A Thousand Roads Home. Carmel Harrington

communal room is available on the ground floor. Guests ask reception for the key.

      No hanging laundry on the balcony.

      No smoking in the room.

      No hanging of pictures on the walls.

      Parents must look after their own children. No babysitting of other guests’ children allowed in hotel.

      A thump in the corridor outside made her jump. She got off the bed and walked to the door, peeping out the small glass hole.

      ‘Hey, Jason, hey, Barry,’ DJ said, high-fiving the two boys from earlier, who were still running up and down the hall.

      Ruth marvelled at how quickly he had made friends in the space of a few hours.

      ‘Where have you been?’ Ruth asked, when he walked into their hotel room.

      ‘Nowhere,’ he answered, flopping down onto his bed.

      ‘Well, that’s impossible. You must have been somewhere,’ Ruth said.

      ‘Exploring,’ he mumbled. ‘You OK again?’

      ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Ruth looked at her son and tried to gauge how he was doing. She was not good at reading people’s emotions. ‘Are you OK?’

      He shrugged.

      ‘Does that mean you are OK?’ Ruth asked.

      ‘I’m OK. But hungry. Can I watch TV?’

      ‘I will go to the shop, buy some groceries and make us something to eat,’ Ruth said.

      ‘What are we eating, and please don’t say mashed potatoes?’ DJ said.

      ‘Depends what choice there is in the shop down the road. But noted on the potatoes.’

      DJ turned back to the football match that had just started. As Ruth reached the door, he called out, ‘Just remember to say hello if anyone speaks to you. And take the sunglasses off when you are inside. You’re not one of the Kardashians.’

      ‘I could think of nothing worse. No potatoes. Speak. Sunglasses. Got it,’ Ruth replied, with more confidence than she felt. She threw the sunglasses onto the bed to avoid temptation.

      It was her brother, Mark, who gave Ruth her first pair of sunglasses when they were kids. Her classmates had begun to call her a weirdo. Mark did not like other kids making fun of her. Not because he was worried about Ruth, but because he was worried about how it would reflect on him.

       ‘People think you are being shifty, hiding something, if you don’t look at them. And then they think that you don’t like them,’ Mark explained.

       ‘I am not hiding anything,’ Ruth said. ‘And I like them all. Except for Mary Lawlor and Tadgh D’arcy, who laugh at me a lot.’

       ‘Just try eye-balling them when you are in conversation with them. Look at them for five seconds, then you can be all weird and look at the ground again.’

       ‘But I do not like eyeballs,’ Ruth said.

       ‘Don’t look at their eyes then. Jeez, Ruth, help a guy out here! Cheat. Look in that general direction. It will be grand,’ Mark said.

       ‘I can do that. I will try it,’ Ruth said.

       And try it she did. It went spectacularly wrong. When Mary Lawlor asked her for help with page 190 of their maths homework, it was the perfect opportunity to try out her new skill. People often asked her for help at maths and she was happy to do so. She liked solving problems. Ruth looked up at Mary, who was a few inches taller than she. She lowered her gaze to avoid eye contact and hoped for the best.

       ‘You big fat lesbian!’ Mary Lawlor screamed. ‘Did you see that? Ruth Wilde is looking at my breasts!’ She covered her chest with her arms, delighted to see that she held the class’s attention.

       Ruth did not know what a lesbian was. She suspected it was not said as a compliment.

       Mark was not happy when they walked home together after school. ‘How on earth did you manage to make them all think you were a lesbian in the space of only a few hours? I can’t leave you on your own at all, can I?’

       ‘What’s a lesbian?’ Ruth asked.

       ‘Ask Mam,’ Mark replied, making a face.

       So when she walked into their kitchen, she asked Marian, ‘Mary Lawlor said I was a lesbian. Am I a lesbian?’

       Marian’s face told Ruth that she’d done something wrong again. ‘In the name of all that’s good in this world, what is wrong with you, child? Are you trying to kill me? That’s all I need on top of everything else.’ Then Marian sighed again.

       And that was why Mark bought Ruth a pair of sunglasses. That was the thing about her brother. He spent most of their childhood ignoring her or making fun of her. But every now and then he surprised her with a random act of kindness.

      Twenty minutes later, armed with a small bagful of groceries, she made her way to the kitchen for the first time. She crossed her fingers that it would be empty. Her hopes disappeared when muffled sounds of fellow residents creeped out into the corridor as she approached. She braced herself for interactions and hoped that the people in the room were friendly. She reminded herself that she was actually a good communicator. She could enjoy a conversation for an hour or two at a time. Unless it was boring, of course.

      A sign on the door stated:

      Please avoid prime times in the kitchen:

      8–9 a.m., 1–2 p.m. and 5–7 p.m.

      As it was now four o’clock she hoped that meant it was a good time to make their dinner. A man and a young boy were sitting down at the kitchen table, tucking into fish and chips. A woman stood at the hob literally watching water boil in a pan. Then another woman stepped out from behind the door and said, ‘Don’t get any ideas about skipping the queue. I’ve been waiting nearly ten minutes already.’

      Ruth shook her head quickly and took two steps away, until her back hit the wall.

      ‘Leave her alone. She’s the new one I was telling you about,’ the man said. ‘I saw you arriving earlier. I’m Kian. This handsome young fella with me is Cormac, my heir apparent.’

      Ruth nodded in his direction. She did not recollect seeing him in the lobby earlier. She was pretty certain it was empty. She would learn that Kian was like a silent ninja. A pro at hiding in places he was not meant to be.

      Kian continued, ‘One fridge, one cooker, one microwave, ten families and five hundred bleeding rules about how you can use them all. Welcome to the kitchen.’

      This made the woman beside Ruth laugh, but hob woman replied in a tone that was decidedly frosty, ‘Rules that some in this establishment don’t seem capable of following. I’m Ava, in room 124. That’s Aisling hovering to your right.’

       Say hello, remember to say hello.

      Kian saved her by continuing his rant. ‘Bleeding bureaucratic bullshit. There’s more rules on the lists in The Silver Sands Lodge than in a bleeding jail. What gets my blood boiling is that they don’t make sense at all. I mean, take a look at the notice on the door. The so-called rush hours to be avoided create rush hours in the quiet times. Do you get me?’

      His little boy, who looked no more than eight or nine, started to laugh, delighted with his dad’s rant.

      ‘Ignore our resident ray of sunshine,’ Ava said. She threw a look of disdain in his direction. He happily threw an equally disdainful one back at her, then scoffed the last of his chips.

      ‘They need to add a new rule to the laminate. No stealing food. That way I wouldn’t have