Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
SADIE
‘This is a lovely house,’ I say as I admire the parts of it that I am getting to see as Luna shows me into her kitchen.
‘Thank you,’ she replies as amongst the fine furnishings and gleaming pots and pans in here, I spot the baby in the bouncer.
‘Hello, Jude,’ I say, approaching the happy little boy who stares up at me with wide eyes. ‘Are you being a good boy for your mummy?’
‘Yes, he is,’ Luna answers for him before she fills the kettle and puts it on to boil.
I take a seat at the kitchen table, glad to take the weight off my legs because while I am now capable of walking around unassisted, it still takes a lot of effort and energy to do so. But still, being out of breath is better than having Mum, Dad or a nurse escorting me everywhere.
‘How are you feeling?’ Luna asks me as the kettle boils.
‘I’m getting there, slowly but surely,’ I reply. ‘Or at least my body is. My mind is still a bit fuzzy, but I’m learning to live with that.’
‘Have the doctors said anything more about your memory coming back?’
‘No. They won’t admit it, but I think they’ve given up on me there. I’m not sure they expect me to remember everything before my accident, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s better if I don’t.’
I smile at Jude then rather than Luna, but I know that woman has her eyes on me, and I know she just asked about my memory because she has a very good reason not to want it to return.
As the kettle gets louder, Luna asks another question.
‘How did you get here?’ she wants to know.
Ahh, yes, of course. Thanks to her, I lost my driving licence, so she is probably wondering how I got myself here.
‘I took a taxi,’ I say.
‘Oh, I see. Was that not expensive?’
‘A little. It was quite far to get here,’ I comment, well aware that I’m sure a major selling point of this house for Luna was the distance from here to where I am based. ‘But it’s no problem. It gives me something to do.’
Luna nods, unsure what to say to that last part because it does make me sound rather pathetic. Just the way I want it to.
‘So, what was it you wanted to talk about?’ Luna asks as the kettle reaches its crescendo. ‘Something about a present for Ruby, was it?’
The kettle is really loud now so I decide to let it finish doing its thing rather than raise my voice over it. While I wait, I stare at Luna and she stares at me and I savour these final few seconds before the only noise in this kitchen will be the sound of her panicking.
The switch on the kettle finally flicks off, signalling that the water inside it has reached boiling temperature, and suddenly, all is quiet.
As Luna pours our drinks, I take advantage of her back being turned to stand up and walk over to Jude.
I unclip him from his comfortable, inclined bouncer and lift him up into my arms.
By the time Luna turns back around, I am holding her baby.
‘He really is handsome,’ I say, smiling at the little face. ‘You are so lucky to have him.’
‘I know,’ Luna replies, holding two cups of tea while I hold something of far more importance.
‘The thing is,’ I say, taking my time because I want to enjoy this. ‘I wasn’t exactly being truthful with you back there at the front door.’
‘You weren’t?’ Luna asks, suddenly putting down the tea.
‘No. I said I was here to talk about Ruby, but that was a lie. I guess it was a good one because you seemed to believe it.’
‘Why would you lie to me?’
‘Because you lie all the time. So I thought I’d give it a go myself.’
Luna is starting to realise that this is not a friendly visit after all.
‘Please can you pass Jude to me. He’s due for a feed,’ she says after sensing the shift in my demeanour.
‘No, I think I’ll hold onto him for a little while longer. At least until I tell you about the other lie I told.’
Now Luna really looks nervous, and this is even better than how I imagined it going when I was lying in bed last night and playing it through in my mind.
‘What other lie?’
‘The lie I told back at the hospital after I woke up from my coma,’ I say before shushing Jude, who is starting to cry, but only because he senses his mother’s angst. ‘The lie about not being able to remember my accident.’
It starts to dawn on Luna what this is all about.
‘That’s right. I remember everything,’ I say smugly. ‘How you dragged me into the garage. How you wanted to kill me when you realised I knew the truth about you. And how I ran but slipped before I could make it to the stairs.’
Luna stares at me, her mouth open, aghast at how I fooled her and everybody else.
‘Surprise, surprise, bitch,’ I say, and I laugh at her.
Then I resettle Jude in my arms, trying to get him to stop crying. As I do that, Luna suddenly gets as serious as I am.
‘Give me back my baby,’ she says, stepping towards me.
‘Don’t you dare get any closer to me,’ I say, and my threat is implied, even if it is unspoken. I have her baby, so she has to do what I say. Or else.
‘You won’t hurt him,’ Luna says, calling my bluff.
‘You’re right. I won’t. That’s because I would never harm another human being. Not willingly, anyway. But you, on the other hand, have no problem harming people. Isn’t that right, loopy Luna?’
I see the flicker of emotion behind her eyes at using that nickname.
‘Admit it,’ I say. ‘You’re crazy. You’re a stalker. You’re a murderer.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ I say. ‘You tell me how you did it all and I will leave here without calling the police.’
That sounds like a fair deal to me, but Luna has a counter-offer.
‘I wouldn’t let you call the police,’ she snaps back. ‘And I won’t let you leave either. Not if you really do remember everything like you say you do.’
I make sure to stay calm, though on the inside, I am pleased to see that Luna seems to be showing her true self, finally.
‘Oh, Sadie. What have you done?’ she asks me with a laugh.
‘I’ll give you credit. You genuinely had me fooled with the whole amnesia thing.
But you’ve just gone and ruined it all by giving yourself away.
You had the element of surprise on your side, but this is how you choose to use it?
I’m sorry to tell you, but you have totally misplayed your hand if that’s so. ’
Luna is now the one looking smug as she thinks that I have totally botched my big masterplan. Is she right?
‘You think that holding my baby makes you safe?’ she asks me then.
‘Because it doesn’t. I know you won’t hurt Jude because you don’t have it in you to do such a thing.
You know as well as I do that I’m the only one out of the two of us who is capable of doing bad things.
So stop being silly and put Jude down. Then we can deal with this woman to woman. How does that sound?’
‘If I put him down, there will be nothing stopping you reaching for one of those knives and killing me,’ I say, glancing over at the six sharp knives that sit in the rack very close to where Luna stands.
‘There’s nothing stopping me anyway,’ Luna says with a shrug. ‘I can kill you anytime I want. You’re lucky you’re still alive now. But this is when your luck runs out.’
‘You’re wrong,’ I say. ‘You’ve tried to kill me before and failed.
Like the time you tried to lure me to the woods, pretending to be Reid with the kids, when really, you were there alone, looking to entrap me.
Then, of course, you tried to kill me on the night of my accident.
But you failed again. Last but not least, you were standing there in my hospital room when I woke up from my coma, which makes me think that you were in there to try and kill me a third time, but that was another failure too. Am I right?’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Luna concedes. ‘But don’t let my past mistakes fool you into thinking you are invincible, because you’re not. Nobody is. Well, nobody except me, of course.’
I watch as Luna reaches for the knives and picks one up by the handle.
The one with the biggest blade.
‘The only thing you did succeed at was silencing Gemma,’ I say to her. ‘That was you, wasn’t it? You killed her.’
‘She had to go,’ comes the cold response as Luna eyes up the knife in her possession.
‘I just want to know why you did it,’ I say as Jude wriggles in my arms. ‘Why you targeted my family? Why us?’
‘You really don’t see it, do you?’ Luna replies.
‘How you had it all. You had everything a woman could possibly want. The husband. The children. The house. The cars. The lifestyle. You took it for granted, but not me. I saw what you had, and it was my dream to have it for myself. So that’s what I did.
I took it from you, and it worked. Now I have the life you had and you have nothing, just like the old me.
Only now do you realise what you had to lose, but it’s far too late to get it back. ’
Luna takes another step towards me, the knife raised in her hand, and it looks like she is actually thinking about trying to stab me while I am holding her child. But nothing should surprise me with this woman, which is why I am prepared for every eventuality.
Even my own death.
‘Why couldn’t you start your own family?’ I ask, taking a step back. ‘Why couldn’t you do what normal people do and find yourself a man? Have your own children? Buy your own house? Why did you have to take mine?’
‘Because it was easier,’ Luna says before laughing.
‘Really? It was easier to set fire to my parents’ house and frame an innocent woman for it? It was easier to drug me and cause me to fail a breathalyser test? It was easier to kill Gemma at the hospital and that police officer she was with?’
‘Yes, it was,’ Luna replies as she steps forward again. ‘Just like it will be easy for me to kill you now, and then I will have completely got away with it all.’
The knife is raised higher. I see the blade glint in the pale sunlight that pours through the large kitchen window.
Jude’s crying gets louder. I keep backing up until I bump up against the wall.
I have nowhere else to go. Luna has me cornered.
She knows it as well as I do. So there is only one option left for me to take.
‘Here,’ I say, holding out Jude towards her.
That move surprises Luna, who clearly presumed I was going to try and hold Jude like a human shield during the inevitable assault that was about to take place.
But by holding out her baby towards her, it forces her to lower the knife, and if she wants to take back possession of her baby, she’s going to have to put the knife down first.
But will she do it?
Will she choose her child over ending this once and for all?
As Jude dangles between us, his little legs kicking at the air whilst I hold him with outstretched arms, I glance to my left. As I do, I see two shelves full of cookery books, an ornament and a family photo showing the smiling faces of the five people who call this house home.
‘That’s a nice picture,’ I say sadly. ‘I guess you really did win.’
I look back to Luna and she senses what I am trying to signal to her.
I have given up. I am conceding. I am admitting that she is the better woman.
Luna puts the knife down on the table beside her before taking Jude from me. But I don’t lunge for the knife, nor does she rush to pick it up again either. We just stare at one another.
‘What happens now?’ I ask her.
‘You know the answer to that question,’ Luna says. ‘I put Jude down and then I finish what I started. You know I can’t allow you to keep living. Not when you remember everything and can ruin it all for me.’
I nod my head.
‘I thought so,’ I say sadly.
I hold my hands up. Surrendering. Accepting. Waiting for Luna to put Jude down and pick up the knife to finally finish me off once and for all.
But before she can do that, we are interrupted by a knock at the door.