Page 67 of The Happy Family

I don’t know because I’m still searching for the damn camera.

As Jude giggles and jiggles in his bouncer, my blissful boy living without a care in the world and making me extremely envious, I have awful anxiety as I frantically search the room. I’m pushing pots and pans onto the floor, opening and closing cupboard doors, pulling drawers open, feeling along the top of every surface.

If there is a camera here, I have to find it. It won’t change anything, but I have to know what Sadie has done to me.

She could just be playing mind games with me. There might be no camera at all. That optimistic thought is fuelled by the question I have of how she would have got a camera in here in the first place. She had never been inside this house until today, and while she was here, I certainly didn’t see her planting a camera. So she can’t have got one in here, right? But then I think about how I was able to trap her without stepping foot in her home. How I got those vitamin pills into her home by completely fooling her. Is that what has happened here? Did she get a camera into this kitchen in a clever, calculated way that has completely fooled me?

I look around at my messy kitchen, the one I have just totally ruined by pulling everything apart in my desperate bid to find a camera. But then my eyes land on a part of the room that I haven’t touched yet.

I see the shelves in the corner, and all the things that sit on them.

It would be the perfect place to hide a camera.

My heart is pounding and the blood feels like it is flowing even faster around my body as I start pulling cookery books off the shelf, until something other than a book full of recipes falls to the floor. I look down at the small black object before bending to pick it up. It looks like a very small, very expensive camera.

As I stare into the lens, I wonder if Sadie is staring right back at me, wherever she might be watching this recording from. If she is watching, I’m sure she will have taken great pleasure in seeing me frantically scouring and searching this kitchen to find what I have finally found now.

She might be watching. She might also be listening. If she is, there is only one thing I want to say to her.

‘You bitch.’

It feels useless and far too little too late, but I had to say it anyway and with that off my chest, I throw the camera to the floor and stomp on it until it’s no longer in one tiny piece, but several of them.

I’m furious, but not just at Sadie. I’m angry at myself too. She got me and I didn’t see it coming.

But what is coming next?

I wonder if she is on her way to the police.

Or are they already on their way here?

As I ponder my grim fate, my gaze falls on the only thing left on the kitchen shelves that was spared my desperate searching. It’s the framed photo of my family of five. I look at each of the faces in the image, from Reid, to Arthur, to Ruby, to Jude and then finally, to me. It felt like I got everything I ever wanted. Now it feels like I have just lost it all.

I consider my options. Should I phone Reid and try and explain this to him? No, it’s too late for explanations. Whatever I say will be no match for when he sees the footage, and I have no doubts that Sadie will ensure that he sees it. As for Arthur and Ruby, they’ll always be on their mum and dad’s side, so there would be nothing I could say to make them not hate me. That just leaves Jude, and I turn to face my baby boy.

He looks so happy where he is. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s done nothing wrong. But his mother has. Now I know what I need to do and it has to be done before the police find me.

I have to take my baby.

And I have to run.

Having made up my mind to abandon half of my family to hopefully preserve the final piece of it, I leave Jude alone for the moment and rush upstairs, grabbing a suitcase from under the bed and throwing in as many of our things as I can fit. Once I’ve done that, I haul the suitcase downstairs before stuffing my coat pockets with a few snacks and a bottle for the baby because I have no idea when I will get a chance to eat again. I don’t even know where I’m running to, only that I am running because if I don’t, I’ll be separated from my son and it will be years until I get him back.

I scoop him up and put him in the pram, before heading for the door, not even taking a moment to look around my home one last time, because there simply is no time.

I pull the front door open and am relieved to not hear sirens or see police cars. It’s all quiet out here. Too quiet? I can’t worry about that. I just have to keep moving.

I plan to take Jude and this suitcase a couple of streets from here before calling for a taxi to take me to the train station. If I call for one to come to the house, I risk the police arriving before the taxi does, so I’ll go around the corner, where they might not see me if they do come here.

Pushing the pram in front of me with one hand while the other drags my suitcase behind me, I hear the wheels from the suitcase rumble along this sleepy street where I thought I’d spend the next several years of my life. This was supposed to be the place where I got to live out my fantasy of being a family woman, raising the three children I shared with Reid. But now that fantasy is over. My life will never be the same again.

Sadie saw to that.

And then I see her again.

‘Going somewhere?’ she asks me with a smirk after I have rounded the corner and almost run right into her.

‘Get out of my way,’ I say, determined to push past her with the pram if I have to.