Page 37 of A Miracle on Hope Street
The swing slows down and I stare at the puddles below me, trying so hard to hold back a mixture of emotions that run through my veins as my fingers grip the cold chain on the swing. I feel guilty. I feel empty. I feel like I’m bobbing along on a wide ocean all alone with no direction. I just need some direction. I need someone to set me straight and guide me along the path I’m meant to be on right now. Is this it? Is planning this dinner party going to help me do that? Is selling up my family home after Christmas as I plan to, going to help me?
‘Ruth? Is that you?’
I look up to see a young woman, her pale blue duffle coat buttoned to her throat with the hood up, holding an umbrella in one hand and the hand of a toddler in another.
‘Molly!’ I say, trying to hide my tears. ‘I’m sorry. I was totally lost in thought. Have you been standing there long?’
‘Not at all,’ she replies. ‘I parked Marcus’s pushchair just at the gates. He always insists on walking from the gates and throws a tantrum if the pushchair comes any further because he wants to be a big boy.’
‘How old?’
‘Two,’ she says and we both have to cover up our laughter. ‘So we just got here, and since we’re the only crazies to be out on a day like this, I kind of figured it had to be you on the swings. You looked like you were enjoying yourself.’
I sniffle and search for a tissue in my pocket. Molly comes to the rescue and expertly fishes one from the bag she is carrying.
‘I was taking a very unplanned trip down memory lane,’ I tell Molly. ‘Isn’t it funny how memories can just creep up on you like an old ghost and before you know it, you’re back in a moment you thought you’d left behind a long time ago?’
Molly sits down on the swing adjacent to mine and secures Marcus on her knee. We both sway ever so slowly as a light fall of December rain comes down from the sky.
‘I try to very much live in the present,’ she says to me, looking down at little Marcus whose chubby hands are now holding the chain of the swing. ‘I’ve learned a lot from my past, that’s for sure, but there’s no point dwelling on it. I don’t think it does us any good at all. The bad stuff, I mean.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking of bad stuff at all,’ I try and correct her quickly. ‘I spent a lot of time in this park as a child. When you swing high enough, you can see the top of my house just over there.’
‘You live on Beech Row?’ Molly says, her eyes widening.
‘I do,’ I tell her. ‘Though I’m not entirely sure I want to be living there, but that’s where I am now. That’s my present.’
Molly looks across at the hedge towards the row of houses and lets out a sigh.
‘You know, when I was a little girl I used to come here a lot too,’ she says with a smile, kissing Marcus on the back of his head. ‘We grew up in a place that was very, very different to Beech Row. Happy all the same, but very different. When I’d get home I used to pretend that I lived over there and that I had my own bedroom and we had two living rooms and lots of space to run around and explore. I used to pretend that a lot and then I realised that a home is what you make it, no matter what it’s shape or size. It’s up to us to make it a home, isn’t it?’
I close my eyes briefly and picture the big, spacious rooms that I take so much for granted. That I’ve cursed and dreaded going back to for the past twelve months. I’ve made no effort to make it my own, have I? I’ve let it sit as if time had stood still and blamed those walls for all my misery.
‘We have a very modest home now, me, Jack and Marcus,’ says Molly. ‘But if Jack doesn’t find work very soon, we are going to lose it and I dread to think of where we’ll end up.’
‘Oh Molly, you must be worried sick,’ I whisper. I look at young Marcus, his saucer-like eyes looking round him under the hood of his yellow raincoat.
‘I will never take the comfort of a home for granted, ever,’ she says to me, looking me right in the eye. ‘No matter if it’s a two up, two down, or a rolling mansion; when you’re under threat to lose your home, that’s when you know just how much it means to you. We need to get out of this mess, Ruth. I don’t ever want to be in this position again.’
‘I will help you in any way I can,’ I promise her. ‘Let’s get you all through Christmas first and then I’ll see if there’s anything at all I can do to prevent you from losing your home. Anything.’
‘Thank you,’ says Molly, her eyes glistening with tears.
‘And thank you also,’ I say to her. ‘You’ve reminded me of a few home truths today, pardon the pun.’
‘I have? How?’
I look across in the direction of Beech Row and she follows my eyeline.
‘It’s up to us to make a house a home, no matter what size or shape it is, and it’s sometimes good to focus on the present and not the past,’ I reply. ‘Thanks for reminding me of that.’
I agree to meet Michael in Caprinos, my favourite little old Italian restaurant which my work colleagues and I have frequented so often, and when I get there later in the evening, I’m delighted to see that he has already found our seats.
Meeting Molly and Kelly today was exhausting but oh, so rewarding, and tomorrow I’ve to meet Nicholas outside St Mark’s Church and then Marian has agreed to make me tea in her conservatory as it’s the closest to going outdoors she can guarantee right now. I can’t get an answer from Paul Connolly but, if push comes to shove, I’ll drop by the hostel and see that he has definitely been receiving my messages. I hope he has.
The lights are low in Caprino’s and Michael sits in a corner table which has a red candle burning in a wine bottle in the middle of a green and white chequered cloth. A glass of red wine sits waiting for me and I light up as I take my seat across from him. The smell of garlic and pizza and the ambience of the room, with the sounds of Italian folk music in the background, make this place so authentic and as my mother used to say, ‘a proper Italian experience and not one of those fake, plastic pizzerias that pop up in town.’
‘You look like you could be one of the family here,’ Michael jokes as a waitress walks by and I must admit, I would fit in quite well and would feel very much at home in a place like this.
