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.