Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sadie
T he groceries are starting to back up at the checkout, quicker than I can pack them. Disposable nappies and bread and laundry tablets mush up next to each other, and I struggle to spread them out because the cashier is relentless in swiping everything through. Leo’s meant to be helping. I look up, and, surprise surprise, my husband is going gooey over our daughter in her trolley cot, almost nose to nose with her. His face is as soft as anything as he murmurs some sweet ramblings about how adorable she is, and kisses her cheek as she wriggles peaceably, waking up.
I roll my eyes and laugh. “Come on, Leo, be helpful,” I admonish him, not really meaning it. I love to see him loving on Rhiannon. She’s only a couple of weeks old, but he’s already completely owning daddyhood. He spends all his time just being with her, watching over her, ready every time she makes the slightest noise. He changes nappies with nary a complaint, and gets up with me every time I need to feed her overnight. I’ve been able to express some milk, as I think it’s important for him to have that bonding time with her too while feeding, but we supplement with formula too, because fed is best, and I will die on that hill.
He’s everything a papa bear should be, and I only hope I live up to his example as her mother.
She holds both our hearts in her teeny tiny hands, the love we feel for her indescribably powerful, and I have never been happier. We’re both beyond exhausted, some days barely dragging our exhausted arses through each hour, but it’s all made worthwhile when we gaze down at her, asleep in our arms or in her crib, her little mouth moving now and again. And when she yawns, I can hardly repress my squee noises.
And it’s not just us; the gang all dote on her. Rhiannon has storybooks aplenty thanks to her Auntie Em, and we read them to her every night, but it’s the one her Uncle Eli drew for her about the golden retriever and the black cat that seems to soothe her the most when she’s fussy. Auntie Liaden has given us all sorts of classical music to play to her, and my girl seems to like Mozart a lot, but if she won’t stop crying, she seems to respond best to System of a Down. That’s our girl. And Uncle Dean is an absolute god at getting her to fall asleep on his shoulder.
Even Gary is mesmerised, loving to watch her and be near her, and only swearing quietly these days. Unless Rhiannon is screaming, in which case he continues to flap violently and ask, “WHAT THE FUCK?!”
Rhiannon has been very good during our shopping trip, sleeping peacefully in spite of all the noise, and she is indeed so adorable, but it’s time to pack up and pay, and my husband is too smitten to do a damn thing.
“Dude,” I call, laughing at Leo quite openly now.
Leo manages to tear his eyes away from her long enough to give me a sheepish grin. “Sorry. But she’s too cute… ”
“And these loaves of bread are too far out of the shopping bag ,” I quip, grinning back.
The cashier chuckles at us both. “You’re lucky, love. My Darren wasn’t interested until our lot were out of nappies.”
I look at my man fondly, reminded again how lucky I am that he’s not that kind of twat.
Eventually, with a little more engagement from Leo, the goods are packed and paid for, and we’re on the way home.
The house is a total mess, with toys and books and blankets strewn everywhere, but the two of us are at least presentable; we take it in turns minding the baby so the other can shower. Eli kindly filled our freezer with home cooked meals that just need to be defrosted and then cooked through, so we’re eating well. Every single member of our family is happy to swoop in and help in any way they can, whether that’s taking Rhiannon off our hands after a bad night so we can get a couple of hours of sleep or helping us with household chores so the place doesn’t crumble around our ears while we get used to parenting.
We really are ludicrously lucky.
I start taking the laundry off the clothes horse, folding bib after bib and blanket after blanket, and so many babygros. I love the one she has on at the moment, with Team Leo emblazoned on the front just like on the parlour t-shirts. Em had that made, and I still chuckle whenever I see it.
And Leo hand washes it every time it gets dirty so she can wear it again sooner.
“...and then we print the picture on a special type of paper, right, and place it where the client wants the tattoo to be. And then we - ”
“Seriously?” I laugh.
Leo grins at me, cradling Rhiannon in his arms. She’s looking up at him, enraptured. “Hey, she asked.”
“Our two week old daughter asked you how to do a tattoo?”
“Clear as day.” He kisses where my neck meets my shoulder, and fuck me, I can’t wait to be given the all clear to resume having riotous sex in a few weeks. Yes, I’m tired, and sore, and trying to get used to my new body now it’s just mine again, but Leo’s hot, and Mummy has needs. “Shall I take her?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
He deftly fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Forgot to show you this one from while you were getting dressed this morning.” He flicks to a selfie of him and Rhiannon. She’s crying, and he’s imitating her face. It’s cute as fuck. “Reckon I can post it on the Wishbone Instagram?” His eyes communicate a pretty please .
“No,” I say, tapping his phone holding arm. “People come to our Insta to see tattoos , not babies. I’m not going to start mommyjacking everything, and you’re not going to do any daddyjacking anything , got it?”
He snorts with mirth.
“Yeah, dickhead, I heard it.” I giggle, shaking my head. “God, ‘daddyjacking’ sounds so dirty.”
“It sure does, and you can jack this daddy any time you like.”
“Duly noted.” Rhiannon starts to squirm and cry. I’m starting to recognise what she needs by the tone, and this little angel is hungry.
“Aaaaaand that’s my boobs leaking,” I grumble, feeling the wetness in my bra like a Pavlovian response to her cries. Thank fuck for the little absorbent pads in my maternity bra. I sit down and lift my top, and Leo gently hands her to me. It took a couple of days for me to get the hang of latching, but it’s all good now, and the system works.
And my tits are HUGE.
And veiny. With sore nips.
Shaking my head to clear it of the petty vanity, I focus back on my daughter with a wry smile. Man, she really was hungry. Good girl.
“I do love that sight,” Leo says softly.
I look up, and smile at his expression. I hope that maybe this makes up for his years of waiting for me.
Maybe if I’d gotten together with him that first day we met, we’d still be here now, married and with a baby. I like to think so, but I guess we’ll never know. Even so, something about this seems inevitable.
Fate.
Gary flies in, resting on his designated lounge perch. He shifts from foot to foot, watching the three of us contentedly. “Cockwomble,” he near-whispers.
“Good point,” Leo says, and pats his shoulder. Gary flutters down and nestles against his cheek. He’s become rather soppy since our girl arrived, and I love it. “Thanks for the reminder, Gaz.” He turns back to me. “Are you all set for tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” I ask, forgetting what he’s talking about. I still have baby-brain like you wouldn’t believe, losing track of what I was saying halfway through the sentence, unable to remember if I put the milk back in the fridge or switched the oven off. The works.
“Court.” Leo isn’t judging; he knows what it’s like himself to be so distracted and tired that the bleeding obvious is no longer quite so obvious.
“Oh, right.” I shake my head. That was a pretty big thing to forget. “Yeah, definitely.” I smile down at my baby as she finishes her latest meal. “We’re going to put that stupid fucker away, yes we are…”
“I feel ridiculous,” I complain, tugging on my hastily bought suit. I found it in a charity shop, because I don’t normally have any need for one, and it’s too tight in some places and too baggy in others. Plus, it’s a vile shade of navy blue, and I’ve had to put a camisole under my blouse because of my huge, milky, starting-to-annoy-me bazongas making the buttons strain to stay together.
Leo is next to me in a much nicer suit than mine, with a burping cloth thrown over his shoulder. He just fed Rhiannon the rest of her lunch, and any second now…
Buuuuuuuuuurp . There it is. I’m not proof against my daughter’s perfect comic timing, laughing at the rich and enthusiastic sound made by such a little lady, and my tension is eased nicely.
“Pumpkin, the suit’s not that bad,” Leo reassures me sympathetically as he wipes the spit-up from her chin and settles her again, “and hey, we can cut that thing up for more burp rags. Rhi-Rhi can throw up sour milk all over it.”
“Deal.” I look at the huge clock on the wall in the waiting area of the court. “I wonder how much longer they’re gonna be.” We were told to show up at noon, and now it’s almost two p.m. I’m not a huge fan of waiting, and I don’t remember needing to wait this long the last time I was a witness at a trial.
I need to try not to get thrown out for contempt of court this time, like I was that time a few years ago. Much as Em and Liaden love that story, and much as this is going to test my temper to its absolute limits, it’s too important.
“They probably just ran on a bit with their last witness, or something,” Leo suggests, gently swaying to make our daughter sleepy.
“Sadie Mills?” A voice down the hall calls me. I still enjoy the sound of my married name. She nods at me.
“Thank goodness,” I mutter, and kiss Leo and Rhiannon for luck before heading inside.
The courtroom is like a poshed up lecture hall, all wood and red velvet, so Peter must feel right at home. In spite of myself, my eyes automatically scan the court looking for him, and he’s changed so drastically that I almost don’t recognise him. His suit is worse than mine, nothing like the Savile Row looking schmutter he used to wear. He’s cut himself shaving in several places, and his hair looks thinner than the last time I saw him, the hairline receding right back. And he’s so gaunt, he could be an extra in one of the Romero zombie movies he had such disdain for whenever I watched them.
I don’t feel anything even vaguely resembling sympathy for him. Just a determination that he will not get away with what he did to me. Especially given his nerve; at least Jayden Ross had the sense and the decency to plead guilty and avoid all this unpleasantness.
I look away before he sees me and go where I’m led to the seat in the witness box. I affirm, and then offer a quick smile at Alison, the barrister prosecuting my ex. Her mouth doesn’t smile back at me, but her eyes do. I like her wig. She looks like she belongs here, like she’s in her element. Like I can trust her to get the right result.
She starts off with some easy questions, and makes a point of congratulating me on recently becoming a mother. Well played. We’d discussed everything beforehand, and she thinks the jury will be baying for Peter’s blood when they find out that I was heavily pregnant when he set his goon on me.
We cover how long I was with Peter romantically, and I get rebuked by the defence when I say, “To my everlasting shame,” before I provide my answer.
Must. Not. Be. Rude.
“And how would you describe that relationship?” she asks me.
“Good, to begin with, and then strained and unpleasant.”
“Why strained?”
I consider for a moment. “He behaved as though he disapproved of me, of my job, of the clothes I wore, and the films I liked to watch and the books I liked to read. He claimed to like the classics, though it must be said, they were pristine and unread on his shelf; I preferred Stephen King and James Herbert. And I actually read my books.”
“And why do you think he disapproved of you?” Allison asks.
“Speculation,” the defence lawyer pipes up. He looks familiar; I’m fairly sure I saw him at one of the annual Foxton Melas.
“Overruled,” the judge says before she turns back to me. “You may answer.”
“I later discovered that I…wasn’t his type. He liked me in his youth, but then the Vice Chancellor’s daughter caught his eye, and when he broke up with me, he told me that she was ‘more suitable’, and fit in better with his long term plans.” I shrug. “In the end, it was the best possible thing that could have happened. A few months later, I began a relationship with my now-husband.”
In my peripheral vision I see Peter flinch. He can’t be surprised; I was on the court listing as Sadie Mills , not Sadie Stewart . I guess there’s a difference between reading it and hearing it out loud.
“Were you aware that Mr Lang was in debt?”
“No, never. He used to have a lot of the finer things in life - his watch, his car, his suits - but he never seemed to be in trouble. I just thought his job paid very well, and that it probably gave him the knowledge to make his money work for him with smart investments.”
“And when was the last time you saw the defendant in person?”
“A couple of months before my daughter was born.”
“A couple of months before she was born,” Allison muses for the benefit of the jury. “So you were visibly and unmistakably pregnant?”
“Yes. I was out here,” I gesture a few inches in front of my flattening stomach. “He even commented on it.”
“Oh? What did he say?”
“He said, and this is a direct quote, ‘Jesus, you’re pregnant’, and then he told me that he hadn’t known that I was.”
We then move on to the day of the attack and the injuries I suffered, with photos as supporting evidence, and I can’t help feeling sick when I think of how close I came to disaster. My daughter was threatened, and now that I’ve held her in my arms, nursed her, taken a ridiculous amount of photos of her because I want to preserve every minute… God, I can’t bear it, and my voice starts to crack.
“And when Detective Antoniou informed you that they had arrested Mr Lang in connection with the crime, what was your reaction?”
I breathe in deeply, looking directly at Peter, who won’t meet my eye. “Disbelief. I never thought in a million years he had it in him to be a part of something so terrible. That he’d harm me, and my baby, just for the prospect of easy money.”
“Objection!” the defence barrister barks.
“I’m sure, but overruled in this instance.” I like this judge. She looks at me, and I swear there’s a sympathetic twinkle in her eye. “Though I advise Mrs Mills to be careful going forward.”
“Fair enough,” I reply.
When it’s the defence’s turn, the barrister does his best, but he’s got a hard job, and he knows it. He tries to place the blame of my break-up with Peter at my door; he tries to imply that I was having an affair with Leo before that point, obviously pressed to do so by his client; he tries all sorts of insinuations, but he just ends up looking petty.
I behave as though I find his line of questioning bizarre, by blinking, raising an eyebrow, asking him to repeat questions I find particularly victim-blaming.
Eventually, I suppose in desperation, he points out my sarcasm when answering Peter’s observation that I was pregnant, and establishes that I’m ‘acerbic and combative’ in my interactions with Peter historically.
“Can I please clarify the question?” I ask him innocently. “Are you saying that, even if I had ever called the defendant a low down, selfish, spiteful individual with a debilitating and well deserved inferiority complex, which I didn’t, this would justify what he did?”
“ Allegedy did,” he fires back at me.
“No, no,” I blithely insist, “he did do that, and he treated me with the most profound contempt and disrespect when we were together.” I tip my head to one side. “So, is that what you’re saying?”
From the grin Allison fails to smother, I think my point is well made.
“No further questions, Your Honour,” the defence barrister says, giving up.
It’s childish, I know, but when I step down, as Peter watches me leave, I move my hair behind my ear with my middle finger and let it linger.
And when I walk out of there, back to my amazing husband and beautiful daughter, I leave that piece of shit in my dust, where he belongs.