Louisa
Now
‘I think Cory’s lips are turning purple. Do they look purple to you?’ I plough the pram through a thick mound of snow, my arms aching and my bare knuckles burning with cold. On a normal day the doctor’s surgery is a ten-minute stroll, but we must have already been battling the elements for half an hour.
‘I did say to bring the car.’
My stomach dips with guilt. James had suggested driving to the surgery but I deemed it too unsafe given the icy roads. Now it seems my newborn is in the first throes of hypothermia and as usual it’s too late to take a different course. ‘He’ll be going into shock soon. You’ll have to walk back and get the car while I’m in the doctor’s.’
‘ He’s fine, Lou…stop fretting.’
‘You haven’t even looked at him!’ I pick up the pace, the snow squelching beneath my feet, my toes numb despite wearing thick woolly Ugg boots. The wheels of the pram jam up continuously as I push it forward, my panic intensifying until I actually consider calling the emergency services to rescue us.
It’s now the 23rd December, three days since my husband declared me insane and demanded I see a doctor. ‘I really don’t think this is necessary,’ I say, annoyed I’m being forced here against my will. I hunch up against the cold, the wind howling around my ears, wet, damp flakes still falling like confetti from the sky. I look up, see trees, fences and rooftops all swallowed up in white. The morning light struggles to poke through the thick white clouds. ‘And anyway,’ I add, ‘I’m not depressed, I feel fine.’
James sighs. ‘It’s best to get checked out. We’re lucky to be seen this close to Christmas.’
‘Do you think Doctor Roberts will know if it’s possible for a sperm donor to track down a child?’ I ask cautiously, finally seeing the surgery up ahead, its roof buried under a three-inch blanket of snow.
‘Not this again. Can’t you just leave it?’
‘No, I can’t.’ I blow out an agitated breath of air, then watch as the wind sweeps it up and carries it away. Over the past three days I’ve tried countless times to discuss Cory’s donor, to try and make James see that I’m anything but mad, despite the supposed ‘evidence’ to the contrary. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to believe me, like a part of him simply can’t bear to think about Cory’s real father. I understand it, of course I do. But, ultimately, protecting James’s feelings is nothing compared to protecting my son’s safety. ‘I’m asking the doctor, James, I have to.’
‘Whatever you want, Lou.’ His words hold a degree of finality, like an invisible full stop has been jammed into place.
‘You could be called in by the hospital at any moment,’ I continue, desperate to keep the conversation open now it’s begun. ‘I don’t feel safe without you. I need some advice on the matter. You have to understand that?’ For the past three days James has been ‘on call’, meaning he’s been able to stay at home with us. Despite his occasional pitying glances and passive-aggressive demeanour, I have felt safer with him around. Unfortunately, he is due back in work on Boxing Day and to say I’m dreading being left alone is an understatement.
‘You can ask her if you like,’ he says. ‘But she won’t have any insight because the donor hasn’t tracked us down!’ He strides in front of me, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets, turning his head after a second or two, presumably to have another go. ‘And anyway… you haven’t had anything strange happen for days. No peculiar cards, no nicotine-starved ghosts.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic.’
‘Okay, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. But you must realise the absurdity of it all?’
‘Whatever you say,’ I snap, purposely throwing his earlier words back at him.
The doctor’s surgery is now upon us, the icy driveway marred with black tyre marks. Light shines out through the front bay window, the waiting room already crammed with people despite it not even being nine o’clock. ‘And anyway,’ I say, wanting one final snipe before I’m swallowed up by the hushed silence of the waiting room. ‘Just because there haven’t been any other incidents doesn’t mean he isn’t still out there.’ A part of me is annoyed that everything has stopped. I almost want another card to materialise so James will believe me.
I push the pram up the ramp which leads directly into the surgery, convinced I’m going to slip and land on my arse at any moment. James pushes past me and proceeds to pull open the glass door, gesturing with his hand for me to pass. ‘Let’s just see what the doctor says, shall we?’ he says again, a smattering of arrogance in his voice. ‘We’ll do whatever she suggests.’
The receptionist barely looks up at us as she takes my name and gestures for me to take a seat in the waiting room. Behind her, next to several grey filing cabinets, a small Christmas tree tilts over to one side, its feeble branches littered with baubles which have seen better days. ‘Doctor Roberts will be with you shortly,’ she mutters, already bashing her manicured nails on the keyboard of a clunky desktop.
The waiting room is warm but not comfortably so. I take off my cashmere coat and drape it over the back of a blue plastic chair, indicating with my hand that James should sit in the empty seat to my left, buffering me and Cory from an elderly gentleman who is currently regurgitating the lining of his lungs into a stiff handkerchief. In front of us, a child, no older than two, ransacks a paint-chipped toybox, seemingly finding nothing of interest as he discards each tatty item noisily on the floor. His mother, I assume, flicks her eyes over to him before wordlessly diverting her attention back to her mobile phone.
‘This is pointless. We should just go. Cory’s going to end up ill in this place.’ I make an attempt to stand.
‘Not so fast.’ James reaches out and grabs my lower arm, pulling me back down. ‘You need some help, Lou. I’m only trying to protect you.’
‘Hmm, if you say so.’
‘Louisa!’
I jump at the sound of my name, thinking for a moment that the doctor has personally called me in.
Magda stands in the archway which separates the reception area from the waiting room. In her hand she clutches what looks like a prescription.
‘Hey,’ I say, slightly flustered to see her here. ‘I’ve got a bit of a cold.’
She bats away my response with her hand, as if she knows I’m lying but doesn’t mind. ‘Just collecting Helen’s repeat,’ she says through a small smile, by which I assume she means antidepressants. ‘Poor love isn’t doing great. Still, we’re both excited for Christmas Day.’
Shit! In all the goings on I’d completely forgotten about hosting Magda and her sister on Christmas Day, not to mention Annette and Ron. I haven’t even told James about our extra guests! ‘Brilliant,’ I say, my voice sounding much friendlier than I feel inside. ‘We’re looking forward to it.’
‘Net and Ron wanted to know what time?’
Beside me I sense James stiffen. ‘Tell me you’re joking?’ he whispers through gritted teeth.
‘About midday all right?’ I say to Magda, gaining some sort of warped pleasure from James’s misery.
‘Perfect.’ She sticks the prescription between her teeth and pulls on her coat. ‘See you in two days then. I’ll tell Annette and Ron. Although you’ll probably be seeing them in a moment, won’t you?’
‘Why’s that?’
She pauses, a small, almost embarrassed smile sneaking onto her face. ‘In the pharmacy. To pick up the prescription for your… cold.’
I swallow loudly. ‘Yes, of course. See you Christmas Day then.’
‘Mrs Carter to room two.’
The sound of my name over the intercom makes me jump for the second time in as many minutes. I look over at the archway but Magda has already gone.
‘Come on then,’ says James, jumping to his feet.
‘No.’ I turn to face him, my eyebrows knotting together. ‘You’re not coming in with me, I’m not a child.’
‘ I think it would be better if I were there.’
‘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.’