Erin Kaye - THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS

‘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.