LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      ‘I’m going to take Oli home now,’ she said, walking over to the table and unhooking her bag from the back of a chair where she’d hung it earlier. The strap got tangled and caught between the bars on the back. Viciously, she yanked it free.

      When she turned to leave, Sian blocked her way but Joanne stopped her.

      ‘I think we all need to cool off – let her go.’

      Louise found Oli in the playroom with Abbey and Holly, all three quietly watching a DVD of The Incredibles. He was lying on a beanbag, his eyelids fluttering like moth’s wings, with his thumb wedged in his mouth. Overcome with a sudden fierce love for her child, Louise knelt on the floor beside the beanbag and planted a gentle kiss on his smooth brow and on his round, red cheek, so soft and hot. He was as pure and innocent as an angel – her angel, her gift from God, sent from heaven. Oblivious to just how much he had been wanted and how much she loved him.

      She thought of the conversation with her aunt and anger coursed through her veins once more at the thought of how her parents had denied his origins. And in their denial they had made Oli’s story a shameful one, something to be hushed up, avoided, condemned and criticised. Louise looked into the face of her child and determined not to let him be affected by such prejudice. Not her darling boy.

      Chapter Four

      A week later and Louise surveyed the table in front of her, littered with bank statements and an opened laptop displaying a spreadsheet. She ran her hand through hair she should’ve washed that morning and sighed. No matter which way she looked at the figures in front of her, it seemed she had no choice.

      She glanced at Oli sitting too close to the TV on the cream carpet watching cartoons. Her gut tightened. She hated the fact that the decision to return to work was, for financial reasons, being forced on her. She began to prowl through the small neat flat, straightening the cushions on the sofa, picking Oli’s toys off the floor. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Looking after a pre-schooler single-handedly was hard enough without the pressure of having to earn a living. Before Oli, when she’d worked full-time she had only herself to take

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