THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS. Erin Kaye

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ