“And who the fuck is looking after the baby then?”
I should have stopped, said no more, maybe even backtracked but I didn’t. “Obviously we could work things between us and you’d be here in the evenings and at weekends if I wasn’t, then we could look at a nursery of childminder.”
“Me?” He laughed but he was a far from amused as anyone I had ever seen. “You trapped me, not the other way round, so if you think I am spending my evenings and weekends babysitting your kid while you play doctor . . .” He paused. “Or is that it, that you plan to play with the doctors while I stay at home? Forget it, Danielle. You will be the one at home, in the day, at night and at weekends.”
Looking across at the clock that told me I was going to be late, I felt sick, not least because if we were using my full name, this was about to take another turn for the worse. Suddenly, my belly let out a loud rumble.
“Sit down.” Mike’s voice was softer, confusing me at the quick change in mood and his next words confirmed a change in topic too. “Eat some breakfast.”
Reaching for a slice of toast and a banana, I prepared my escape and at that very second, that is exactly what it felt like, an escape. I had realised, perhaps a little late as I was almost four months pregnant that I could not do this. I wasn’t sure I could terminate my pregnancy, but I could call Jess, and my parents and explain everything and they would help me. It had been ten weeks since Jess and I had fallen out and probably a month since I had outed my pregnancy to my mother, but I knew they’d be there for me.
“Sit down,” he repeated and kicked a chair out for me to sit.
Protests were on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down.
“Eat.”
The toast stuck in my throat, possibly more so because Mike was silent, not another word was said, instead he just stared at me. Part of me wished he’d let rip at me with insults and accusations.
“You need to take care of yourself, or at least the baby.”
I assumed he was referring to my rumbling stomach. “I am trying to make sure I eat.”
His laughter caused me to stop. “Your eating is not in question. Your spare tyre and multiple chins will attest to that.”
I felt myself shrink at his barbed and hurtful words that were yet another dig at my weight. I didn’t believe I had put a significant amount of weight on. Even the sonographer a couple of weeks before had commented that I wasall baby.
“Come on, I’ll walk you to the door.”
He was mercurial at the best of times, but this morning was something else.
As we entered the hall, I faced him and wanted to see something kind and loving in his eyes like there had been at the very start. Kindness and love had been present then, right? If they hadn’t, then how the hell did I come to be in this hideous predicament?
I wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but as we moved into the hallway, the arm around me turned into a tight grip on my arm and body and the next thing I knew, I was being bundled into the cupboard under the stairs and then the sound of a lock echoed around the dark, empty space.
NOW
“He locked you in the cupboard?”
My depth of the fear I felt in that moment came flooding back to me. My whole body shook, the tears flowed and the sobs were the only sound in the office. I had no idea how long I cried for but once my emotions slowed and eventually stemmed, the counsellor spoke again.
“Can you tell me what happened, in the cupboard?”
“It’s not so much what happened. I think I said before that I was scared of the dark, and that Mike had made reference to it, critically so, but yeah, my fear was real, irrational, but real.”
“Fears are rational to a point, however, it’s when they take over your life or limit how you live your life that they become an issue.”
“I don’t even know where the fear came from, not really. I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t a fear I had. My parents would leave a light on at night and as I got older, I coped with going to bed without lights on, however, if I was somewhere new or it was pitch black, it caused panic in me.”
“What did that panic look like?”
“I’d feel sick, sweat, cry and my mind would go into overdrive, thinking of a million different things, all the terrible things that could happen to me in the dark, things that rationally weren’t plausible, but my fear allowed them to become real scenarios.”
“I don’t think I have heard fear so accurately described. Did Mike understand the depth of your fear? Not that I am suggesting using anyone’s fear against them on any level is acceptable.”
“We went to a theme park and one of the rides we went on was in complete darkness. I hadn’t realised that the ride was pitch black and I had a panic attack in the middle of it. Mike had been great, held me, talked me through it and reassured me until we got off the ride. We talked about it afterwards and we didn’t speak about it again until we had arguments when he would make a comment about my ridiculous fear, he’d ridicule me, tell me how pathetic I was. Then he locked me in the cupboard.”
“What happened, that day in the cupboard?”
