‘No, you look after Cory. I won’t be long.’ I turn away from him before he has chance to protest. As I make my way across the waiting room, I get a sickening feeling that all eyes have turned on me, their judgemental stares burning into my back.
‘Mrs Carter, what can I help you with?’ Doctor Roberts, who always insists I call her Suzanne, offers me a kind smile. Her southern accent is calm and reassuring, providing her with an air of professionalism. She leans forward on her chair and clasps her long, slender fingers together.
I flick my eyes over towards the closed door where James is waiting with Cory. ‘Well…’
‘Are you nervous of something?’ she interrupts, leaning further over the desk. ‘You do know anything you tell me is confidential.’
I lower my gaze, unsure of what exactly I am going to say. ‘I’m not sure you’re going to believe me if I tell you.’ I peer up at her, gauging her reaction.
‘Let’s say you try me,’ she says, sweeping her hand through her short, coppery hair, her eyes not leaving mine for a moment.
I spend the next twenty minutes slowly unravelling everything which has happened over the past three years. I explain about our heartbreaking struggle to conceive, about our decision to use a sperm donor, about the feeling of utter terror which engulfed me the moment Doctor Hughes inseminated me with the donor’s sperm… how I’d felt trapped, pinned down to the bed. I tell her how the memory has begun to manifest itself into a nightmare which makes me wake up in hot sweats, triggered possibly by the card at the hospital. I don’t tell her that the nightmare is also marred with another memory from my childhood, something I can’t even bear to tell James about. The doctor may already know, of course, but she’s never mentioned it in the two years I’ve been attending this particular practice.
‘So the final straw was the email, you see,’ I tell her, my eyes misting. ‘James says there’s no possible way Cory’s biological father has found us. He says it’s ludicrous to think he’d steal my phone without me knowing, email my contacts list, then hide the phone on the garden bench to make me look crazy. But I know it’s true. This man obviously donated sperm because he wanted to be a father and now he wants to take my son. Do you think I should go to the police?’ I ask her, my voice catching in my throat. ‘He needs to be stopped, doesn’t he? Before he kidnaps Cory.’
Doctor Roberts sits back in her chair after I’ve finished speaking and swivels it slowly from side to side. She chews on the inside of her cheek, her silence resting in the place where a response belongs.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I say, deflated.
‘Louisa…’ She looks down at her hands. ‘I think what you’re feeling right now is pretty understandable. It must be difficult to give birth to a child and have all this uncertainty regarding his genetics.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
She sighs. ‘I’m no psychiatrist, but it seems to me that, subconsciously perhaps, you’ve been deeply affected by having to use a sperm donor. I guess because you wanted a child so badly you never really stopped to think of the emotional implications. Were you never offered counselling?’
I shake my head. ‘You don’t get any freebies when you’re private. I suppose we should have paid for it but really we just wanted to put it to the back of our minds. We wanted to have the procedure and then just pretend that James was the baby’s biological father.’
‘Hmm.’ Doctor Roberts looks at me for a fraction longer than is comfortable. ‘I think it’s this pretence that has become your problem. There are obviously a lot of issues going on here which haven’t been addressed.’
‘I love my son,’ I say through gritted teeth, annoyed that yet again I’m being dismissed as a mental case.
‘I’m not saying anything to the contrary. But as you were talking, it almost felt as if there’s a part of you desperate to know who this donor is. Which I can totally understand.’ She pauses before continuing. ‘You gave birth to this baby, who you love more than you ever could have imagined, and yet there is this whole side to him that you know nothing about. Am I right?’
Her words resonate somewhere deep inside of me and I realise she has a point. I have to admit that, from the moment I gave birth to Cory, I’ve wondered who else created him. How could I not? Cory’s hair colour is the same as mine and our noses have a certain ski-slope appearance, but who gave him his deep-red lips? Who chiselled the shape of his jaw and darkened his eyes? ‘I understand what you’re saying. I guess you’re right.’ My admission is small, frightened almost.
Doctor Roberts turns her attention away from me and begins to fiddle around with her computer mouse. I can barely see her behind the blur of tears which have pooled in my eyes. ‘Mrs Carter,’ she says eventually, her voice now slightly harder than a moment ago. ‘I’m going to refer you to a specialist team of people who can help you better. They are a postnatal division of the mental health team, a little like your health visitor, but they specialise in postnatal depression, PTSD, that sort of thing.’
‘What?’ My chest tightens. ‘I haven’t got postnatal depression, or post-traumatic stress. Yes, I think about Cory’s donor from time to time but it’s hardly bloody surprising given the card.’
‘The card which was really from your fertility clinic?’
‘No… it changed, somebody swapped it, I told you that. Why don’t you believe me?’ I bang my fist down on the wooden desk, knocking over the doctor’s framed photograph of what I assume to be her grandchildren.
A sudden knock on the door makes me jump. I swivel round to find James’s head poking through the crack, lines of worry creasing his forehead.’ Sorry to interrupt, but I heard shouting and crying. Are you all right, Lou?’
Placing my head in my hands, I allow the tears to come, all the fear and frustration gushing out of me until my stomach muscles ache.
James crouches down beside me and after a moment or two he embraces me, his arm pulling me in to his side. I inhale the scent of him, his freshly washed hair and the smell of washing powder reminding me of a time when, finally, everything seemed to be going well. ‘It’s all right, sweetie,’ he says. ‘We’ll sort it out.’
‘I’m not crazy, James. I love Cory… there’s no way I have postnatal depression.’ I speak through the cracks in my fingers, not daring to look up at him. ‘That’s for people who can’t bond with their children and I have bonded, haven’t I?’
‘Shhh,’ he whispers into my ear while stroking my hair. ‘I know you love him… so do I, really I do.’
‘Mrs Carter, do you give me permission to tell your husband what we have discussed?’
I look up at her in horror. You said it was confidential, you bitch.
‘Louisa?’ James kisses the top of my head. ‘I’m your husband.’
‘Fine,’ I hear myself saying. ‘Tell him.’
‘So…’ Doctor Roberts clears her throat, not wasting a moment. ‘After listening to Louisa’s story, I believe she loves Cory very much, of that I have no doubt. But I am concerned, Mr Carter, especially in regards to what she believes is happening to her, don’t you agree?’ This she directs solely at James, who nods his agreement. My gut twists with anger. ‘I have to pass on my concerns to Louisa’s health visitor,’ she continues, now avoiding my stare completely. ‘But don’t fret, she’ll work with you, not against you, and ensure Louisa gets the best course of treatment. I’m also going to prescribe some antidepressants.’ I look over to James who offers me a thin smile. ‘I’m going to push this through as a priority, Mr Carter. I know it’s Christmas in two days but I’m hoping you’ll receive a visit before the New Year, or a day or two into January at the latest. In the meantime, if you feel things are progressing further, don’t hesitate to call me.’ There is a warning in her voice which James appears to hear.
‘No problem,’ he says, already pulling me up from the chair as if he’s heard all he needs to. ‘And thank you, Doctor. You’ve been most helpful.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Louisa
Then