Page 12 of The Happy Family

And Sadie.

‘Try to stay calm,’ the nurse tells me, seemingly sensing my anxiety about the impending scan that I will have as soon as the stitching is finished. ‘Everything is going to be okay.’

‘How do you know for sure?’ I ask in reply to that kind-hearted but baseless opinion.

‘If you work in hospitals for long enough, you get a sense for things,’ comes the rather strange reply, but I guess I have no choice but to take this nurse’s word for it. Hopefully, her sixth sense about the state of my unborn baby is correct and everything will be okay. If not and the scan brings bad news, I will make a point of finding her and telling her how useless her ‘senses’ were. But for now, I’ll stay quiet and wait for her to finish her delicate work. It doesn’t take long. Her hands move skilfully, stitching until my wound is sealed.

‘Just try not to move your arm too much and don’t raise it for a while,’ I am told, which sounds like common sense, though I won’t be thinking sensibly if my scan goes badly.

I just want to get it over with. I feel sick. But I need to know if Sadie has taken something important from me like I took something important from her.

‘How’s it going?’ comes the question from the man who has just poked his head around the curtain of my hospital bed. It’s Reid and he is smiling, doing his best to look positive in the circumstances, though I know he is as worried as I am.

‘We’re all done here,’ the nurse says with a satisfied smile. ‘The doctor will be here in a moment to make a quick check on you and then we’ll take you for your scan, okay?’

I nod my head. It sounds terrifying, but I can’t say no, I don’t want to go, can I?

The nurse leaves whilst Reid takes a seat beside me on the bed.

‘You’re doing really well,’ he tells me, taking one of my hands. ‘You just need to be brave for a little while longer and then we can take you home and you can get some rest.’

‘I don’t want to go home,’ I reply. ‘It’s not safe there.’

‘Sadie is here in the hospital, and the police are watching her. She’s not going to do anything now.’

‘Is there any update on her?’ I ask, hoping that she has passed away and Reid is trying to keep that shocking news from me. But he shakes his head.

‘We haven’t had any more updates,’ he replies. ‘She’s still being treated. That’s all we know.’

Still being treated means still alive.

Damn it.

‘How are the children?’ I ask, making sure not to forget about them in all of this, because I do care about Arthur and Ruby. But I still want that woman dead so that my secret dies with her.

‘Trying to be brave but it’s not easy for them,’ Reid admits. ‘Sadie’s parents are trying to keep their spirits up, but they are obviously struggling too. Hopefully, we’ll get some news soon.’

‘Do you want her to live?’ I ask Reid, the question falling out of my mouth before I can catch it.

‘What?’

I don’t say anything more, but I’m pretty sure he heard me, judging by the frown on his face.

‘I want her to live in as much as she is the mother of my children,’ Reid says then. ‘Obviously what she has done is wrong and she deserves to be punished for that. She will be too. I’ll make sure of it. But Arthur and Ruby don’t deserve to go the rest of their lives without their mother in the world with them. Surely you can understand that?’

‘I do,’ I say, nodding because what else can I do? I can’t say no, I want her to die and I want Arthur and Ruby to be motherless. But there is something I can say.

‘I’d be there for them. I’d be their mother,’ I tell Reid, and he smiles.

‘I know you would,’ he says, leaning in and giving me a kiss. ‘But let’s focus on you being a mother to our little arrival, shall we?’

He gently places a hand on my stomach then and while I can sense his anxiety, he is covering it up as well as he can in the circumstances.

‘Okay, Luna, how are we doing?’ the kindly doctor who I first saw when I arrived here asks me as he approaches the bed and examines the nurse’s handiwork on my arm.

I don’t answer because I feel too nervous to form any words at this moment in time, but I think he understands that.

‘That looks good, so I’m happy for you to go for your scan now,’ the doc says. ‘Are you ready to go?’