Page 55 of The Happy Family

I tend to find this part of the day the most stressful. It’s the part of the day when I’m dealing with the consequences of another night of unsettled sleep with Jude, so all I want at this hour is coffee and quiet. But while I might be able to make myself a hot mug of caffeine, there is no quiet, not with Arthur and Ruby running around upstairs, and it certainly won’t be quiet when they eventually make it down to join us. But before that happens, Reid usually has to make several trips to the bottom of the stairs to call up to his children and give them a warning about how much trouble they will be in if they don’t hurry up and get ready faster. That shouting only makes my morning migraines worsen, and I find myself counting down the minutes until everyone but Jude leaves this house to go to work or school. But until then, it’s a testing time.

Reid seems to be delaying the inevitable, savouring his bacon sandwich rather than shouting up the staircase. With Jude happy in the pram by the window, where he likes to lie and look out at the treetops swaying in the wind in the back garden, I take the opportunity to sit at the table and sip my coffee. I also take the opportunity to give Reid the pep talk that I know he needs before his very important lunch date.

‘Are you all set to see Sadie?’ I ask him.

‘Yeah,’ he mumbles unconvincingly between bits of bacon and, as I suspected, he does need a little reminder of who is the boss between them.

‘Like I said yesterday, you need to go and see her and be firm but fair. Tell her that we would like to take the children away on holiday this Christmas and, remember, you’re not asking, you are simply being polite and keeping her in the loop. You don’t need her permission, because you have custody of the kids.’

‘She still has rights as their parent,’ Reid says.

‘Yes, but she lost a lot of them with all the crazy things she did, like driving drunk with them in the car or attacking me while they slept upstairs. She knows it as well as we do. She can’t argue over this because we have been playing nice with her so far. But we can play nasty if she’d prefer, and somehow, I don’t think she’d like that.’

Reid listens to everything I am telling him, and I feel a bit like a coach giving one last pep talk to their players before the big game. Reid is going to his ex-wife to tell her that we are not going to be here this Christmas, and she will have to make do with seeing the children when we are back from our holiday. We haven’t actually booked it yet, despite my desire to do it already, and that’s because Reid wants to tell Sadie first. I said okay, do it, but on one condition.

He does a good job of it.

‘She’s really not going to like this,’ Reid says as he finishes his sandwich and wipes a little bit of ketchup from the corner of his mouth. ‘She’ll miss the children terribly, and any extra stress might affect her recovery.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t like it when you found out she had recklessly endangered your children’s lives by getting behind the wheel of a car whilst drunk,’ I say. ‘And I sure didn’t like it when she slashed at me with a knife. But we got over it, so I’m sure she can get over this, considering this is the least harmful thing to happen out of the three.’

Reid lets out a sigh and pushes his empty plate away from him, and I do sympathise with him. He is the man in the middle between two very strong-willed women, and it can’t be easy to be him. But if he only knew how hard it was to be me, I’m sure he’d take his problems over mine in a heartbeat.

‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ Reid says.

‘That’s my man,’ I reply before leaning across the table and giving him a kiss.

‘I better chase up the kids,’ he says, wearily getting out of his seat to go and perform the same routine that marks all of our weekday mornings.

As I hear him shouting in the hallway, urging Arthur and Ruby to hurry up or they’re all going to be late, I sit back in my chair and comfort myself with my coffee. The caffeine is kicking in, and while my headache will be kicking in soon if Arthur and Ruby don’t hurry up and get to school, I know it’s not long now until it’s just me and Jude here.

I love our alone time.

No stress, no drama, just us two and the whole day ahead of us.

As for Reid, I fear he’s got plenty of stress to come before the day is out.

THIRTY-EIGHT

REID

This is the last thing I need after the morning I’ve had. Sure, my day started well enough when I walked into the kitchen to find my partner presenting me with a bacon sandwich. That was delicious and I gave my compliments to the chef. But things went quickly downhill from there. No sooner had I finished it than I had to endure the torture that is trying to get my two eldest children to follow simple instructions like getting dressed, eating their breakfast and then getting in the car so I can take them to school. That took as long as it typically takes, and it always takes forever. Once they were in the car, I was met with nothing but traffic jams and red lights, making them late for school and me late for work. Arriving at my desk twenty minutes later than the time I should is hardly the ideal way to endear myself to my new boss, or any of my more punctual colleagues, but what could I do? I just sat down and started to work. Unfortunately, it meant I was inundated with emails, phone calls, password-protected spreadsheets and plentiful paperwork, all of which left my head spinning. But I couldn’t even afford the luxury of looking ahead to lunchtime because I knew that was only to be even more arduous. Unlike everyone else in my office who was spending their free sixty minutes at lunch eating, going for a walk or scrolling social media on their phones, I had to go and do something no man likes to do.

Visit my ex-wife and give her some bad news.

Now I’m here, sitting outside Sadie’s house, or Sadie’s parents’ house, should I say, although I guess they’re the same thing these days, and this is as much her address as it is theirs. I need to get out of my car and approach the front door because there are only forty-four minutes of my lunch hour left and I have a very difficult conversation to initiate before I can get behind the wheel and drive back to my office. I dare not be late to my desk twice in one day, so I better get a move on.

With a world-weary sigh that every divorced dad would recognise, I open my car door and decide to just get this over with.

As I walk to the front door, I can hear Luna’s words still ringing in my ears. While I was busy biting into bacon, Luna was busy motivating and managing me, but to be fair to my partner, I needed it. I’m nervous about this because I know Sadie is going to take it badly. I know I would if our roles were reversed. I would hate the thought that I wasn’t going to get to see my children over the Christmas period, not even for an hour on the day itself or at least a bit of Boxing Day. That’s why I know that Sadie will hate it too. It’s also why I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of taking the children on holiday during the Christmas break. Sure, I’d love some sun, but what I won’t love is seeing the look of sadness, disappointment or anger on Sadie’s face when I tell her what is happening.

But that’s what I’m about to do right now.

I knock on the door and then pray that nobody will be home, that I won’t have to do this and I can return to Luna tonight and tell her that I tried, but luck was against me. But I already know that’s not going to happen because I had to message Sadie to arrange this lunchtime chat, and she said to meet her here at this precise time, so she will be in this house. I assume her parents will be too and, sure enough, it’s her father who opens the door to me.

‘Come in,’ he says before stepping aside and allowing me to enter, as warm a welcome as I tend to get from this man these days.

‘Thanks,’ I say simply.