THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS. Copyright © Erin Kaye 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

Patricia Gibb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847562012

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780007340415

Version: 2018-06-26

To Mary Clare, my eldest sister

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

‘Nearly there, Oli!’ said Louise McNeill brightly to her three-year-old…

Chapter Two

With Joanne’s help it didn’t take Louise long to organise…

Chapter Three

Sian stood on the step at the back of Joanne’s…

Chapter Four

A week later and Louise surveyed the table in front…

Chapter Five

It was early, but the day was already hot and…

Chapter Six

Louise was looking forward to the night out with Joanne,…

Chapter Seven

Sian, who had been awake since dawn, stood looking out…

Chapter Eight

‘Bye, Oli. Mummy’s going to work now,’ said Louise, standing…

Chapter Nine

‘If you don’t hurry up, Holly, I’m going to be…

Chapter Ten

‘So how are things with you, Gemma?’ said Joanne. She…

Chapter Eleven

Andy lay sprawled lifelessly on the sofa, in a T-shirt…

Chapter Twelve

‘She says she doesn’t want to go out,’ said Sian’s…

Chapter Thirteen

Sian stood in the doorway to Louise’s small kitchen wearing…

Chapter Fourteen

On Sunday morning Joanne struggled into the kitchen with the…

Chapter Fifteen

The taxi dropped the girls off and Joanne ran out…

Chapter Sixteen

Sian stared out the shop window decorated with paper snowflakes…

Chapter Seventeen

‘The nurse tells me you’ll get out tomorrow,’ said Andy…

Chapter Eighteen

Sian stood barefoot on the beach at Ballygally, the cool…

Read on for an exclusive reading guide to Promise of Happiness

Reading Group Questions

Read on for an interview with Erin Kaye

In Conversation with Erin Kaye

About the Author

Other Books by Erin Kaye

About the Publisher

Chapter One

‘Nearly there, Oli!’ said Louise McNeill brightly to her three-year-old son, Oliver James.

Somewhere in the bowels of the ferry the engine growled and a shudder ran through the ship. Louise put her hand on her belly and her stomach lurched – though not with nausea. She’d spent her youth sailing on these waters – in the sheltered safety of Ballyfergus Lough or, sometimes, venturing out into the choppy waters of the Irish Sea – and not once had she been seasick. And she wasn’t pregnant. No, her nausea was caused by nerves. Louise took a deep breath, glanced at Oli and wondered – panicked suddenly – if she was doing the right thing by coming home.

Oli, restless, banged the fleshy pads of his palms against the sloping window, leaving smudges on it. ‘Now, now,’ said Louise, fretting that he might pick up germs from the glass. Instinctively, she reached out and caught one of his hands in her own. Oli’s olive skin tone came from his father’s side – it certainly hadn’t been inherited from the pale, Celtic-skinned and fair-haired McNeills. She touched a dimple on the back of his hand with her thumb – he was losing his baby fat rapidly, moving on to another stage of development.

Oli was a constant source of fascination to Louise – every new word was an achievement, every task accomplished a source of wonder. Each step along the long, slow road to independence seemed like a miracle. And it was a miracle – rather he was a miracle. Her baby. Hers alone. The child she had thought she would never have. Love and pride swelled in equal measure, threatening to choke her.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ said Oli, in the high-pitched monotone common among children of his age. Louise found listening to other people’s children grating, but never Oli. He let out a long sigh, having long ago lost interest in the view of the calm, glittering sea, pale blue sky and swooping gulls. Louise put her arm around his waist where he stood on the blue leatherette bench beside her. She pressed her face into the small of his back and inhaled, knowing that if they were ever separated she could recognise him by smell alone.

The boat swung slowly round on its axis and hot July sunshine flooded through the glass. She squinted as the land mass of East Antrim, and the town of Ballyfergus, came slowly into view.

The town was just as Louise had remembered it. The shoreline was dominated by the big working port with its hulking cranes and drab, pre-fabricated buildings. A docked P&O ferry discharged its cargo, an endless stream of lollipop-coloured container lorries, onto the shimmering black asphalt of the quay. Further inland, arcs of slate-roofed white houses, none more than two storeys high, inched up the hills like cake mixture on the side of a bowl. And beyond that the gentle rounded green hills.

‘Look,’ she said and pointed through the window. ‘That’s Ballyfergus. Where Nana and Papa live. That’s where we’re going to live too.’ The idea of this, of bringing Oli home to his grandparents, to be amongst his own, filled her with pleasure. And the feeling of doing something right by her child momentarily displaced the gnawing doubt that she had failed him.

‘Where? Where are we going to live?’ persisted the child. His dark brows came together in a frown and he glared mistrustfully at the lush green hills overlooking Ballyfergus Lough, oblivious, it seemed, to the breathtaking beauty surrounding them.

‘There,’ said Louise pointing at the town, which had served as a port and gateway to the rest of the province for over one thousand years. She remembered that Oli had last visited when he was two and would not recall the trip. ‘See those houses there. Not up on the hill. Down there.’ She pointed at the sprawling cluster of grey and brown buildings on the flat plain. ‘They look really tiny, don’t they?’

Oli nodded.

‘That’s because we’re so far away. We’re going to live in a house down there.’ She pointed roughly in the direction of the indoor swimming pool, a grey block of a building, which sat only metres from the shore.

‘With Nana and Papa?’

‘No, Oli,’ said Louise and he plopped down suddenly onto his bottom. ‘Just you and me. Like always,’ she added, careful to deliver this news in a neutral tone and eradicate any hint of disappointment or anxiety from her voice. She brushed his straight brown fringe, so different from her fine fair hair, off his forehead. He swatted her hand away absent-mindedly.

‘Why?’ said Oli.

‘Oh,’ said Louise, not expecting this question, not here, not now. ‘Well,’ she said carefully and took a deep breath. ‘Because your daddy doesn’t live with us, does he? He lives in Scotland. But of course it might not always be just the two of us. One day Mummy might meet a nice man and …’

Suddenly, Oli slid onto the floor and disappeared under the table. Mischievous brown eyes, the same colour as his father’s, stared up at her. ‘But why can’t we live with Nana and Papa?’

Louise put a hand over her heart and let out a silent sigh of relief. In her zeal to ensure Oli understood, she had yet again answered the question she thought Oli had asked, rather than the one he actually had. It was a fundamental pitfall she’d read about more than once in the library of parenting books that now lay in storage, boxed up in some Edinburgh warehouse.

‘Come on out of there, Oli,’ she said, pulling him gently out from under the table. ‘You don’t know what’s on that floor.’

Louise extracted a bottle of antibacterial gel from her bag. ‘We can’t live with Nana and Papa because they haven’t got enough room for us. Their house is very small.’

But Oli was now more interested in the gel than pursuing this topic of conversation. Louise held his hand by the wrist and squeezed a translucent green blob onto the centre of his palm. ‘This’ll kill all the nasty germs. Now, rub your hands together like this,’ she said, squirting some of the gel onto her own palm and rubbing her hands briskly together.

Oli held his hand inches from his face, stared at the gel and said, ‘It’s got bubbles in it, Mummy.’

‘Yes, I know, darling.’

‘Why?’

‘It just has.’

He extended his hand towards her face, his chubby fingers spread like the fat arms of the starfish that Cameron, her former husband, had once fished out of Tayvallich Bay on the west coast of Scotland. Together they’d knelt on the pebbly beach and wondered at its pale lilac beauty, heads bent together like children. Oli smeared a blob of gel, wet and surprisingly cold, on Louise’s nose. She blinked, surprised, and he let out a squeal of delight.

She laughed then, coming back to the moment, to her perfect boy, and he said, ‘I love you, Mummy.’

She swallowed, fought back the tears of joy. ‘I love you too, my sweet angel.’ She beamed at him and added, ‘Now, hurry up. It goes runny if you don’t do it quickly.’

‘Okay, Mummy.’ Oli slapped his hands together, sending splatters across the Formica table. He let out a cry and looked up at her, slightly shocked-looking, for reassurance.

Louise smiled. ‘That’s it. Now rub them together,’ she said and Oli complied.

She loved the unquestioning trust her son placed in her. She was the epicentre of his world, his everything. And he was hers – she craved his neediness and the fulfilment it gave her as a mother. And for the last three years – no, from the moment of his conception – he had been her obsession.

Her decision to relocate from Edinburgh to Ballyfergus had been taken entirely with Oli’s welfare at the forefront of her mind. Though it was also true that, after many years in Edinburgh, she now primarily associated the city with disappointment and heartache. She had been glad to leave. Her only regret was leaving her best friend, Cindy, behind. But this, she told herself bravely, was a new chapter for her and Oli, though coming back to the town of her birth induced an odd feeling. It was a fresh start but it also felt like she was returning to an old, familiar life. A life she had carelessly left behind as an eighteen-year-old without so much as a backwards glance.

A voice over the tannoy told them to return to their car and Louise gathered up their possessions – colouring books and crayons, books, snacks, a copy of Marie Claire magazine (an optimistic purchase from the shop on the ferry) and her mobile phone. She stuffed them into the stylish, capacious patent leather bag that had become her constant companion since Oli’s birth. Not that she cared much for fashion – not any more. She liked to look her best, of course, and she had not, like some other mums she knew, let herself ‘go’.

Louise descended the first lethal flight down to the car deck, gripping Oli’s hand like a vice. Twice he slipped on the steep metal steps and she hauled him back to his feet. Her left shoulder ached with the weight of the bag and her heartbeat accelerated, her brow beaded with sweat. Her stomach flipped with nerves and excitement. She squeezed Oli’s hand even tighter. He glanced up at her.

‘Watch where you’re going, pet!’ she said, as his foot slipped again and he almost landed on his bottom on the ribbed metal floor at the foot of the stairs. Doors led off from this landing to the top level car deck.

A portly middle-aged man, a member of the ship’s crew, stood on the landing dressed in a short-sleeved pale blue shirt and navy polyester trousers with a perma-press crease down the front of each leg. ‘Do you want a hand, love?’ he said, in the hard-edged, down-to-earth accent of North-East Antrim, and stepped forward with one hand outstretched. ‘If you carry the wee man, I’ll help with your bag.’

‘No, thanks. I’m fine,’ bristled Louise automatically. She missed no opportunity to demonstrate to the world in general that she could cope alone. ‘I can manage.’

The pleasant smile fell from the man’s face. He said nothing more, stepped back and adopted his guard-like stance once again, hands behind his back, and nodded in a tight-lipped manner to the person behind Louise. Realising how rude she had sounded, Louise ducked her head and proceeded quickly to the top of the next flight of stairs, her face flaming with embarrassment.

She told herself she was tired and emotional. The drive across Scotland to the port of Cairnryan had taken the best part of four hours, including a stop for lunch. And she’d not slept well the night before, her sleep disturbed by dreams of Cameron. In the dream she was following him in a storm along a narrow cliff pathway on the southern side of the Firth of Forth – a path they had once walked together in happier times. He wore a bright red jacket, his dark hair plastered to his scalp by the driving rain, his face dripping with water. It was high tide and she could hear the ferocious crash of waves on the treacherous rocks below. She stopped and called out to him that it was too dangerous, that they should turn back. And then, right at that moment, without any warning at all, the coastal path crumbled and Cameron plunged over the edge of the cliff, lost to her forever.

They had been divorced for three years – she had not seen him in as long. Why was she still haunted by dreams of him? Perhaps it was understandable – after living with someone for fifteen years you couldn’t expunge all the memories of your life together from your consciousness. And she didn’t want to. For some of the happiest times of her life had been spent with Cameron. She had given up so much in leaving him. It had taken such courage. And such bravery to build the independent life she now enjoyed.

Why was she thinking of him now, on this day? Annoyed with herself, she tossed her head, shaking off thoughts of him like raindrops, and brought her analysis to bear on the present.

‘There you go again,’ she mumbled under her breath as she and Oli picked their way carefully down the next flight of narrow metal steps into the gloomy bowels of the great ship, ‘pushing people away to prove your independence.’ She hadn’t always been like this – only since Oli. She wanted to run back up the steps and apologise to the man but it was too late. Instead she resolved to stop interpreting kindly offers of help as assaults on her independence.

‘Not long now, honey!’ she said, doing up Oli’s seatbelt. She jumped into the driver’s seat, clapped her hands together and rolled her shoulders in an attempt to ease some of the tension that had built up between her shoulder blades. She imagined her parents, and her older sister Joanne and her three children, all squeezed into the modest home on Churchill Road watching and waiting eagerly for their arrival. It was going to be all right, she told herself.

Once she’d negotiated the tricky ferry ramp, she set off along Coastguard Road, the old route into Ballyfergus, avoiding the harbour bypass. She passed landmarks as familiar as the back of her hands.

‘Look,’ she cried, slowing the car down to a crawl, and staring out the passenger window at a nineteen-sixties concrete block fronted by a big, unimaginative rectangle of dusty tarmac. ‘That’s where I went to school, Oli. That’s where you’ll go to school too when you’re a big boy.’ In the rear-view mirror she saw Oli straining for a better view, his eyes wide with curiosity.

A car behind tooted. She waved good-naturedly and accelerated away. ‘And look, there’s the fish and chip shop,’ she said, as they passed a cluster of small businesses on Upper Cross Street. But on closer inspection she saw that the fish and chip shop was gone, replaced by a plumbing suppliers. ‘Oh, it’s not there any more. But look, there’s the library. I used to go there every week with my mum, and we will too, Oli. Would you like that?’ She kept up this bright trail of chatter, seeking out familiar, reassuring places and noticing changes too, changes that reminded her how Ballyfergus had moved on.

Then, at last, she turned into Churchill Road, where children played in the blazing sun just as she had done as a child. Her hands began to tremble and the perspiration on the palms of her hands made it difficult to grasp the steering wheel. She pulled up outside her parents’ semi-detached house and took a deep breath to calm herself. She smiled to reassure Oli, who was looking at her with his thumb stuck in his mouth, then cut the engine. She stepped out of the car into the sunshine and a warm westerly breeze rolling off the Sallagh Braes, a ring of dramatic rounded cliffs overlooking Ballyfergus. Today the hills were framed by a cloudless cobalt sky, the brilliant shades of green softened by a heat haze rising from the black tarmac.

Louise tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and remembered the first time she’d brought Cameron home and they’d parked in the very same spot. He’d been driving then – he always did. He’d looked at the modest house and said, ‘Is this it then?’ and she’d felt herself blush, embarrassed for the first time by her humble origins.

Cameron had been to Watson’s, a private school in Edinburgh and studied English Literature at Edinburgh University. Although only a few years older than Louise he had lived in Paris for a year and spoke fluent French. He seemed so sophisticated and experienced. His worldliness contrasted with her sheltered, mundane upbringing. She realised she had so much to learn about everything and she was his willing pupil. The tone of their relationship was set from the outset. He was the leader, the decision maker – she was the follower, happily compliant. She allowed him to educate her, coach her, mould her. She had told him once that she would follow him to the ends of the earth and she’d meant it.

And here she was all these years later, back it seemed, to where she had started.

Joanne ran out of the house and Louise took a few steps towards her. They briefly embraced and cried, ‘Look at you!’ in unison.

Joanne gave an impression of girlishness despite her forty-five years with her tight-waisted, delicate frame and long wavy blonde locks. The illusion was further reinforced by a knee-length floral printed dress, flat ballerina pumps and a cropped cerise cotton cardigan.

Joanne’s olive-green eyes gleamed with emotion. ‘Welcome home!’ she cried and they hugged again. Louise put her hand on Joanne’s back and was surprised to feel a hard and bony frame under the thin layers of clothing. She realised now how much weight her sister had lost.

‘It’s good to be back,’ she choked, her eyes filling up.

And then the neat, small figure of their mother appeared at the doorway to the house, her hand raised feebly in greeting. And behind her was their dad, with his hand on their mother’s right shoulder. Quite unexpectedly, and uncharacteristically, Louise couldn’t control her tears.

Later, after they’d eaten a lasagne made by Joanne, and Oli was happily watching TV in the little room at the back of the house with his cousins, the women – Louise, Joanne and their mother – sat in the lounge, around the coffee table, chatting. Louise’s dad was in the kitchen with Frankie Cahoon, a neighbour from two doors down, drinking whiskey and talking about their days in the GEC factory. Louise looked down at the dainty china cup and saucer balanced precariously on her knee. It was her mother’s best china – a wedding present from her parents – adorned with delicate red roses and rimmed in gold leaf. If only her cosmopolitan friends could see her now, thought Louise, with a deliciously wry sense of humour.

‘What are you smiling at?’ said Christine McNeill, pale blue eyes, the colour of washed denim, staring at her daughter from behind steel-rimmed glasses. At seventy-three, she had lost none of her perceptiveness. Her gnarled hands rested on the arms of an upright Parker Knoll chair.

‘Oh, I was just thinking how the house hasn’t changed at all,’ said Louise, casting her gaze around the cluttered room. The big flowery paper pressed in on every side, so loud it almost screamed, and the nineteen-fifties walnut cabinet was stuffed to bursting with all manner of trinkets and old-fashioned ornaments.

Her mother followed her gaze and said, a little defensively, ‘Well, I like it. I don’t like all this modern design. Bare walls and hardly any furniture. I like a place to feel homely.’ Her nod was like a full stop at the end of a sentence. ‘Now, would you like some tea?’ Without waiting for an answer she leant forward and gripped the handle of the china teapot with her right hand.

‘Why don’t you let me—’ began Joanne.

‘Ouch!’ cried her mother and she let go of the pot immediately. It wobbled uncertainly for a few moments. A little spurt of brown liquid slopped onto the pristine tray cloth and spread like a bloodstain.

‘Did you burn yourself?’ cried Louise, already out of her seat and by her mother’s side.

‘It’s her arthritis,’ said Joanne flatly.

‘It’s all right,’ said Christine, and she held her hand protectively to her chest. ‘It’ll pass in a minute.’

Joanne sighed loudly. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. You know you can’t lift heavy things.’

Louise sat down again and Joanne poured the tea.

‘A teapot isn’t heavy,’ said Christine, glaring at the pot, her lips pressed together in a thin line.

‘It’s too heavy for you. You know that.’ Joanne sounded cross and harsh. She passed round the milk.

‘Joanne,’ said Louise warningly and glared at her sister.

‘What?’ Joanne’s eyes flashed defiantly. She set the milk jug down on the tray, avoiding eye contact.

‘Don’t …’ Louise lowered her voice. ‘Don’t talk to Mum like that.’

‘She’s only got herself to blame.’

‘What? For her arthritis?’

‘No, of course not. But she’s always doing things the doctor’s told her she mustn’t.’

Their mother blinked and said, as though she’d not heard this last exchange, ‘It’s so frustrating not being able to do all the things I used to take for granted.’ She looked at her hand, the thumb joint red and swollen, and suddenly Louise was struck by how much her mother had aged since she’d last seen her. Now that she looked more closely she noticed how grey her mother’s hair had become and how lined her face was. Sitting perched on the chair she seemed shrunken somehow, as though she was slowly disappearing.