“What happened, Danni?”
THEN
Walkingthrough Mike’s front door felt surreal. It had only been a couple of days since I had last been here and yet, everything had changed. I was no longer pregnant and although I was saddened by this, I couldn’t help but think that if everything happens for a reason that it might be for the best, for me.
“I never thought your parents would leave.”
I turned and came face to face with Mike who was smiling, and I was briefly reminded of the man I had met across the bar that first night.
“Leave?”
“Yeah, I know they’re your parents but they a hard work. They’re intent on taking you home and putting a divide between us.”
“They want to take care of me.” I was beginning to question if I shouldn’t have gone to the hotel with my parents, or allowed them to come back here with me which they had wanted to do.
“But that’s my job and by excluding me from that I can see that they want to control you, not take care of you.” His tone had changed and I knew this was now going to become a bone of contention.
“Mike, I know, and I am glad you want to take care of me, but I want to go home.”
My choice of word was like a red rag to a bull and suddenly Mike was pacing across the room, back and forth, the annoyance rolling off him, but he said nothing and I wasn’t sure if that was worse than if he had been shouting and hurling insults. Unsure what to do, I sat on the window ledge, almost at the exact spot where I had collapsed a couple of days before. Thoughts of that day and the days before flooded my mind, not the miscarriage itself but the way Mike had treated me in the run up to it. The cupboard under the stairs. Sleeping on the floor.
“You are home!” Three words uttered and despite the anger I would have expected to hear, there was none.
Turning my attention back to the man before me, I was unprepared for the sight of him dropping to his knees before me with tears streaking his face. “Danni, please, don’t leave me. I can’t lose you, not you and our baby. I can do better, I promise. I know I get it wrong, but please, if you go too there is nothing left for me to live for so I might as well go to our baby.”
Sinking to the floor, I joined him, hugged him, and held him close knowing that I couldn’t leave him, not like this and not with threats of suicide hanging between us.
NOW
“You stayed?”
“I stayed, unfortunately.”
“What happened? Presumably your parents went home without you.”
I nodded. “Reluctantly, but they insisted on checking in with me regularly.”
“And Mike.”
“He was genuinely upset about the baby.”
My counsellor raised a slightly sceptical looking eyebrow that made me laugh.
“I am sure you and your eyebrows are supposed to be impartial.”
His response now was a simple shrug causing another laugh from me.
“He was, I believe that. He changed, became more like the Mike from when we first met and I honestly thought we might have a chance to make things work.”
“What happened?”
“Mike, Mike happened. I think the man I first met was an illusion. That the man I had come to fear was the real version, and the nice guy was a mask. A mask that slipped after a few weeks, continued slipping until the man I feared, loathed and stood in the way of every dream I had returned.” I paused, expecting a prompt of a question, but there was only silence, so, I continued. “My parents paid a surprise visit after about a month and although they still didn’t like Mike, they begrudgingly accepted that I had stayed. I think he thought he was winning them over so once they left, he stopped pretending to be Mr Nice Guy. He would lock me indoors when he went out and if I objected he’d threaten me with the cupboard under the stairs. My parents sent me money and he took that from me. He never returned my phone and would answer my parents calls and vet emails and messages. He resigned my place on the foundation course, although he initially told me he had arranged a sabbatical.”
“What about intimacy?”
Well, that was a curve ball I hadn’t seen coming. “I was scared of getting pregnant.” I heard the break in my voice. “Mike demanded sex and if I refused, he would take what he wanted anyway. Sometimes he would taunt me, saying that he hoped I didn’t get pregnant as I had already killed one baby. . .”
“He accused you of killing the baby you miscarried?”
