Page 52 of A Miracle on Hope Street
His eyes are dazzling as he speaks and I don’t need to ask too many questions. I can tell exactly what, or should I say who, he is talking about.
‘Liam?’ I say to him, managing a smile. He nods. ‘Michael, I’m so very proud of you. That’s the best Christmas present you could ever give that little boy and I hope his mother can see that he will really benefit at having you in his life, no matter how small that way may be. I’m delighted for you. I really am.’
‘I go to meet his mum tomorrow to talk things through with her,’ he says to me. ‘You were right. It’s a case of now or never but I spoke to her, and after a bit of convincing and once she got over the initial shock, she said she’ll meet with me and we’ll make a plan to see Liam as soon as she explains to him what has been going on in whatever way she chooses to do.’
‘Yes,’ I say to him. ‘Gosh, I can just imagine what she was thinking when she took the call. Have you spoken to her much since you left?’
He looks away.
‘Now and then,’ he says to me. ‘I really can’t thank you enough, Ruth. This is all because of you and I do think she’s going to give me a second chance to be part of his life. My son, Ruth. I might finally get to see my own son again. That’s enough to change my world for the better and it’s all down to you.’
I stand on my tiptoes and give Michael a peck on the cheek and a tight hug. I don’t care who sees me do it or who is staring and jumping to conclusions about our relationship, I just want to let him know how happy I am for him right now.
‘You’re doing the right thing,’ I tell him. ‘And I can’t wait to hear how it goes. But be patient, Michael. It’s not going to be happily ever after overnight, just like I know it won’t be when I finally reunite with my own mother, but if you can just be patient and understand that there will be a lot of emotion from seeing you again, it will all work out. Call me when you’re ready. I’m always there for you when you need a friend.’
He puts his hand to where I kissed him and holds it there for a second.
Then I bid him goodbye and walk out into the blustering wintery afternoon with no idea of where to go or what on earth I should be doing now.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I spend the afternoon at my desk, pushing myself to write replies to all those who have written to me for my last weekly column before Christmas and before I know it, it’s dark again outside and another evening lies ahead. My head hurts, my tummy rumbles, but I don’t have an appetite to eat anything or even to do anything more with my evening. I’ve tried to keep busy to distract myself from thoughts of Paul and it has really helped, but now I need a change of scenery and to force myself for a shift in energy that comes with hanging around this house for too long on my own.
I miss Michael’s company. I want to call him and see if he fancies a drink somewhere or an evening in front of the fire with a movie but I don’t want to push him. I know he has so much on his mind now as he prepares to meet his ex tomorrow. I hope she gives him a chance to make amends. I really do.
I go down to the dining room and switch on the Christmas tree lights; I pull the curtains closed and I go across the hallway and into the sitting room where I put a match to the fire and sit on the sofa, watch it glow and wonder once again where I’m going in my life.
I should have contacted Paul sooner. I should have signposted him elsewhere and not just invited him to my home, but I thought it would give him something to look forward to at Christmas, just as I did when I wrote to everyone else on my list.
I pull a blanket from the back of the sofa and snuggle down, watching the flames dance in the hearth, and my eyes go heavy and eventually I fall into a light snooze, waking up what feels like moments later but when I look at the clock, I realise that it’s gone eight thirty in the evening and I feel worse than I did before. Groggy, tired, hungry and grumpy. I check my phone, hoping and expecting that Michael might have been in touch but he hasn’t. I have a voice mail message, though, so I dial the number, put the phone to my ear and listen, hoping that it might be him.
But it isn’t him. It’s Sonia, the lady from the hostel earlier. I recognise her voice the moment she speaks and I sit up, wide awake now as I listen to her lengthy message.
‘Ruth, I hope you don’t mind me calling you,’she says. ‘I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all evening but you must be busy, so I’ll tell you what I wanted to say to you in this message if you don’t mind. Please let me know that you’ve got it when you get a chance.
I could see how upset you were today and you haven’t left my mind all afternoon, so when I heard what I heard just a few hours ago I thought I’d pass it on and maybe it might ease your pain just a little on the news of young Paul Connolly’s untimely death.
Apparently, Paul had a partner recently; well, an on-off boyfriend you might say, and I was chatting to him this afternoon when he popped by to clear some of Paul’s belongings from his room. His name is Terence, a nice kid who is devastated beyond belief, of course, but he told me that Paul had opened up to him the day he died and said that he had written to you. Paul was overwhelmed and overjoyed at your invitation to Christmas dinner and he told Terence that he was going to go and was really looking forward to it.
Terence couldn’t spend Christmas with Paul this year as his parents didn’t know of their relationship and probably wouldn’t have approved, he says, so he was delighted that Paul had found somewhere to go. When I told him you had popped by this afternoon without having known what happened, Terence asked me to pass you on a message so I’ll do that now, if it’s okay . . .
Terence wants you to know that you gave Paul a lifeline when he felt that no one else would. You were prepared to welcome him into your home and feed him on a day that he would otherwise have been all alone and that made him smile;
He wants you to know that you reached out and showed kindness when most people disowned and rejected Paul and that made him feel very good inside. You showed him that even in his darkest days, there was still hope and someone who cared, even when he thought he was all alone;
He wants you to know that Paul was very much looking forward to meeting you to say thank you, but his addiction proved to be of a greater power. You made him look forward to Christmas again, even though he didn’t make it that far. You gave him a sense of warmth in his final days and your simple act of kindness had a huge impact on the last moments of Paul’s short life. The drug pushers and the addiction won this time, but please know that you made a big difference in showing Paul that someone out there cared, even if it wasn’t enough for him to hang on for in the end.
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, Ruth. Please do keep up the good work. No one could have saved Paul in the end it seems, but I want to say thank you for what you tried to do. If the rest of us have learned anything from Paul’s passing and from how you made him feel, it’s that just a little kindness can indeed change someone’s world – and it’s never too late to know that.
Thank you so much, Ruth. Oh, and I’m going to take your advice too. I’m taking a break from this place to get my own head together. It’s time to look after me and my own family for a change. Happy Christmas.
And then she is gone.
I sit here in the dark, blinking back tears as I hang up the phone and absorb Sonia’s words and Terence’s thoughtful way of passing on Paul’s feelings to me. My heart feels much more at ease now and I manage to smile at the idea that Paul may have experienced just a glimmer of warmth before his sudden death.
So, I go to the hallway and I open the drawer of the little table that sits there with a photo on it of my sister and I as young toddlers, sitting on each of our parent’s laps. I take out the envelope with the familiar handwriting and I bring it into the sitting room, put some coal on the fire which has almost gone out, and I sit down to read it over and over again – words of sorrow, words of pain, words of begging for a chance that I couldn’t bear to absorb before or even think about properly until now.
I clutch the letter in my hands and I stare at the ceiling as I long for the courage to make the call I’m dying to make, but the thought of hearing her voice is enough to turn me into a quivering wreck.
