THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS

Louise smiled tightly. ‘I guess you’re, right. I just want to do what’s right, you know. What’s best for Oli.’

‘Well by the looks of it you’re doing a grand job, Louise,’ said Andy kindly and Louise visibly relaxed.

‘Do you think so?’

‘You’re giving him the best start in life,’ said Sian, seeing suddenly how much her sister needed reassurance. ‘Not many people have the luxury of being a full-time mum, especially single ones.’ Sian’s gaze was drawn momentarily to Gemma who was standing on the far side of the garden with a plate in one hand and a fork in the other, talking to her eldest child. She’d gone back to work as a legal secretary soon after her marriage broke up and her son was only four – a tough decision, Joanne had told her at the time, motivated by necessity rather than choice.

Louise cleared her throat, drawing Sian’s attention, and let out a long heartfelt sigh. ‘That might have to change,’ she said flatly, toying with a lock of fair hair by her left ear, the way she used to as a child when she was bothered by something.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I’m going to have to return to work sooner than I’d planned.’

‘But I thought you said you wouldn’t go back to work until Oli went to school.’

Louise looked at the ground and bit her lip. ‘That was the plan, but I’m not sure I can afford to now. I put cash away for the first three years and the plan after that was to cash in shares. But they’ve fallen so much, I’m not sure that’s a sensible thing to do right now. I’d be better off waiting until they recover some of their value, otherwise I’ll be eating into Oli’s university fund. I still have to sell the Edinburgh flat and buy a place here and that’ll involve legal fees and stamp duty.’ She shook her head resignedly. ‘I can’t see any way round it. I think I’m going to have to go out to work and full-time at that.’

Sian, surprised by this news, was momentarily at a loss for words. Louise had prepared so carefully for Oli’s birth and childhood, both practically and financially. Being at home for him, in his early years at least, had been one of the cornerstones of her dream. It was disconcerting to hear that these plans had gone awry. Sian glanced across the garden at Oli, now sitting on the grass making daisy chains under the guidance of Abbey. He would have to go into full-time childcare of some sort – a very different proposition from the one morning a week he’d done in Edinburgh and the very last thing Louise had wanted for her son.

‘Would you be looking for something in your old line of work?’ said Andy, breaking the silence.

Louise’s last job – before she’d resigned six weeks before Oli was born – had been as Tourism Marketing Director for Historic Scotland with responsibility for Edinburgh Castle, the city’s most visited tourist attraction.

Louise scratched her head. ‘Ideally, but realistically, I might have to cast my net a bit wider. There aren’t many senior jobs in tourism marketing in Northern Ireland and with this recession I doubt if there’ll be much recruiting in the field at the moment.’

Sian, suddenly inspired, said sharply, ‘Aren’t they looking for a Tourism Marketing Manager out at Loughanlea, Andy?’

‘Yeah,’ said Andy vaguely, rubbing his chin, ‘it was mentioned at the meeting last week. I got the impression they wanted the vacancy filled by the autumn. It’s going to be a world class venue, so I imagine they’ll be looking for someone with your level of experience, Louise.’

Louise put a hand to her breast. ‘It sounds too good to be true – a marketing job like that right on my doorstep.’

Sian nodded. ‘It sounds as though it might be perfect for you, Louise. You should give it some serious thought.’

Louise nodded. ‘I’ll do that.’

‘I wonder where Joanne’s got to with that beer,’ said Andy, craning his neck to peer into the lounge. ‘She’s been gone ages and I’m gasping.’

‘I’ll go and look,’ said Sian.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Louise and they started off in the direction of the kitchen door. Just as they got there the sound of raised voices, a man’s and a woman’s, drifted into the garden through the open kitchen window. Sian held her breath and stared at Louise.

‘Does that,’ she said, pulling a face, ‘mean that Phil’s home?’

The two sisters stepped quietly into the kitchen and closed the back door. Joanne, standing behind the breakfast bar, barely glanced at them. It was strewn with dirty plates, scrunched-up napkins and used cutlery. Her chest, under folded arms, felt tight and her breath was shallow. Her cheeks burned hot. She stared at Phil, sprawled in a chair in front of the crumbled remains of the chocolate welcome home cake she’d baked, and she blinked to hold back the tears of frustration.

‘Okay, so you couldn’t be arsed coming home in time to help me. Nothing new in that. You’d think I would be used to that by now, wouldn’t you? But to turn up now – when the party’s almost over. And drunk.’ Her voice rose against her will to a high-pitched shriek. ‘That’s … that’s … unforgivable,’ she hissed, finishing the sentence. ‘You always put yourself before everyone else. You don’t give a shit about anyone but Phil Montgomery, do you?’

Phil closed his eyes and raised his face to the ceiling, an infuriating smirk fixed in place. He was incredibly handsome – dark-haired, brown eyes framed by long black lashes, a strong square jaw and tanned muscular frame under his golfing polo shirt and pale pink sleeveless sweater. Usually his physical presence was enough to mollify her, but today Joanne barely registered these physical details. She forgave him so often because her physical attraction to him was still, at times, overwhelming.

But today, something had changed. She felt sudden, cold clammy fear. She recognised something underneath his looks and what she saw, she did not like. She shivered suddenly and rubbed her upper arms roughly. Phil brought his cold gaze to bear on her, his eyes red-rimmed with drink, his stare arrogant.

‘Do you?’ shrieked Joanne.

‘Shush,’ said Louise, putting a finger to her lips. ‘People will hear. Can’t you … discuss this another time?’

‘I don’t care who hears,’ said Joanne, defiantly, not really meaning it. She covered up for Phil all the time. It was what she did.

Heidi, confined once more to the utility room, started scratching at the door and whimpering.

Sian said, ‘Mum and Dad’ll hear you if you don’t stop shouting. You don’t want to upset them, do you? You know how Mum’s been looking forward to this afternoon.’

Joanne let out a long slow breath. ‘No, of course not,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘But will you look at the state of him!’ she hissed pointing at her husband, the corners of her mouth turned down in disgust. She grabbed a used napkin and threw it at him – with no weight behind it, it fell pathetic ally short. Phil did not even notice.

‘Bla … de … bla … de … bla,’ he said, his face raised to the ceiling. He brought his head down suddenly and glared at Joanne. ‘It’s your frigging family, Joanne. Not mine. I told you I was playing golf today weeks ago and you still persisted in having people over. And then you go about like a martyr accusing me of being in the wrong.’

‘You didn’t have to stay for a meal at the clubhouse. You could’ve come home after the game.’ And then – because there was a grain of truth in what Phil said which frustrated her even more – Joanne burst into tears. Immediately her sisters ran over and stood on either side. Each placed a hand on her shoulder.

‘Phil,’ pleaded Sian, ‘can’t you just leave it?’

‘I can. She won’t,’ he growled.

‘Please, Phil,’ said Louise. ‘She’s upset.’

Joanne wiped away the tears, black with mascara, with the back of her hand. ‘I’m okay,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m used to this.’

‘Pah,’ spat out Phil. ‘Look at you. The three bloody degrees. Telling me what to do in my own home.’

‘But Phil—’ began Louise’s reasonable voice.

Joanne cut across her. ‘Don’t you talk to my sisters like that,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘I pay for this house, slave all hours to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. I’ll do whatever I bloody well like in my own home.’

‘That,’ said Joanne with a dramatic pause, ‘is exactly your problem.’

The back door burst open all of a sudden and Andy came in, his T-shirt spotted with dark splats of rain.

‘Not now, Andy,’ snapped Sian but he was pushed further into the room by a horde of giggling children, trailing muddy slicks across the clean kitchen floor.

‘Sorry,’ said Andy with a quick glance at the glum faces in the room and a shrug of his shoulders. ‘The rain’s really chucking it down, man. Hi, Phil.’

Phil nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Andy.’

‘Dad,’ cried Holly, running over to her father and throwing her arms around his neck. Maddy gave him a wary look and shot a searching glance at her mother. Abbey ran over to the table, grabbed a chocolate muffin and stuffed as much of it as she could into her mouth, moist crumbs falling to the floor. Oli followed suit. Nobody chided them.

Heidi, on hearing the commotion, started howling and Abbey cried, ‘Heidi’s locked in the utility room!’ She paused momentarily to put her hands on her hips. ‘Mum,’ she scolded, ‘did you lock Heidi in the utility room, again? She doesn’t like it, Mum. She gets scared.’

When Joanne did not reply Abbey ran over to the utility room door, opened it and the dog bounded into the room. She made straight for the table, put her front paws up on it and wolfed down a muffin, paper case and all. Then, before anyone could stop her, she grabbed another one in her long snout. ‘No, Heidi. Bad girl!’ cried the children in unison and the dog, duly chastised, shot out the back door like a black bullet with her tail between her legs and the muffin lodged firmly in her mouth.

‘Wow!’ said Oli and the children and Andy laughed.

‘That, Abbey,’ said Louise wryly, ‘is why I think your mum keeps Heidi in the utility room when there’s food about.’

Abbey shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly and said, ‘Heidi likes chocolate muffins.’

‘But they’re not very good for her, are they?’ said Louise.

‘Well, looks to me like this party’s well and truly over,’ said Phil, disentangling himself from Holly. He stood up, his tall, athletic frame wavering slightly as if in a breeze, and left the room.

Joanne turned her back to everyone and cleaned up her face as best she could by wiping under her eyes with a napkin. Then she busied herself at the cooker, scraping the remains of the chilli into a bowl. She did not want the girls to see she had been crying – she did not want them to know she and Phil had been fighting yet again. But who was she kidding? In a house with walls as thin as paper, of course the girls overheard every argument, every bitter word between them. What was all this fighting doing to them, her precious daughters? How could she get it to stop?

‘Right you lot,’ said Sian with spirit. ‘Out of the kitchen now. Or you’ll get a job to do. Who wants to help with the washing up?’

She held out a tea towel, eliciting a shriek of horror from the children and they ran, en masse, out of the room.

‘Okay,’ said Sian when the children were gone, their peals of laughter echoing down the hall, ‘I’ll stack the dishwasher.’

‘I’ll clear the table,’ said Louise quietly.

Andy got himself a beer from the fridge and, sensing the strained atmosphere, quietly disappeared.

When the door shut behind him, Joanne said, ‘I’m sorry about that. For what he said about you.’

‘It was nothing,’ said Sian. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it,’ said Louise.

Their readiness to dismiss Phil’s rudeness touched Joanne deeply. They did it, of course, not for him but for her.

The women worked without talking then, the silence broken only by the clank of dishes, the scraping of plates and the rattle of cutlery, while Joanne gradually pulled herself together.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said when she was composed once more. ‘I just wanted today to be perfect for you, Louise.’

‘You don’t need to apologise,’ said Louise, as she stretched a piece of cling film over the remains of the cake. ‘It was Phil’s fault. Getting pissed and talking to you like that.’

‘Maybe I provoked him,’ she said quietly.

‘What?’ cried Sian. She paused by the door of the dishwasher with a clutch of dirty cutlery in her fist. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Joanne. And stop apologising for him. You’re always doing that.’

Louise glanced sharply at Sian. How long had things between Joanne and Phil been this bad? What had been going on in her absence?

‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Joanne, who looked completely wrung out. ‘I was just as much at fault as he was. He’s right. He did say weeks ago that the date clashed with his tournament but I went ahead and organised the party anyway. I guess I wanted him to put me first for a change.’ She let out a hollow, sour laugh. ‘But that backfired, didn’t it?’

Tears came again and she put her hand over her face.

Louise, filled with sudden compassion, went over and put her arms around her sister. ‘I remember having fights like that with Cameron,’ she said and painful memories came flooding back. The fights had started when she, who had given so much in their marriage, asked for something back. ‘About different things, of course. But I know how awful it feels. I was so angry with him.’

Joanne looked up, her face tear-stained and said, ‘Bet Cameron never spoke to you like that.’

‘Oh, he did, believe me,’ said Louise, letting go of Joanne. ‘Towards the end when our marriage was on the rocks.’

She remembered his exact words and they cut her to the core still.

‘If you think having a baby is more important than our marriage, then just go, Louise. I’m sick to death listening to you banging on about it.’ He’d thrown a book across the room in frustration. ‘Is that the only bloody thing you care about, for God’s sake?’

But she’d said awful things too, things she shouldn’t have – they’d both been angry.

And now she felt awful that her welcome party had led to this row, yet Sian’s comment seemed to indicate that things had not been right between Joanne and Phil for some time.

‘Time I was off, Joanne,’ said a cheery female voice and they all looked up to find a grey head poking around the kitchen door. It was Aunt Philomena, their mother’s sister, whom Louise had not seen since before Oli was born. ‘Youse are awful busy in here,’ she observed. ‘Men left you to it, have they?’

‘Funny that,’ said Joanne, with forced jocularity. ‘When there’s work to be done in the kitchen, men disappear like snow off a dyke!’

‘Some things never change,’ said Aunt Philomena with a hearty chuckle. ‘Thanks for a lovely afternoon, Joanne. It was smashing. Louise,’ she said, ‘I never got to speak to you all afternoon. Come on, love. Walk me to the door.’

In the hall, her tipsy aunt, smelling of Baileys and Imperial Leather soap, pulled Louise to her ample breast – an embrace that required some contortion on Louise’s part given that Aunt Philomena, even in heels, was only five foot three. Oli came tottering up the hall, his face smeared with chocolate frosting, and Auntie P’s eye fell on him. She leant conspiratorially towards Louise and said, ‘Oh, love, I know you did the right thing not getting rid of the adorable wee thing. Your mum told me all about how the father let you down. But that’s men for you, isn’t it?’

And then she staggered out the front door leaving Louise utterly dumbfounded. She turned to find Joanne and Sian standing in the kitchen doorway. One look at their faces told her all she needed to know.

‘Wait. Wait just a minute.’ Louise unfolded her arms as realisation hit home. She raised her index finger in the air in a Eureka moment. ‘You two knew, didn’t you? You knew about this already?’

Sian straightened up. ‘What Aunt Philomena said … that’s pretty much what Mum and Dad told everyone. They said you’d been seeing this guy for a while, got pregnant and then he left you.’

‘We only found out afterwards,’ added Joanne quickly, looking at Sian.

‘And you didn’t think to correct these … these lies?’ demanded Louise. How could her sisters let her down like that? How could they not defend her and Oli?

Joanne shrugged. ‘At the time we didn’t think it mattered. You were in Edinburgh. Correcting the story would’ve embarrassed Mum and Dad—’

‘Embarrassed Mum and Dad!’ repeated Louise. ‘What about embarrassing me?’

Joanne wiped her brow with the back of her hand. With much of her make-up rubbed off, she looked pale and tired. ‘Look Louise, they didn’t mean any harm. And to be honest I kind of agree with them. A lot of people wouldn’t understand why you chose to be a single mum – or approve of the way you went about it. A lot of people would think it just plain wrong.’

Louise took a deep breath. ‘Let me get this straight. You think it’s better that people think Oli was an accident rather than a much-wanted, planned-for child? Not to mention the fact that this ludicrous story paints me as a naïve idiot who got herself knocked up and then dumped.’

Joanne blushed and looked at Sian who said quietly, ‘I guess Mum and Dad thought they were acting in Oli’s best interests, Louise. And yours. And anyway, what does it matter how he got here?’

‘The truth always matters,’ said Louise, choked with anger. Her disappointment in her sisters cut deep. Since she’d had Oli, Louise tended to categorise people into one of two camps – either they were on her side or they weren’t. She had always thought she could count on her sisters. Now she wasn’t so sure. ‘You don’t know how I agonised about telling Oli who he is and where he came from. How I worried about explaining it to him in ways he could understand. I made the decision from the outset to tell him the truth, no matter how difficult it was. And now I find out that you lot have been spreading all these lies. Lies I’m going to have to undo.’

‘We didn’t tell any lies,’ said Sian boldly.

‘You acquiesced. It amounts to the same thing.’

Her sisters glanced at each other again – but this time sheepishly. Louise waited for an apology but none was forthcoming.

‘You’ve let me down,’ she said, her bottom lip starting to tremble. ‘Both of you.’ She felt the tears prick her eyes and bit her lip, the pain a momentary distraction from her distress. It helped her to focus her mind – and retain her dignity.

‘I’m going to take Oli home now,’ she said, walking over to the table and unhooking her bag from the back of a chair where she’d hung it earlier. The strap got tangled and caught between the bars on the back. Viciously, she yanked it free.

When she turned to leave, Sian blocked her way but Joanne stopped her.

‘I think we all need to cool off – let her go.’

Louise found Oli in the playroom with Abbey and Holly, all three quietly watching a DVD of The Incredibles. He was lying on a beanbag, his eyelids fluttering like moth’s wings, with his thumb wedged in his mouth. Overcome with a sudden fierce love for her child, Louise knelt on the floor beside the beanbag and planted a gentle kiss on his smooth brow and on his round, red cheek, so soft and hot. He was as pure and innocent as an angel – her angel, her gift from God, sent from heaven. Oblivious to just how much he had been wanted and how much she loved him.

She thought of the conversation with her aunt and anger coursed through her veins once more at the thought of how her parents had denied his origins. And in their denial they had made Oli’s story a shameful one, something to be hushed up, avoided, condemned and criticised. Louise looked into the face of her child and determined not to let him be affected by such prejudice. Not her darling boy.

Chapter Four

A week later and Louise surveyed the table in front of her, littered with bank statements and an opened laptop displaying a spreadsheet. She ran her hand through hair she should’ve washed that morning and sighed. No matter which way she looked at the figures in front of her, it seemed she had no choice.

She glanced at Oli sitting too close to the TV on the cream carpet watching cartoons. Her gut tightened. She hated the fact that the decision to return to work was, for financial reasons, being forced on her. She began to prowl through the small neat flat, straightening the cushions on the sofa, picking Oli’s toys off the floor. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Looking after a pre-schooler single-handedly was hard enough without the pressure of having to earn a living. Before Oli, when she’d worked full-time she had only herself to take care of – and Cameron. But he looked after her too.

She sat down on the sofa, hugged the cushion to her chest and remembered how Cameron used to meet her after work and take her to dinner. Once, for no particular reason, he’d turned up with a bunch of forty red roses in his arms. He had been romantic and fun – they’d had great times together. She smiled and imagined him turning up on her doorstep now with flowers in his hands, like he did that day, grinning from ear to ear. She glanced at Oli and thought that if only Cameron could see him, he would love him as much as she did … But that was a fantasy, of course. And the life she’d lived before felt as though it had belonged to someone else entirely…

Oli had changed everything. Her circle of friends had changed. More and more she found herself socialising with other mothers, women she doubted she would have bothered with if it hadn’t been for the fact that they had children the same age. Amongst the people she regarded as her true friends, like Cindy and Max, whom she had known for the longest time, she had begun to feel boring, out-of-touch, uptight and out of date. They didn’t want to listen to stories of Oli’s latest accomplishment or how long he’d slept the night before. And she hated it when she caught herself indulging in obsessive mum-speak or spent the end of an evening glancing at her watch, worrying about getting home in time for the babysitter.

They listened politely, of course, too kind to tell her to shut up, but she could see the way their eyes glazed over while their minds drifted off. At the end of the day, she had realised, nobody was as interested in Oli as she was. Not even Max, despite his promises and good intentions. Because in the end he’d let her and Oli down, and she really wasn’t sure if she could ever forgive him.

But, Louise had told herself, the sacrifices would all be worth it in the end. She had prided herself on the fact that her child would never be shoved into a crèche or raised by strangers – bar the few hours a week in Edinburgh that she had felt essential for her sanity. And now, because of events beyond her control, that was precisely what she would have to do. Anxiety tightened around her neck like a noose.

She took a deep breath and told herself to keep things in perspective. Most mothers worked, single or not, and their children grew up into perfectly well-rounded, happy, successful adults. Look at Joanne’s family – the girls hadn’t suffered from their mother going out to work, albeit it was part-time and she was always there for them when they got home from school … A very different proposition, thought Louise with an anxious glance at Oli, from going out to work full-time. But, Louise reminded herself, being at home with Oli had been a luxury, an indulgence, a privilege. She had lived an inward-looking, self-contained life for the last three years – it was time to join the real world once again.

She googled Loughanlea and spent half an hour bringing herself up to date with the extraordinary project. The scale and scope of it was impressive, and the objective, visionary – it had taken over ten years of dreaming and planning to reach the stage it was at today. The old abandoned cement works – a fifteen-acre site of the most unprepossessing land imaginable on the fringes of Ballyfergus Lough – was in the process of being transformed into a major, ultra-green, recreational and leisure centre. The development would create four hundred permanent jobs – and hundreds more in the construction phase – and bring millions pouring into the local economy. Northern Ireland had never seen anything quite like it. Something in the pioneering spirit behind the project, the idea that someone had dreamt this and then made it a reality, moved Louise. And made her want to be part of it.