THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS

She turned back to the sink and, when she looked a minute later, the child was gone. She hoped Abbey wasn’t going to be this difficult all summer long. Joanne enjoyed fantastic school holiday arrangements from her job at the pharmacy – her employers were exceptionally generous in permitting her to take eight weeks off and she was grateful. But, still, she missed the work and her colleagues. She would be ready to go back when the holidays were over. But not yet – the prospect of a day at the beach filled her with excitement.

Louise had taken some persuading – she was apparently still annoyed with Joanne for not correcting the stories their mother and father had circulated about her. But the fact that she had agreed to come in the end was a sign that she was prepared to forgive – albeit probably for Oli’s sake.

An hour and a half later, dressed in a knee-length denim skirt, lace-up red plimsolls and a blue and white striped T-shirt, Joanne herded everyone, including Heidi, into her silver Volkswagen Touran. Naturally an argument ensued between Holly and Abbey about who would get to sit in the third-row seat. This was a coveted position because the fold-down seats in the boot were rarely used and therefore somewhat of a novelty. Abbey, the loser, after the argument was settled with the toss of a coin, sat fuming in the middle seat of the second row, her arms folded across her chest and a look on her face that said she would happily throttle anyone who came within a foot of her. She ignored Oli, strapped in beside her, who seemed to be the only one as excited as Joanne. Poor Heidi was curled up uncomfortably on the floor of the middle row along with an assortment of beach bags, buckets and spades.

Louise sat beside Joanne in the passenger seat dressed in khaki knee-length shorts and a bright multi-coloured stripy T-shirt with large red buttons on the shoulder. Joanne knew it was from Boden – she’d seen it in the catalogue. She couldn’t afford to buy from there – her top came from George at Asda. Joanne gave her head a little shake, resolving to banish such destructive, jealous thoughts from her mind.

She reversed the car out of the drive singing the first few lines of ‘Summer Holiday’. She glanced in the rear-view mirror – Maddy grimaced and put her head in her hands. Joanne smiled and carried on singing even louder than before and after a while, her reserve cracking, so did Louise. No one, Joanne decided, was going to put a dampener on this day.

There were beaches close to Ballyfergus – the rather un attractively named Drains Bay and Ballygally to the north and, to the south, Brown’s Bay on Islandmagee. These were well-known to Joanne and Louise but today they were going farther afield – to Whitepark Bay, which lay between picturesque Ballintoy harbour and the tiny fishing village of Portbraddon on the north-east coast of Antrim. The drive took an hour and a half and it was almost lunchtime when they finally pulled into the car park. Outside the Youth Hostel, two female cyclists wearing full-face helmets fiddled with luggage on the back of their bikes. A couple of backpackers ate sandwiches at a picnic bench, huge rucksacks leaning against the end of the table.

Everyone tumbled out of the car, stretched and looked down at the swathe of golden sand below, great waves breaking white and frothy on the beach. Heidi barked at the sea then belted off down the long path towards the beach. Joanne perched her sunglasses on top of her head and squinted down at the breathtaking view, equalled perhaps, but not surpassed in the whole of Ireland.

‘Heidi! Heidi!’ called Louise frantically.

Joanne put her hands on her hips and smiled at the now-distant streak of black as the dog disappeared into the sand dunes. The sun was high in the sky, hot and fierce – the light north-easterly breeze a welcome, cool caress.

‘It’s okay, leave her be. She’ll not go far.’ Heidi was a terrible scavenger – all she seemed to think about was food – but not, thank goodness, a wanderer.

Even Abbey who had resolutely maintained a stubborn silence throughout most of the car journey, suddenly came to life, energised by the sight of the ocean.

‘I’m going swimming,’ she cried, her mood entirely shifted.

‘I forgot how beautiful it was,’ said Joanne. ‘And how empty.’ The wide sands, lapped by wave after wave of frothing sea, were virtually deserted. A few surfers in wetsuits, black and leggy like spiders, rode the waves. On the beach, a flock of grey-white sheep wandered from the dunes onto the sand.

‘Mum would love this,’ said Louise, conjuring up memories of happy days spent on this beach as a child.

‘I know, she used to love coming here,’ said Joanne, a little sadly. She pointed at the long flight of steep steps that led down to the strand. ‘But she couldn’t have managed those steps or stayed very long. We’ll take her to Portstewart next week. She’ll be able to manage the promenade there much better.’

‘Yes, that’d be nice,’ agreed Louise and then added doubtfully, ‘You know, I forgot how long the walk was from the car park.’ She cast a worried glance at Oli who was examining the small stones on the ground by the car.

Joanne laughed, took the sunglasses off her head and put them on her face. ‘He’ll be fine, Louise. A bit of a walk won’t hurt him. Didn’t we do it when we were his age?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, then,’ said Joanne, unwilling to let anything get in the way of her good mood. ‘Let’s go. If everyone takes a bag each, we should manage it all.’ She paused, aware that, despite congenial conversation in the car on the way up, things weren’t quite right between her and Louise. She lowered her voice so that Maddy, hovering only a few feet away, would not hear. ‘But before we do that, I wanted to say that I’m sorry about not speaking up about you and Oli. For not telling everyone the truth. I’m so glad you returned my call and agreed to come today.’

Louise shrugged. ‘It’s okay. Though I’m still cross with Mum and Dad.’

Joanne smiled gently. ‘Try not to be, Louise. Annoying though it is, they did do it out of love, for all the right reasons.’

Louise nodded and said tightly, ‘I know. They’ll never approve of what I did but I guess I just have to accept that.’

Joanne nodded thoughtfully and then she cocked her head to one side and gave Louise a broad smile. ‘Are we friends again?’

Louise’s face broke into a grin. ‘Of course we are, you daft brush,’ she said and gave Joanne a brief hug. She let her go and hauled the picnic hamper out of the boot. ‘We’d better get a move on before I die of hunger and one of these kids,’ she said, with a nod over her shoulder in the direction of Oli, Abbey and Holly, who were playing tig, ‘gets run over by a car!’

They made camp in a sheltered spot close to the dunes, the fine gold sand dotted with black sheep droppings. Largely untouched for thousands of years, and now protected by the National Trust, the bay teemed with wildlife. A blue butterfly skittered briefly around Joanne’s head and disappeared. The cry of Fulmars and other birds Joanne didn’t recognise filled the sky as they swooped and glided overhead. Small Ringed Plovers, with their distinctive black-and-white head markings, and the larger Oystercatchers with their bright orange-red bills, patrolled the shoreline. Oli shrieked with delight, clapped his hands at the birds and sent them skywards like a cloud of dust.

After their picnic, the children in wetsuits (Maddy excepted) played in the surf with Heidi, the birds scattering like confetti. Joanne hovered by the water’s edge warning them not to go in below waist level – the waters here could be treacherous. Oli wore an old wetsuit Abbey had outgrown, itself a hand-me-down from her older sisters, flashes of bright pink neoprene on the arms and legs. Later they built a dam to divert the course of one of the many trickling streams that traversed the dunes and journeyed to the sea and finally, with the afternoon sun casting long shadows on the beach and everyone happily tired, they climbed back up to the car park, Oli clinging to Louise’s back like a monkey.

On the way home they took the scenic road that cut across Ballypatrick Forest, dropped dramatically into Cushendall and hugged the coast all the way down to Ballyfergus. Oli and Heidi, both done in, fell asleep as soon as the car pulled out of the car park. Oli woke in time for fish and chips in Carnlough and they ate them and traditional dulse – dried, salty seaweed – on the limestone harbour wall. By the time they got back to Ballyfergus it was seven-thirty and everyone’s cheeks were flushed with the happy afterglow of a day spent in the sun.

Joanne dropped Louise and Oli off first and then drove the short distance home to Walnut Grove. She had disliked the street name from the start – why were new developments given such daft names? What had walnuts got to do with Ballyfergus? It sounded like a street from a soap on the telly. As soon as the car pulled into the driveway, Holly and Abbey ran off to play with the other girls in the street. Abbey really ought to be getting ready for bed but how could the child be expected to sleep when it was broad daylight outside? Heidi hopped out of the back of the car and sniffed happily in the borders, squatting by the pampas grass to relieve herself, before trotting round to the back of the house. Maddy got out of the car, earphones still plugged in, and stretched. In her right hand she clutched her mobile like a talisman.

‘Mum, can I go round to Charlotte’s just now? She texted to say she’s been shopping in Belfast and has some really fab new clothes to show me.’

‘Sure you can,’ said Joanne indulgently. ‘Just don’t be any later than ten-thirty, okay?’

The back door was locked and there was no sign of Phil. She resolved to put the past behind her and make an effort tonight – she would get tidied up quickly and perhaps they could open a bottle of wine and sit down and chat properly like they used to. Tired but happy, she staggered into the kitchen laden with bags, in the process almost tripping over Heidi who, despite a small fortune spent on dog-training classes, had never learnt to wait at a door until called in. Joanne dumped the bags in the kitchen and, in the hall, found the wooden floor littered with mail.

Joanne sighed, picked it up and was just about to throw the bundle on the hall table when something caught her eye. ‘LAST REMINDER’ screamed the block capitals in red on the front of a white, windowed business envelope. Her heart began to pound. She picked up the envelope, turned it over and examined the address on the back – it was from Phil’s credit card company, or rather one of them.

All the energy drained out of her at once, the warm, happy glow of the day put out like a fire in a downpour. She sank down on the bottom stair, feeling like a puppet whose master has just let go of the strings. She set the envelope on her knees and wiped the sweaty palms of her hands on her thighs.

The envelope was addressed to Phil. She had no right to open it. But hell, who was she kidding? She had been opening his mail for years. And she did so for very good reason. She saw this not as an invasion of his privacy but as a means of protection for herself, the kids and, ultimately, Phil himself. This was not the first such letter she had seen over the years – nor, she supposed, would it be the last. Overdue bills, parking tickets, even a court summons once for dangerous driving – she had seen them all.

But she knew that when a last reminder was issued, things were very far down the line indeed. Many warnings would’ve preceded this one. Phil had managed, somehow, to hide them from her. No wait, that wasn’t true. There had been a similar envelope a month or so back with something written on it in red, along the lines of ‘Urgent! This requires your immediate attention. This is not a circular!’

That day, Phil had been at home and snatched it out of her hand at the breakfast table. ‘That’s for me,’ he’d said, without glancing at the envelope, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

‘Phil, that’d better not be a red bill.’

Silence.

‘Is that a red bill?’

‘Just leave it, Joanne,’ he’d warned.

‘It’s not a parking ticket, is it? Not again.’

‘I said, will you leave it alone?’ And with that he grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and left the room.

She’d got up from the table and followed him up the hall. ‘Whatever that is, Phil, you’d better sort it out. Do you hear me?’

He shrugged his jacket on and opened the front door. ‘For the last time, Joanne.’ He paused, exasperated. ‘It’s my business. Not yours. I’ll take care of it.’

And really, she could say no more for it was true – it was his business. They had always kept separate credit cards and bank accounts. During the short period in her marriage when she was working full-time and before Maddy came along, the idea of keeping their money separate had appealed to her fledgling feminist instincts. Everything was paid for on a fifty-fifty split – furniture, the mortgage, insurance, holidays, food bills. At the time, it had given her a sense of independence. She had liked the idea that she contributed exactly the same as Phil and what was left over at the end of the month was hers. It had worked well enough while they were both earning roughly the same salary.