, then sat in behind the red curtain. And once again it hissed and spluttered, then spat out a card.
YOU WILL MEET YOUR SOUL MATE TODAY.
Ruth heard the man laugh out loud as he picked up his fortune. ‘Well, I’ll be darned. Look at that.’
Ruth looked up from the floor and their eyes met.
Ruth had found herself laughing with that strange man dressed in a grey suit on a hot September day, not just about the impossible odds that they beaten but so much more too. And because of this chance encounter, Ruth’s life was about to change and shift more than she could ever imagine.
33
RUTH
Then
‘Any good?’ Shiny Shoes Man asked, pointing to her book and blocking the summer sun.
Ruth looked up, recognising the voice. He was smallish for a man. Skinny, too, but with a round face. She liked his face. It was kind. And handsome. He was holding his shoes in his hand, his grey slacks now rolled up to his knees. His white shirt was now open at the collar and he had pushed his sleeves up past his elbows. She moved herself up to a sitting position to answer him.
‘It is most excellent,’ she replied.
‘My name is Dean, too, you know,’ he said, pointing to the author’s name on the book.
‘If you say your second name is Koontz, on top of the fortune earlier, I may just have to marry you,’ Ruth replied.
He started to laugh and said, ‘Ha! I’m tempted to say it is, just to get a proposal. But I am a huge fan. Of his. Not just because we have the same great name, either.’
‘He is my number-one favourite author. Followed by Stephen King,’ Ruth said.
‘Very precise. I like it,’ he said. ‘Can I sit down for a minute?’
‘If you wish.’
He plonked himself down on the sand beside her. ‘That’s better. I finished work early today, and just couldn’t face driving back to Dublin. Thought I’d take advantage of the Indian summer and have a walk on the beach.’
‘It is unusually warm and dry. Met Éireann have forecast another three days of temperatures up to twenty degrees.’
‘The sunny south-east is living up to its reputation,’ Dean said. ‘It always seems to be sunnier down here than in Dublin.’
‘Is that where you live?’
He nodded. ‘What is your favourite Koontz?’
She waved Odd Thomas at him. That was an unnecessary question.
‘Doh!’ he acknowledged. ‘An excellent choice, although I would probably have to pick By the Light of the Moon. I’ve read it a few times and get something different from each read.’
‘I am the same with Odd,’ Ruth admitted. ‘I have read it seventy-two times to date.’
‘Wow. That’s a lot of love for one book.’
‘I do not like to waste my time on things that do not interest me. When I read Odd Thomas I feel happy. Odd is my friend. He makes me feel good about myself.’ Ruth stopped suddenly. She had just shared something with this stranger that she had never told anyone else. She waited for him to sneer and laugh.
‘That makes a lot of sense to me. I always think of book characters as real people, too. Or at least the ones from the good books,’ Dean replied.
His response made Ruth feel al
l funny inside. Her stomach began to flip and flop. She popped a knuckle to try to quieten it down. Dean seemed to sense her need for silence, so he sat quietly beside her and they watched the ocean in front of them.
After a while he turned to her and said, ‘I like your hair.’
‘So do I,’ Ruth agreed, reaching up to touch her short pixie cut.
‘You look like Audrey Hepburn,’ Dean said.
‘I hope not, because she is dead,’ Ruth said.
‘Cute and funny, too. I like it,’ Dean said, laughing.
Ruth had never had anyone compliment her like this before. It was uncharted territory. Her mother had been horrified by her haircut, telling her she looked like a boy.
‘Do you live around here?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I live with my mother. Not far from here. In between Curracloe and Screen village. I like to spend my time on the beach when I can. I come here every week.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ he agreed, wondering what colour the girl’s eyes were behind her big sunglasses. He bet they were the same colour as the sky. He very much wanted to find out. ‘You never told me your name.’
‘You never asked,’ Ruth replied.
‘Mystery girl on the beach, with the cool haircut and funky sunglasses on, who happens to have impeccable taste in books, what is your name?’
Now it was Ruth’s turn to laugh. ‘I am Ruth.’
‘With a cool name, too! You’re making my head turn,’ he said, with sincerity. ‘So Ruth, do you work or are you a student?’
‘Neither. I was fired yesterday. I have yet to tell my mother,’ Ruth answered. ‘I’m not looking forward to that.’
‘Ouch, sorry to hear that. Do I take it your mother will not be impressed?’
‘She will not be surprised. I do not have a good track record with jobs.’
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘I have been working for a PR company over the past couple of months. They were running a promotion for Budweiser this month. My job was to hand out free bottles of beer yesterday in a beer garden.’
‘I bet the bar was jammers because of the Indian summer! Nothing like a hot day to send the droves to the pub!’ Dean said.
‘Exactly. But I do not think I am cut out for PR.’
He laughed, thinking that this girl could sell anything to him. He was enthralled with her every word. ‘What happened?’
‘Some guys were being arseholes. One of them asked me what did he have to do to get a kiss from me.’
‘What did you say?’ Dean asked, feeling irritation at these faceless guys who tried to chat up this woman who had intrigued him from the moment she stepped out of the fortune booth.
‘I said to him, “I could kiss you, but I would rather kiss a pig’s backside.” His friends laughed. Turns out he did not like being laughed at. Also turns out that he knows my now ex-boss. He complained that I was stuck up. My boss agreed. He said that he found it hard to put up with my quirks, as he called them. My candid interactions were not appreciated.’
‘You shouldn’t have to put up with that shit in work. Sounds like you are better off out of it,’ Dean said. ‘As for being candid, I think it’s like when people ask for advice. Really they just want you to pat them on the head and agree with everything they’ve said!’
Ruth nodded in agreement. She liked that Dean understood her. She liked chatting to him. And, unusual for her, she did not mind that he was interrupting her reading time. She felt Odd’s approval.
‘I’m curious about these quirks that your boss didn’t like,’ Dean said.
‘I like white food. I am not sure why this bothers anyone else, as it does not bother me when they eat food all the colours of the rainbow. But it seems to put people out,’ Ruth said.
‘When I was a kid, I did my best to avoid any food with colour. Like broccoli and carrots,’ Dean said. ‘You know, I can’t eat halved or broken peanuts. I have to separate them into little piles, and only the complete ones get past the Deano radar!’
Ruth said, ‘I do not care for broken nuts either.’
‘Noted,’ Dean said. They both giggled at the innuendo that sat between them.
‘Tell me more,’ Dean said.
‘I am not very good in big crowds,’ Ruth said.
‘Overrated. Agreed.’ He swivelled his bum around till he was facing her, wishing she would take her sunglasses off. ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. You might not do well in crowds, but you are doing very well with me. I feel like I could tell you anything.’
‘Then do. Tell me something about you that no one else knows,’ Ruth said.
‘Like what?’ Dean asked.
‘Tell me the worst thing you have ever done,’ Ruth said. ‘Shock me.’
Dean gave the question some thought, which Ruth admired.
‘OK, here’s my most dastardly deed. I’ve not confessed this to anyone before.’ He went on to tell Ruth about a time when he snuck over his next-door neighbour’s garden fence and broke into their shed. Mr Murphy kept a stash of booze there, some beers and wine. And Dean was going to a party with no money. There was a girl there he wanted to impress.
‘There usually is,’ Ruth said.
‘The weird thing is, I can’t even remember her name now. But at the time, it seemed of the utmost importance that I be the big man, arms full with beer.’
‘And did you get the girl?’ Ruth asked.
‘Yes, I did as it happens. We went on a few dates after that party, but whenever I saw her, all I could remember was the stolen beer. The Murphys were nice people. I shouldn’t have done it,’ Dean said. ‘I swore after that I’d never steal a single thing again.’
‘And have you kept that promise?’ Ruth asked, crossing her fingers that he said yes.
‘Yes. I have.’
Dean had never spoken so honestly about himself before, but somehow with Ruth he felt the need to tell her everything. He wanted her to know him. All of him. The good and the bad.
‘We have all done things in our pasts that we shouldn’t have,’ Ruth said. ‘When I was in primary school there was this boy in my class who was bullied by his classmates.’
‘A friend of yours?’ Dean asked.
Ruth shook her head. ‘He was just a boy in my class. But he had a rough time of it. He was not from a well-off family. His clothes were always that bit too small or too big, hand-me-downs. A little bit shabby and dirty. And he often smelled. I would say now, looking back, that he was lucky to get a bath in his house.’
‘That’s bloody awful,’ Dean said.
‘The kids in my class used to brush by Paul, then touch him, squealing at everyone else, “I’ve got Paul on me.” Then they’d all run away, playing a cruel game of tag, passing “Paul” onto each other.’
‘Kids are savage,’ Dean replied. ‘Do you feel guilty because you played along, too?’
‘I was not included in any of the games my classmates played. But I watched. I never intervened,’ Ruth whispered.
‘You were a kid,’ Dean jumped in, quick to defend her.
‘A kid who knew better, who knew what it felt like to be on the sidelines, bullied for being different. I should have said something, shown him a kindness, been a friend to him. I should have screamed at the kids, “Fuck the fuck off!”’ She felt Dean’s eyes on her and looked up to meet his gaze. And she did not feel anxious. But the flipflops were back in her tummy.
Pop, pop, pop.
‘Where is he now?’ Dean asked.
‘No idea. Last I heard he had gone to the USA on a J-1 visa.’
‘What would you say to him if you could?’
‘I would promise him that if I were lucky enough to have children of my own, that I would teach them every day to be kind. To stand up for the underdog. To avoid being a sheep.’
‘I think a kid would be very lucky to have you as a mother,’ Dean said.
They sat side by side on the sandy white beach and continued to swap stories until the sun began to go
low. Others packed up their things to go home. Until it was just the two of them.
‘Will you take your sunglasses off?’ Dean asked, his voice a whisper on the evening breeze.
She did as he asked and he said, ‘I knew it. Exactly the same colour as the sky.’
His words made her smile, and for the first time in her life she felt like someone who could grasp a happy-ever-after.
‘If we kiss, that will be it, you know,’ Dean told her, when it was almost dark.
Every word he spoke was a solemn promise that made Ruth’s stomach flip. She nodded because she recognised the truth in his statement. She had no idea what lay ahead for them both, but she knew, with every ounce of her being, that Dean was part of her future.
Her soul mate. She had fallen in love with this man in just a few hours. It was that simple.
Dean leaned in and kissed her hard. His nose banged against hers and their teeth clashed.
‘Shit!’ Dean yelped. ‘Ignore that kiss. I do way better kisses than that.’
‘I should hope so,’ Ruth said in disappointment.
He steadied himself. Then moved in, slower this time, and took her head in his hands. He kissed her like it was the last kiss he would ever give in his life. She felt her body move into his until she no longer knew where hers began or his ended.
She did not remember the kiss ending, but she knew that this time it was perfect.
Dean never went home that Friday evening. He checked into the Curracloe Lodge Hotel and without any need for speeches or promises, Ruth went with him. They continued the kiss that they started on the beach and afterwards, when they lay back on his hotel bed, Ruth realised that in this moment, in his arms, she felt happiness for the first time in her life.
34
RUTH
Now
They ate their breakfast in silence, with DJ’s question still hanging between them, like rotten fruit. The scowl on his face only disappeared when Anna and Cormac walked in. One good thing about their move to this hotel was the friendship that was developing between the kids. Most evenings, the three of them went to the park to play football, or throw a stick for Bette Davis.
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