Sometimes you find yourself caught in a human drama from which you can’t escape. So it was with my husband Sean on a recent train journey. I received a text from him saying that the phone conversation going on opposite him was “out of this world”.

From what was being said, Sean gathered that the young man sitting opposite him had just been released from prison and was on the phone to his pregnant girlfriend, who had a barring order against him. She was having none of his palaver and told him straight out that he was a loser.

This seemingly spurred him into promising to give up drugs if she would take him back, but she wasn’t backing down. Sensible girl, I hear you say. Then the young man threatened suicide. He told her he had two black eyes and had lost two front teeth following a fight in prison. Complete lies, according to Sean, who was looking straight at him and texting updates every few minutes.

The young man’s next ploy was to promise to come off heroin, saying he was down to 50ml methadone doses. He also promised to stop being sent to jail. He was still getting nowhere with the young woman. Then he began to get angry and accused her of putting her father up to giving him a beating. He was shouting at her by now, with the entire carriage forced to listen whether they wanted to or not. He then wanted to know if she’d ever cheated on him. He didn’t believe her when she said she hadn’t. It was no longer a conversation but a raging rant, and it continued in this vein all the way to the station.

The young man had nowhere to stay and didn’t appear to have any family support. He may have had a little money but nothing to keep him off the streets and drugs until he could get settled. Sean thought it was bad but also very sad. There was no one to meet the young man when he got off the train and Sean reckoned he’d be lucky if he wasn’t back in prison within six months.

It was a sobering journey that brought the situation of that young man, his ex-girlfriend and their unborn baby into the lives of complete strangers. You could only hope the young woman would stay strong and stay away from him for the sake of her own health and that of her baby.

Sean reckoned the young man was about 21 or 22, the same age as our youngest. God only knows what sort of rearing he had, how he ended up in this situation and what lies ahead of him.

You could blame his parents but sometimes it doesn’t matter how well a child is reared; they can still go wrong, causing huge pain to themselves and those around them. You could also blame the State. What options do we offer a young man in this situation? Is he in a vicious circle of no escape? Of course you can blame the young man himself. But think about it: no home, no training, no job, no family, no future. You’d need to be very strong to survive that.