Читать книгу THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS - Erin Kaye - Страница 7

With Joanne’s help it didn’t take Louise long to organise the small, two-bedroom flat on Tower Road. Joanne had chosen well. On the first floor in a modern two-storey building, it was bright and functional with pale cream carpet and walls, a brand new blonde wood kitchen and a pristine white bathroom. The bay window in the small, narrow lounge overlooked a pleasant residential street and the flat was only a few minutes’ walk from the seafront. Once Joanne had helped her unpack Oli’s toys, and her own familiar belongings, it started to feel like home.

In Oli’s bedroom, after Joanne had gone, Louise wrestled with a Thomas the Tank duvet cover while Oli played happily with his rediscovered Brio train set.

‘It’s nice here, isn’t it? Do you like it?’ said Louise happily, shaking the cover like a sail in the wind. If everything else went as well as today, their new life would work out just fine.

He shrugged without looking up. ‘It’s okay. Look. Choo-choo. The train’s coming into the station.’ He pushed a red engine along a wooden track. ‘When can we go home?’

The smile fell from her lips. She sank down dejectedly on the tangle of bedcovers and sighed. ‘This is home, Oli. For the time being anyway.’

‘But I want my old room. And I want to see Elliott,’ he said, referring to his best friend at nursery. He stuck out his bottom lip.

‘Oh, darling,’ said Louise, momentarily stuck for the reassuring platitudes that usually sprung so readily to her lips.

He got up then and ran to her and buried his face in her lap. She smoothed the fine soft hairs at the nape of his neck, closed her eyes, and prayed to God that he would settle down.

A few days later, she visited her parents and found her mother in the kitchen drying dishes from the evening meal with a red and white checked tea towel. Mindful of the signs of stress she’d detected in Joanne, Louise was trying to do her bit to support her parents.

She heaved a canvas shopping bag onto the kitchen table. ‘I made a big stew last night,’ she said lifting three foil containers out of the bag and setting them on the table. ‘I thought some would be handy for you and Dad. It’ll do for when you don’t have time to cook.’

Of course this wasn’t true. Her mother had all the time in the world – she was just no longer capable of running a house and putting a square meal on the table every night.

‘Well, thanks, love,’ said her mother, graciously. ‘That is very kind of you.’

‘It’s no bother. I get Oli to help me. It passes the time.’

‘How’s he settling in?’

Louise sighed. ‘He’s been having bad dreams. He’s had me up nearly every night this week.’ She yawned. ‘It’s like having a baby again.’

‘It must be terribly unsettling for him.’

Louise nodded. ‘I’ve tried my best to explain what it means to move house, but I’m not sure how much he understands. He keeps asking me when he can see his friends. I feel awful.’

‘Never mind, love,’ said her mother, with an encouraging smile. ‘He’ll soon make new friends.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Louise hopefully.

Her mother examined the packages on the table and shook her head. ‘I don’t know where you get the time.’

Louise smiled in acknowledgement. ‘Well, I’m not working and I only have Oli to look after. Not like Joanne.’

She watched her mother dry the bottom of a china dinner plate, then the top. She was so painfully slow. Louise resisted the urge to intervene, placing the portions of stew in the freezer instead. ‘Do you think Joanne’s all right?’ she said casually, closing the freezer door.

‘What do you mean? Like not well?’ Her mother set the plate on the counter and picked up another one.

‘No, she just seems a bit stressed to me.’

Her mother rubbed the tea towel on the surface of the wet plate in a languid circular motion. ‘She probably is. Those girls can be a bit of a handful. And Phil’s not around much to help.’

Louise paused, considering the wisdom of sharing any more of her concerns with her mother. She looked at her gnarled hands, decided against it and said instead, ‘I suppose it’s hard when there’s three of them.’

‘What?’ asked her mother distractedly, stacking the plates.

‘It’s so much easier with just one child.’

‘Easier, maybe,’ her mother replied and left the sentence unfinished – like an old plaster partially hanging off a wound.

‘Go on.’

Her mother sighed, shuffled over to a chair, sat down and regarded Louise thoughtfully. ‘It might be easier for you. But it might not be best for Oli. It’s not healthy him being with just you all the time.’

‘He’s not with me all the time,’ said Louise evenly. ‘He sees other people – adults and kids – regularly. And that’s one of the reasons I moved back, isn’t it? So he could be closer to his family and cousins and grow up knowing them.’

Her mother shrugged her shoulders and Louise found herself compelled to pursue this topic, realising as she spoke that it was essential to her that her mother endorse her lifestyle.

‘Oli has a very happy life, Mum. He wants for nothing.’

‘Except a father.’

Louise bit her lip, anger bubbling up like boiling fudge in a pan. ‘There’s nothing like stating the obvious, is there?’ she said. ‘Why do you have to focus on the one thing he doesn’t have instead of all the things he does? Like a mother who adores him and gave up her job to look after him?’

‘I know just how much you love him, Louise,’ her mother acknowledged, her voice softening. ‘It’s just, well … you know.’

The unsaid words hung between them, fuelling Louise’s anger. A father was the one thing she could not give her son. The only thing. The single, glaring flaw in the almost-perfect life she had so carefully carved out of the wreckage of her marriage. And she tried not to be bitter about the past. She ought to be applauded for what she had done, not derided.

Louise’s chest was so tight, she could hardly breathe. She fought against it for a few moments and managed to say, ‘It’s not how I would have wanted it either, Mum. Not in an ideal world. You know that. But do you have to go rubbing salt into the wound? What I need is support – not people, not my own mother, criticising me.’

Her mother let out a long weary sigh. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘You didn’t mean to upset me?’ cried Louise. ‘That’s a good one.’

Her mother glared at her then, her eyes flinty and full of rare anger. ‘You can’t expect your father and I to approve of something that goes against our values. And people won’t understand.’

‘So that’s what this is about, is it? What other people think? Do you care more about that than your own daughter’s happiness?’

‘No,’ said her mother with a steely gaze. ‘You might not care what people think, Louise. But you ought to. For Oli’s sake. If I was you I wouldn’t go round blabbing your story to people. I’m not sure Ballyfergus is ready to hear it. You don’t want Oli singled out for being different.’

‘He’s no different than any other child from a single-parent family.’

‘Most people don’t set out to be a single parent, Louise.’

Louise took several deep breaths and fought to retain her composure. ‘I know you don’t approve but get over it,’ she hissed. ‘Oli’s here now. Why can’t you just get on with the business of grandmothering him and stop finding fault with us both?’

‘I’d never find fault with Oli,’ said her mother quickly. ‘He’s perfect.’

So the fault lay with Louise, did it? Louise blinked, tried to ignore the tightness in her throat and hold the tears at bay. Why did her mother have to be so judgemental? Why couldn’t she give Louise the unqualified, wholehearted support that she so desperately craved?

Her father padded into the kitchen just then, breaking the tension. He rubbed his hands together briskly. Whiskey had lent his eyes a rheumy quality. ‘Anyone for a wee drink?’

Louise shook her head. ‘Not for me.’ Since she’d had Oli she rarely drank alcohol – and she’d no stomach for it today, not after that horrible, hurtful exchange with her mother.

‘You’ve had quite enough already, Billy,’ said her mother sharply. ‘Why don’t you make us all a cup of tea instead?’ She folded the tea towel and draped it over the radiator to dry.

Her father gave Louise a mournful look and she forced the corners of her mouth up in a smile. He filled the kettle noisily.

Louise glanced at the clock on the wall and said, ‘It’s time I took Oli home. He needs an early night.’

Her father switched the kettle on. ‘Sit down and have a cup of tea. A few more minutes of TV won’t do him any harm.’

Louise whipped her head around and said sharply, ‘What’s he watching at this time of night?’

‘Oh relax, Louise,’ said her father, taking mugs out of the cupboard. ‘It’s one of those children’s channels. It’ll not do him a bit of harm.’

‘I don’t like him watching TV this late. Not just before bedtime. It over-stimulates his brain.’

Her father rolled his eyes. ‘You fuss too much, Louise. Let the child be.’

‘I think I know what’s best for my own son,’ said Louise, tears pricking the back of her eyes. ‘I am his mother after all.’ And with that, she huffed into the TV room, grabbed Oli and stormed out of the house.

‘That smells fantastic. What is it?’ Gemma Mooney lifted the lid on a pot bubbling away on the stove in Joanne’s kitchen on Walnut Grove. She bent her long elegant neck over the pot and peered inside, her chunky metal bracelet clanging against the lid.

‘Black Bean Chilli,’ said Joanne, smiling with satisfaction. She was no match in the looks department for Gemma – with her long legs, angular athletic frame and those bright cat-green eyes – but at least Joanne could cook. While she often joked about Gemma’s domestic incompetency, it made Joanne feel secretly superior to her friend.

‘Hey, Gemma,’ she grinned. ‘What’s in your fridge?’

Gemma shook her head of thick black curls. Not many women could wear their hair as short as she did and get away with it. ‘Oh you know me. A lemon, a few mouldy spuds, some ice and a bottle of wine.’

Joanne laughed and wiped her hands on the front of her apron, acutely aware of her insubstantial, scrawny frame. She loved Gemma to bits but she always felt a little in adequate, a little child-like, in her presence. Still, today she’d made the best of what she had with high heels for extra height, a full skirt to fill out the hips she didn’t possess, and a knitted cardigan to create the illusion of a chest.

‘What about the kids? What do you feed them?’

‘Oh, they’re used to fending for themselves. Roz can rustle up a pretty mean pasta and tomato sauce.’ Gemma replaced the lid on the pot. ‘This’ll be delicious,’ she said and gave Joanne a brief squeeze across the shoulders. ‘Everything you make is. You’re such a good cook. Not like me – I’m hopeless.’

‘You could cook, if you tried,’ said Joanne but she couldn’t resist a satisfied sigh as she looked around the kitchen. The table was laid with plates and dishes of food covered in cling film and cutlery rolled up in napkins. Heidi, the family’s black, two-year-old Flat Coated Retriever, lay on her bed in the corner, watching them with soulful dark amber eyes, her ears flattened against her smooth bullet-shaped head.

Everything, from the home-made vol-au-vents to the fresh strawberry tart, looked good. So why did Joanne still have a niggling sense of dissatisfaction at the back of her mind? Heidi lifted her head and let out a long low heartfelt whine, a protest at being surrounded by food yet not allowed to touch any of it. Roughly, she grabbed the dog’s collar.

‘Here, you’d better go in the utility room or you’ll eat everything like you did last Friday. Did I tell you about that, Gemma? She ate an entire cream cake I’d bought for the kids as a special treat.’

‘Yeah, you told me.’

The dog’s claws scraped the floor as she was dragged away and she whined pathetically as the utility room door shut on her. Turning, Joanne caught a flicker of something in her best friend’s eyes. She felt ashamed for taking out her feelings on the dog. What was wrong with her?

‘Oh, we’ll save the leftovers for her,’ she said brightly.

‘Of course,’ said Gemma smoothly.

Joanne peered wistfully out the patio doors at a dull grey sky. ‘Do you think it’s going to rain? At least the garden’s looking good.’

She’d made the most of the tight space, and the borders, still wet from the last shower, were brimming with summer flowers – pink and white foxgloves, frothy white gypsophila and pale purple lavender.

‘Great in the kitchen – green fingers too. Your husband’s spoiled,’ Gemma said lightly and Joanne’s chest swelled with pride.

She blushed and said, ‘Have I invited too many people? I’d kind of banked on good weather and now, if it rains, everyone’ll have to squeeze inside.’

The house was detached and had four bedrooms but everything about it was compact, a fact that constantly irked, like an itchy label on the back of a sweater. Considering she and Phil both had professional jobs, they really ought to be living in a bigger, better house. But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon – not with Phil squandering every spare penny … no, she mustn’t go there, not today, not at Louise’s homecoming party.

‘It’ll be fine,’ said Gemma airily, ‘And I’m sure Louise’ll appreciate it.’ She leant against the counter, her skinny black jeans and black boat-necked jersey top emphasising her sexy contours. Joanne, in her pretty, flared skirt and delicate high heels felt suddenly in danger of appearing frumpy in comparison. And once again, she found herself wondering why Gemma was still alone. Surely there must be a man out there for her?

‘Do you think I’ve put on weight?’ said Gemma suddenly, sucking her already flat belly in so that it was concave.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Joanne loyally. ‘You look fantastic. Like you always do.’

Roz, Gemma’s daughter, popped her head through the kitchen door. ‘Can me and Maddy go down the shop for some magazines?’ It was Roz and Maddy who’d brought Gemma and Joanne together. They’d met at a mother and baby coffee morning when the girls were little.

Gemma looked at Joanne and shrugged her smooth right shoulder indifferently.

‘Why not?’ said Joanne as Maddy followed Roz into the room.

Gemma reached for her purse, found a fiver and handed it to her daughter. Joanne did the same with Maddy adding, as she handed over the money, ‘Just don’t be too long. Everyone’ll be arriving soon.’

The girls, over-made-up and dressed like twins in leggings, ankle boots and baggy tops with a slightly disconcerting eighties look about them, had only just left the room when Abbey came running in, dressed in clothes of her own choosing – red leggings which bagged at the knees and clashed with her orange T-shirt. Her straight, fine hair was carelessly pinned to one side with a diamante barrette with half the stones missing.

‘I want to go to the shop too,’ announced Abbey breathlessly.

Joanne smiled patiently. ‘You can’t, darling. You’re too young.’

‘I’m not too young to go with Maddy and Roz! They can take me, can’t they, Mum? Can’t they, Auntie Gemma?’ she pleaded, the hope in her voice slipping into desperation as the two women exchanged glances. ‘Make them take me, Mum!’

‘No, Abbey. I’m sorry, the answer’s no.’ Joanne paused and then added brightly, ‘Anyway, I need a big girl to help me.’

Abbey folded her arms across her chest defiantly and Joanne pressed on, ‘See all these crisps and nibbles. Can you put them in these bowls for me, please? The rest of our guests will be arriving soon.’

‘That’s not fair. I have to do all the work and they get to go to the shop.’ Abbey glowered. ‘I bet you a million pounds they’re buying sweets.’

‘They are not buying sweets, I can assure you,’ said Joanne, losing patience. She moved towards Abbey, wafting a tea towel at her like a Spanish bullfighter. ‘If you’re not going to help, you can get out of my kitchen. Go on, out!’

‘I’m not helping you ever again,’ shouted Abbey and she ran out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Both women burst out laughing.

‘Why is Abbey so much work? If only I had a boy, like you, instead of all girls,’ said Joanne. In addition to Roz, Gemma had a twelve-year-old son, Jack.

Gemma raised her eyebrows. ‘Jack has his moments too, you know. But any problems and I just call his dad.’ She sighed. ‘Having said that, Abbey’s the feistiest little girl I’ve ever met. Do you remember that year on holiday in Spain when she was only four and we lost her at the pool?’

‘I’ll never forget it,’ said Joanne, recalling the feeling of heart-stopping panic.

‘And we found her a full twenty minutes later, sitting at the bar drinking orange juice, chatting away to the barman with her handbag on the seat beside her!’

Joanne shook her head, laughing at the memory of her fearless daughter though, at the time, it hadn’t been at all funny.

‘Oh my goodness. Would you look at the time? Gemma, love, you wouldn’t do me a favour would you and put out the nibbles? And I wonder what’s keeping Phil?’ Joanne added. ‘He knows everyone’s due at five.’ She slid on a pair of oven gloves, opened the oven door and waved away a bellow of steam.

Gemma sauntered slowly over to the island unit, ripped open a packet of crisps and ate one.

Peering inside the oven, Joanne said, ‘The chicken’s just about done. I’d better turn it off.’

‘Wasn’t he playing golf today?’ said Gemma, tipping crisps into a ceramic bowl.

Joanne turned the gas off under the chilli. ‘Yes, but he promised me he’d come straight home to give me a hand.’ She stood up and made a sweeping gesture with her left hand around the kitchen. ‘And of course everything’s done and there’s no sign of him. Typical.’

‘He must’ve got held up,’ said Gemma reassuringly. ‘Have you tried calling him on his mobile?’

‘I did. It just tripped to voicemail.’ Joanne took off the oven gloves and placed them on top of the cooker. She shook her head. ‘Sometimes I wonder, Gemma,’ she said and paused.

‘Wonder what?’

‘If life wouldn’t be easier on my own.’

Gemma looked at her sharply. ‘Do you mean that?’

Joanne reddened, her bluff called. ‘No, of course not. That was a stupid thing to say, wasn’t it?’

Gemma said sadly, ‘There’s nothing easy about raising a family on your own.’

‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, Gemma,’ said Joanne. ‘That was thoughtless of me.’

‘I tell you, what I longed for most after Jimmy left was another adult just being there so that I wasn’t responsible for absolutely everything. I couldn’t even go out for an evening walk around the block without getting a babysitter.’ Gemma paused and looked out the window, then added quite brightly, tipping salt and vinegar crisps into a bowl, ‘Those days are behind me now, of course. They’re both pretty independent and Roz is old enough to mind Jack for a few hours.’

‘And they stay with their dad every Tuesday night and every other weekend,’ Joanne reminded her friend. ‘You know sometimes I envy you those times – when you’ve no children or husband to worry about. When you can do things that you want to do and you don’t have to be accountable to anybody else.’

Gemma gave Joanne a puzzled look and scrunched an empty crisp bag up in her hand. ‘It can be lonely too though, Joanne. And it’s not through choice. I’d love to be happily married like you.’

‘And you will be,’ said Joanne positively. The idea that Gemma envied her sent a little thrill of pleasure through her. She lifted a ripe avocado out of the fruit bowl and pierced the rough, mottled skin with a sharp knife. ‘You just haven’t met the right man yet.’ She didn’t add that, even surrounded by her family, she sometimes felt lonely too. Phil usually played squash on Friday night and then went to the pub with his pals. He regularly disappeared off golfing at lunchtime on a Saturday and sometimes didn’t come home till midnight. She thought she’d married a home-loving man like her father – how wrong she had been …

Just then the mobile phone rang. Joanne wiped her hands quickly on a tea towel and answered it. It was Phil and he sounded drunk. The call was brief and contained no surprises. When it was over, Joanne set the phone down carefully on the counter, the feeling of disappointment as familiar as the simmering rage.

‘Well?’ said Gemma.

‘You know what?’ said Joanne, by way of reply. She did not wait for a response from Gemma. ‘I seem to spend my life being let down by Phil. He’s always promising the earth and never delivers.’

Gemma threw a clutch of crisp bags in the bin and licked the tips of her fingers. ‘Where is he?’

Joanne let out a puff of air and shook her head. ‘Right now he’s in the bar at the golf club. They’ve just ordered food even though he knows there’s food here. He says he’ll be home after that.’

‘Oh,’ said Gemma. She rubbed at an old paint spot on the limestone floor with the tip of her open-toed sandal.

Joanne cut around the middle of the avocado and twisted it to separate the two halves. She prised out the stone, which skittered across the counter. ‘Last week he promised Abbey he’d take her swimming on Sunday morning and he was too hung-over. He forgot about Maddy’s parents’ night at the school in spite of me reminding him three times and sending him a text.’ She paused, held the knife in the air and went on, ‘Two weeks ago we were supposed to be going round to the Dohertys’ for dinner and he came home pissed from the golf club at eight o’clock. You remember that? We had to call it off in the end. I had to pretend I had a migraine. And I really wanted to go.’

‘I know. You got that new dress out of Menary’s specially.’

Joanne viciously diced the avocado flesh and tossed it in a bowl. She lifted a lime from the fruit bowl and held it in the air between her index finger and thumb. ‘And the week before that I opened a red credit card bill he’d not bothered to pay. Do you want me to go on?’

Gemma bit her lip. ‘I get the picture.’

Joanne hacked a lime in two. ‘There’s always something. He’s just so … so irresponsible, Gemma. It’s like having a fourth child these days. No, it’s worse because I’ve absolutely no control over what he does. I never relax. I never know what disaster’s coming next.’

‘Well, you know what I think,’ said Gemma and she raised her eyebrows and gave Joanne a hard stare. She knew all about Phil’s gambling, his drinking, his extravagant spending, his unreliability.

Joanne set the knife down on the chopping board and sighed, her anger spent. ‘I know, I know. I should stop complaining and do something about it.’

‘It’s just that, honestly, Joanne, you should hear yourself,’ said Gemma, sounding a little exasperated. ‘I can’t remember the last time I heard you say a good word about Phil.’

‘That’s because there isn’t a good word to say.’ She held half a lime over the bowl and rammed a wooden reamer into the flesh. Juice squirted out, stinging a nick on the back of her hand.

‘You sound so cynical,’ said Gemma sadly.

Joanne threw the squeezed lime in the bin and rinsed her hands. ‘That’s because I am.’

‘Leave him then.’

Joanne looked out the window and sighed. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that to the children.’ She dried her hands and fixed her friend with a steady stare. Didn’t Gemma realise that she just wanted to let off steam, not be told what to do?

‘Well,’ said Gemma, looking away and speaking slowly, as if choosing her words very carefully. ‘There’s a lot worse things can happen to children than divorce. Living in an unhappy home can be just as damaging.’

‘You didn’t say that when Jimmy left. And I remember it, Gemma. I remember how awful it was for the kids. And for you.’

Gemma folded her arms. She tipped her chin upwards and said, ‘They got over it. We all did. And Jimmy and I get on okay now. I mean we’re civil to each other and we both put the children first.’

Aware she had touched a raw spot, Joanne rushed to bolster Gemma’s confidence. ‘I think you’ve done just great since the divorce, Gemma. I really admire you for how you’ve managed everything. The kids are happy and well-balanced. And I know how hard it was for you when he moved in with Sarah.’

Gemma suddenly smiled brightly. ‘No, it’s all right, really. It was a long time ago.’ She paused and then added, ‘Look, I was just playing devil’s advocate there. You don’t really want to leave Phil – or have him leave you – do you?’

Joanne stared at her open-mouthed. ‘Phil wouldn’t leave me. I—’ She felt her heart begin to race.

‘Oh, Joanne, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to panic you. It was just a “for instance” – I was just thinking of me and Jimmy.’

‘I – no, Phil won’t leave me. I keep the house nice, the food …’ She gestured helplessly. ‘I really don’t know what I’d do without him.’ Recovering her composure, she added, ‘Look, I’m sorry to bang on about Phil all the time, especially when I don’t take your advice.’

‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Joanne,’ said Gemma looking directly into her eyes. ‘It’s just that I care for you and I want you to be happy.’

Joanne smiled. ‘I know that, love. And I guess I just want someone to listen.’

‘That’s what friends are for.’

Joanne went over and gave Gemma a hug and said, simply, ‘Thanks.’ It fell far short of conveying the gratitude she felt towards Gemma for her friendship and support over the years.

Then the doorbell went and the two women separated.

Joanne straightened her skirt and clapped her hands together. ‘Right, party time!’