Page 37 of The Happy Family

‘Five more minutes, guys, and then I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave so Sadie can get some rest,’ the doctor says, poking his head around the door and giving us all a warning that this visit cannot continue endlessly.

‘I want to stay,’ Ruby says, throwing her arms around her mother and hugging her tightly.

Sadie hugs her back while Arthur suggests having a sleepover in here, an idea that causes us all to laugh before I have to dismiss the notion. I stand back and give the kids a few more minutes with their mother, figuring I’ll have to wait until later to try and broach the difficult topic of Luna with Sadie in private. But just after Arthur, Ruby, and her parents have said goodbye to her, Sadie asks to speak with me alone.

Sadie’s father does not look too happy about that, but I ignore him, as I have got into the habit of trying to do, and linger in the room while Sadie’s mum leads her reluctant grandchildren out.

Eventually, and for one minute only before the doctor comes and tells me to get out too, I am alone with my ex-wife. Or at least as alone as we can be when Jude is still between us.

‘Thank you,’ Sadie says as I sit down in one of the recently vacated chairs.

‘What for?’ I ask as Jude jiggles and wriggles on my lap.

‘For looking after Arthur and Ruby while I’ve been in here.’

‘I’m their father. Of course I looked after them.’

‘I know that, but it can’t have been easy doing it on your own.’

‘I wasn’t on my own. Luna was with me.’

Sadie doesn’t say anything to that, but while we’re on the topic of my partner, I might as well mention the elephant in the room.

‘The doctor tells me that you can’t remember what happened before you came here,’ I say, and Sadie shakes her head sadly. ‘What is the last thing you remember?’

‘I’m not sure,’ my ex replies, looking strained as she tries to recall the past. ‘I remember being in my bedroom at the flat I share with Mum and Dad. But I can’t recall the exact date or time that was.’

‘That’s it?’ I ask.

‘Yeah.’

I let out a sigh. As much as Sadie deserves to be punished for what she did to Luna, it feels impossible to castigate a woman who has no memory of doing the thing I want to punish her for.

‘Please tell me what happened,’ Sadie asks me suddenly. ‘I need to know and nobody will tell me.’

There’s a good reason no one has told her yet. They are all worried that the shock of hearing it will affect her recovery. But Sadie is pleading with me, and the doctor hasn’t yet reappeared to tell me to get out, so maybe I should just get this over with, and it might be better coming from me than anybody else.

‘You broke into our house,’ I say as delicately as I can. ‘The house you used to live in, but the house I then shared with Luna and the children. You broke in, late at night while we were all in bed, and when Luna went downstairs to check on the noise, you attacked her with a knife.’

Sadie’s horrified reaction is what I would expect from somebody who has just been told that they did a terrible thing that they can’t remember doing. This is almost like when I was younger and got really drunk, waking up the next day with a bad hangover and my friends eager to inform me about all the mischief I got up to in my inebriated state. But this is much more serious than someone drinking too much and running around the streets with a traffic cone on their head. This is about real criminal acts, acts that could have taken a life if Luna’s knife wound had been worse or if Sadie hadn’t been nullified by slipping and banging her head in the hallway.

‘You really don’t remember doing it?’ I ask then. ‘Or why you did it?’

Sadie shakes her head and now looks on the verge of tears.

‘Oh my god,’ she says, starting to cry and leaving me awkwardly in a type of no-man’s land, sitting beside my ex but unsure if I should try and comfort her because she did attack my girlfriend and it wouldn’t be the best look to forgive her too easily.

Jude seems to sense that someone is upset because he starts to cry too, and the sound of his distress stops Sadie’s for a second.

‘I can’t believe you have another baby,’ she says to me. ‘I thought you only ever wanted two.’

This might just be as awkward a topic to discuss as the previous one, but before I can answer, Sadie goes back to crying.

‘No wonder we didn’t last. You must hate me. I’m such an awful person,’ she says and now she really looks upset.

As I feared, it was a bad idea to tell her this so soon after she has woken up. Her brain is still very much recovering. It doesn’t yet mean she is in any fit state to face the consequences of her actions. But I’ve told her the truth now, every bitter and twisted part of it, and she had to find out at some point. I don’t know what to do now, but it feels bad to leave her like this.

I’m hoping the doctor might come in and tell me to leave. At least that will give me a way out, but there is still no sign of him, so I guess I’m stuck here for a little while longer. At least that’s what I think until I hear a deafening sound ringing through the hospital.