Summer Soap: She lost her home and job — now Eve was on street (Episode 6)

TOMMY walked past Eve. He didn’t notice her either. She had pulled a hat low over her face and turned her back to the street.

He did think, as he was passing, about how tough it was for rough sleepers, but he was glad for them that at least it was a warm night.

******

The noise of water drops hitting plastic woke her. It was still dark. Eve saw the shape of a man standing over her. His body blocked the lights from the shop window opposite. She knew what it was. Something steaming off her. Reflexive nausea crept through her body and choked in her throat. His eyes were closed, and his body was swaying.

He hasn’t seen me. He mustn’t have seen me. Stay still. Don’t move.

Eve tried to make herself smaller, welded to the ground. The man finished, and she heard him zip up his fly.

“Scum. Go back to your own country,” he slurred.

“Come on, for f-sake, Kev, we’ll miss our spin.” 

A voice shouted from down the street at her assailant.

Please go please go please go...

Eve didn’t move.

It was too late to find anywhere else. The other spots would be taken, and, besides the smell, it hadn’t soaked through. She was glad she had kept the plastic on.

Usually she waited until after 3am to settle. The worst of the crowds would have left town and there was enough darkness that she could stay hidden until dawn.

She knew some people that preferred to stay up all night and then found a spot to sleep during the day. They told her it was safer that way.

Others started to queue for the homeless shelter, but she didn’t like it there. The last time she had gone, an older man had tried to corner her. She never went back. And she had a plan, and at least some small way of making money through her work with the Big Issue. She was trying to make a way into her life.

The Reaching Out volunteer knew where she slept by the colour of the woollen hood of her jumper, sticking over the sleeping bag. It was a good sleeping bag. Her Mam had bought it when they went wild camping in Kerry.

“Alright, Eve,” he whispered, “we don’t have much tonight. All our supplies emptied out fast. But I kept you a meal pack. I’ll leave it here.”

Eve sat up quickly.

“Thanks. Don’t leave it on the ground. I’ll take it.”

She watched him walk away to check on the other rough sleepers. If a man with limited resources could do so much good work, she wondered what would happen if caring people like him could be in charge.

The landlord had served notice when she couldn’t pay her rent, and he refused to accept a rent allowance payment after her mother died.

Eve was let go from her job for missing too many days, and that was it. The guards eventually came with him and evicted her. She had lied, said she was eighteen, and no-one checked.

She had hung around the town she was from in West Cork for a while, sleeping on friends’ couches, but eventually they asked her to move on. And she couldn’t find any work.

If she had an address, if she could sign on and get back into the system, and then she would have more options, but she didn’t have an address and she wasn’t a priority to get one either.

Eve thought of her work with the Big Issue. It allowed her to put some money aside. She hoped that the threatened storm would pass overnight.