The Hypnotist's Love Story (20 page)

“And he looked like he stepped straight off the set of
Farmer Wants a Wife
!”

“
I thought he was sort of sexy, actually,” said Ellen. Of course she must resist telling her about the pregnancy. Patrick had to be told first.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t sexy,” said Julia.

Ellen’s eyebrows popped. “I
see.
”

“After you and Patrick left, he walked me to the car and asked me out for a drink.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes. Just as friends, obviously.”

“Obviously.” It warmed her heart to hear the change in Julia’s voice. The brittleness was gone. She hadn’t sounded like this in years.

“And I found out his real name. It’s Sam. I knew it wasn’t Bruce. Oh, hey, I forgot to say that I loved Patrick! He’s gorgeous. Don’t mess this one up.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m serious, Ellen. He’s a keeper.”

“OK.”
Well, that’s handy, seeing as I’m having his baby.

“
I mean, Jon was so pleased with himself,” mused Julia.

“Why does the truth always come out later? Everyone behaved as if they adored Jon when I was with him,” said Ellen. “You all used to fall about laughing at his jokes.”

“Yeah, he was sort of witty,” said Julia distractedly. “Are you watching
Beauty and the Geek
? See the blond girl with the bulgy eyes? Don’t you think she looks sort of homicidal? Speaking of homicidal, you didn’t tell me that Patrick’s stalker breaks into his house!”

“I didn’t know.” Ellen watched the bulgy-eyed girl on the television screen. She’d quite forgotten about that new revelation regarding Saskia. What would she think if she knew Ellen was pregnant? Would that be enough to cure her? Or would it tip her over the edge into insanity? Had
she
ever wanted to have a baby with Patrick?

“Anyway, I’ve got to go. My mobile is ringing. Might be Sam! I’ll talk to you later!”

She hung up. As soon as Ellen sat down on the couch with her roast potatoes the phone rang again.

“Hello, darlin’.” It was Patrick. For some reason, it had become one of their rituals that he always put on a deep American cowboy voice whenever he said hello. “What are you doing?”

“Watching television and … eating potatoes.” Ellen felt guilty, as if every second she didn’t tell him about the pregnancy was a betrayal. But it would be wrong to tell him over the phone, wouldn’t it? And frankly, she didn’t
want to hear what Patrick thought about it just yet. It was already confusing enough working out how she felt about it.
His
feelings would add a whole new layer of complexity to the situation. If he was thrilled by the news, she would back off: It was too soon, it was all wrong, the sensible thing would be not to let this pregnancy continue. If he was horrified, if
he
suggested a termination, she would be devastated. She wanted this baby! If he said, “I’ll stand by you whatever you decide,” she would be annoyed. It was
their
problem, not just his. Basically she couldn’t think of any way the poor man could react that would please her.

“How was your day?” she said, trying to keep her voice natural.

“It was fine, until you-know-who showed up at the office.”

“You know who?” said Ellen. “Oh, of course. I do know who.” Poor Saskia. He always refused to use her name.

“She was even crazier than usual. Crying. Talking about babies.”

“Babies,” said Ellen. Her blood ran cold. Did Patrick already
know
? Was this some creepy way of letting her know that he knew?

“What did she say about babies?” she asked. She laced her fingers through the curly cord of her grandmother’s phone. (The phone was green, over thirty years old, with the old round rotary dial face that you slowly turned with one fingertip.)

“Oh, I don’t know. Seriously, I don’t listen. I told her she needed psychiatric help. She handed me yet another letter and begged me to read it.”

“Did you?”

“Of course not. I stopped reading them years ago. It’s always the same old crap. Anyway, look, do you want to get out of Sydney for a long weekend? I just had this sudden desire to get on a plane and escape this cold weather, and then I got an e-mail about cheap flights to Noosa. It felt like a sign that we should have a romantic long weekend. After the weekend we just had, I’d like you to myself for a couple of days.”

Ellen didn’t say anything for a moment. She felt an overwhelming wave of tiredness at the thought. She would have to pack a bag. One of those big broad-rimmed hats that girls wore on romantic long weekends. She didn’t
know where her sunglasses were at the moment. They had been missing for days. The lost sunglasses seemed like an insurmountable problem.

“You know, cocktails by the pool, sleeping in, lying on the beach,” Patrick continued. He hesitated and sounded unsure of himself. “Or I guess when you live by the beach, maybe going somewhere like Noosa doesn’t sound so exciting?”

Ellen roused herself. Her lovely new boyfriend was suggesting a weekend away. She should be thrilled.

“No, no, it sounds perfect. Just what we both need.”

Relief smoothed out Patrick’s voice. “I already asked Mum if she could take Jack for the weekend and she’s fine with it. Oh, my whole family loves you, by the way. My brother said you were hot. I said hands off, kid.”

“Did he?” Ellen was flattered. Simon was so young!
Take that, Jon.

What would Patrick’s family think if they knew she was pregnant? She remembered the crucifix hanging over the television. They were old-fashioned Catholics, Patrick had said. Presumably in this day and age they would assume they were sleeping together, but they probably didn’t want to have it shoved in their faces quite so soon. Would his mother suddenly call her a wanton hussy?

“Can you take next Monday off?”

“I’ve got a few appointments, but I should be able to move them.”

“Good. I’m really looking forward to it. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

When she hung up, she headed straight for the plate of roast potatoes to throw them away.

She would tell him on the weekend. It made sense. A neutral location; not his place or hers. They would be lying on a king-size bed, tangled in crisp white hotel sheets, without any of the clutter of their day-to-day lives, and as a result they would come up with a correspondingly clean, elegant solution.

“Patrick, my love,” she would say, with the white sheet pulled up over
her breasts and tucked under her arms like in the movies, her hair sexily tousled. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

As she straightened up from scraping the potatoes into the bin, she caught sight of her missing sunglasses sitting on top of the fridge.

Yes, everything was going to be just fine.

I drove straight to work after my appointment with the hypnotist. When I walked into the office, I moved carefully and slowly, because I was in a million pieces and any tiny movement might have made me disintegrate like a special effect in a movie.

“You look like you’re in pain,” said my boss. He thinks I’m seeing a physio for a bad back. I chose this deliberately because he had problems with his back all through last year, and now he finds anything to do with bad backs a fascinating topic of discussion.

I said I was in pain, and then we talked about slipped discs and stretching and anti-inflammatory tablets before he remembered he was late for a meeting.

Then I worked.

I answered e-mails, returned phone calls, cleared my in-tray and wrote the first five pages of a report.

I worked well. I was crisp and efficient and diligent. I am highly respected in my professional world. I wonder what my colleagues would think if they knew I spent my lunch break crying in my ex-boyfriend’s office. I wonder what they would think if they knew that underneath that veneer I am broken.

I gave him a letter I had written sitting outside the hypnotist’s office. It was full of rage and probably didn’t make much sense.

It was pointless because I have a feeling he doesn’t read my letters anymore.

And that’s the problem with this rage. There’s nowhere for it to go,
because he no longer sees me. It’s like I am smashing my head against an enormous, impassive silent cliff face, over and over, until I’m dripping with blood. Nothing I do will change his opinion of me. Nothing I do will make him see me again.

And I can’t seem to accept that.

If he were dead, like my mother, then I would understand. He would be gone. But he’s not gone. He’s still there. He’s living his life as if
I
died, like his wife. He seems to think he is perfectly entitled to move on, to replace me, to make another woman pregnant.

If somebody would just tell me what to do to make the pain and the rage stop, I would do it.

It’s strange. Sometimes when I’m sitting in the hypnotist’s office with all that light bouncing around the walls, I want to ask her. “Ellen,” I want to say, “please help me.”

She would, I think.

O
n Thursday night, while Ellen was trying to pack for her weekend away, there was a knock at the door.

“What happened?” said Ellen, when she opened the door and saw her mother holding a bottle of wine and smiling socially as if she was arriving for a dinner party.

“I’m ‘dropping by,’” said Anne. “Stop looking so panicked. I had dinner in the area, and I made an impromptu decision to stop and see my daughter. For heaven’s sake, you’ve gone completely white. It’s not that unprecedented, is it?”

“Yes it is,” said Ellen, standing back so she could come in. “You don’t drop by.”

“I can’t believe you still haven’t got rid of this wallpaper,” said Anne,
running her fingertips disdainfully down the wall in the hallway. “I’d be ripping it off—”

“And painting it a nice neutral color,” finished Ellen. “I know. You’ve told me, and I’ve told you, I like it. It reminds me of Grandma.”

“Exactly,” murmured Anne. She walked into the kitchen and winced as she always did at the orange worktops as if she’d never seen them before. It was all some sort of performance to prove how she’d moved on. Her mother had enjoyed a perfectly idyllic childhood in this perfectly lovely, spacious house, on the
beach
, mind you, but for some reason she liked to behave as though she’d spent her childhood in a white-trash ghetto and she now lived in Paris.

“Glass of wine?” said Anne.

“No, I won’t actually,” said Ellen. “I overindulged last weekend, and I’m trying to be alcohol-free this week.”

And I’m pregnant, Mum.

The thought crossed her mind but felt strangely meaningless. Although nothing had changed since she’d done the test on Monday, now that the initial shock had worn off, it had begun to seem less and less likely that she really was pregnant. For one thing, apart from that night when she’d had the roast potato “cravings,” she hadn’t experienced any symptoms; she felt completely normal. It had also crossed her mind that she would probably miscarry. She was in her thirties, after all, and you were meant to take vitamin supplements when you were planning to get pregnant and make an appointment with the doctor and have blood tests. As soon as this had occurred to her, she had become positive that it would happen. If she didn’t make too much of a fuss about it, or overthink it, this pregnancy would probably just slip quietly away, until her body was ready for a properly organized pregnancy.

“Oh, well, I won’t either then,” said her mother. She put the bottle of wine down and rapped her knuckles gently on the table. It seemed an uncharacteristically pointless gesture, and Ellen remembered Melanie’s call earlier in the week about her mother seeming “secretive.”

“How are you?” she said.

“Me? I’m well. Very well.” Her mother stopped rapping and shook her head slightly. “Shall we have a cup of tea then? What were you doing when I interrupted you so shockingly?”

“Packing,” said Ellen, as she put the kettle on to boil and carefully selected two of her grandmother’s most flowery, old lady-ish china cups and saucers. “I’m going away with Patrick for the weekend. To Noosa.”

“Ah, Patrick,” said Anne. She settled herself down at the table. “I really don’t need the whole teacup and saucer palaver. I’m not eighty.”

Ellen ignored her and took out the teapot.

“A tea bag will do! Are
you
eighty?”

“So, what did you think of Patrick anyway?” said Ellen, warming the pot just to annoy her mother. “Both Mel and Pip called to say how much they liked him.”

“Did they?” said Anne. She raised her voice over the bubbling of the kettle. “Well, I certainly didn’t dislike him. You really should replace that kettle.”

Ellen put down the teapot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean it’s so loud. It’s like a plane taking off.”