The Couple at No. 9(95)

Looking back to those sessions in Victor’s office it was obvious that he’d taken a liking to me. I thought, naively, that he enjoyed my company as we were around the same age. It wasn’t until later I realized that wasn’t the case.

I got pregnant quickly, even though, at thirty-three, I was older than what was considered normal for the mid-1970s. It was expensive and I’d had to use some of the money my parents had left me, but I was so happy that it had worked.

And then Audrey broke my heart.

She should have been ecstatic that I’d fallen pregnant so quickly, but as my stomach grew she retreated until eventually she admitted she couldn’t face being a parent after all. That it wasn’t what she wanted. She walked out and moved in with her parents. I was devastated, scared, alone and four months pregnant. At my next appointment with Victor I broke down and admitted everything to him. We became friends after that. He’d pop over to see me, to make sure I was eating properly and to take me out – trips to the theatre, dinner at restaurants I’d never have been able to afford. I enjoyed his company. He was a clever, charming man. And I didn’t think of it as crossing any patient/doctor line, although I see now how guileless I was. But I was so heartbroken, so lonely, I was grateful for his attention. After all, he knew I was gay. When it came to renewing my lease on the flat he invited me to lodge with him instead. ‘I’ve got this lovely big house,’ he’d said. ‘And I’m single. Let me look after you. You shouldn’t be on your own at a time like this.’

I was surprised that he was still single. This handsome, eligible man must have had women flocking around him. But when I asked him he joked that he was a workaholic and didn’t have time for a wife and children, not while he was building his practice. His house was stunning and on one of Harrogate’s most salubrious streets. I couldn’t say no. Maybe if I’d had my parents around or friends in the area – we’d only moved up a few months before I got pregnant to be near Audrey’s family – then I might have resisted. But I was grief-stricken and terrified and, oh, so naive and I looked up to Victor. Respected him.

Unfortunately he hadn’t respected me.

It went well at first. We rubbed along together. But then he became possessive: when I went out he asked where I was going and with whom. I worked as an usherette at the local cinema, handing out ice-creams after the B movies, and when I made friends with this woman he started to act jealous. And that was when I realized my mistake. I might not have had any romantic feelings for Victor, but he did for me. Other things I began to notice: he started telling me what I should be eating, wearing, how much sleep I needed. I couldn’t breathe. And if I didn’t take his ‘advice’ he would spend the next few days ignoring me, slamming out of rooms and giving me the cold shoulder.

One night, after I returned late from work, he rounded on me, accused me of being flighty, and said I ought to act like the mother-to-be I was. I’d stared at him in shock. We were supposed to be friends but I felt like I was in a controlling relationship. We argued and I told him to mind his own business, that he was my friend not my lover and certainly not the dad-to-be.

I’ll never forget how he looked at me. Smug, like he knew a secret that I didn’t.

‘Actually,’ he’d said, his lips twisting cruelly, ‘I am.’

‘What do you mean?’ I’d asked, but a cold hand had gripped my heart as it hit home exactly what he had done.

‘Why use an anonymous sperm donor when you could have me?’ he said. He made it sound so natural. Inserting his sperm into my cervix without my consent. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? It’s not illegal.’

I screamed at him, told him he had violated me, lied to me. He watched me rant, his eyes cold, as though I was nothing more than a toddler overreacting. I raced upstairs and began packing my stuff, running through my mind as to where I could go. I’d stay in a hotel and buy a property – I had the money in savings and was planning to do it with Audrey anyway. I couldn’t face it after she left, but I couldn’t stay there. As I packed I heard the key turning in my bedroom door. He’d locked me in.

‘I’m not letting you leave,’ he’d called through the door, his voice calm, sinister. ‘You’re carrying my child.’

I was the most terrified I’d ever felt. He brought me food, told me he was doing this for my own good, that he loved me, wanted to marry me. He wouldn’t listen when I said I could never think of him in that way.

‘I’ll never let you go, Rose,’ he said. And I realized I had to be clever. Trick him, like he’d tricked me. So I pretended that I’d think about it. When he trusted me enough to leave me in the house without locking the doors I planned my escape. First I would try to find some kind of ‘insurance policy’ in case he ever found me. A man like Victor, I thought, must have made mistakes in the past. I searched his study and when I thought I’d never find anything that was when I saw it. A file in his desk drawer. It looked innocuous enough, with the heading of his clinic blazoned along the front. But when I opened it I dropped it in shock. They were photos of women, legs akimbo in stirrups in one of his consulting rooms – the room I’d been in myself. The photos looked like they had been taken with a Polaroid camera and without the subjects’ consent: the women were all in hospital gowns, as though he’d been halfway through a procedure and decided to photograph their genitals for his own personal use. It wasn’t something a normal doctor would do. The women all looked drugged. I was sickened – he was every bit the monster I had come to expect. I wondered if I was one of them, but I didn’t want to look. My stomach churned and I had to concentrate on not throwing up.