The Hypnotist's Love Story (23 page)

“I suppose not,” said Ellen. Patrick’s money had been the last thing on her mind.

“It’s all very simple,” said Anne again, while her fingertips did a joyful little tap dance on the tabletop, and Ellen saw that she was actually pleased about the baby. She might even be thrilled.

There was a pause.

The soft expression vanished from her mother’s face. “Of course, it’s early days,” she said briskly. “At your age the chances of a first-trimester miscarriage are relatively high.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

“Well, you’re the one talking about terminating the pregnancy, you can hardly get all sensitive about the possibility of a miscarriage.”

“I didn’t say … well, yes, OK.”

Her mother was right. There had never been any doubt. She was going
to have the baby. The complicated part wasn’t whether she wanted a child. The complicated part was how it would affect her relationship with Patrick.

Because Ellen didn’t just want a baby. She wanted the whole kit and caboodle. The husband. The daddy. The man holding her hand in the delivery room.

That’s what she couldn’t say to her mother.
I don’t want to do it your way. I never wanted to do it your way. I don’t want to raise a child alone. I don’t want to be different. I just want to be the same as everyone else.

Patrick came out of the bathroom and hopped into bed with her. He broke off a piece of chocolate from the bar she’d been eating.

“You just cleaned your teeth,” said Ellen.

“I know. Don’t tell Jack. Bad Dad.”

Speaking of which, how do you feel about another child?
She was so close to just saying it, except that she really didn’t have the energy to talk about it. Tomorrow. They would talk about it tomorrow. It was lucky he wasn’t a big drinker. When she’d said she didn’t feel like wine with dinner, he’d said, “Oh, that’s fine. I won’t have any either.” Sharing a bottle of good wine had been such an integral part of her relationship with Jon, he would have noticed immediately if she wasn’t drinking.

They watched the movie together. The plot was too convoluted. They couldn’t get the characters straight. They both kept saying, “What? Who’s he?” Finally they switched it off, agreeing they were either too tired or too old, and turned to each other.

Their lovemaking was sleepy and tender, as if they were an old married couple. Ellen felt teary. Everything was going to be perfect.

“Will you hypnotize me to sleep?” said Patrick, as they switched off the lights.

“I’m pretty tired,” yawned Ellen.

It had so quickly become a habit. She would give him a five-minute relaxation exercise before he went to sleep. He seemed genuinely amazed by it. He said he loved it, it was like magic, and that listening to her voice
was his favorite part of the day and he hadn’t slept that well since he was a teenager and that she was helping him deal with the stress of “that woman,” his work, everything. She’d never been with anyone who was so impressed by her skills before.

“That’s all right,” said Patrick. “I’ve been exploiting you, haven’t I? I wouldn’t be up for doing a survey right now.”

Oh, he was nice, and she did want him in a relaxed frame of mind tomorrow.

She sat up and laid a hand on his forehead. Sometimes this felt more intimate than sex. She so rarely used touch on her clients, although she knew other therapists who did. Lying in bed in the private inky blackness, knowing that her words had the power to place images in his head, to slow his heartbeat, to lower his blood pressure, she felt powerful, nurturing, mystical. A good witch, a sorceress. Not a hypnotherapist, a hypnotist.

“I’m going to count to ten. By the count of three or four you may feel your breathing slow and your eyelids become heavy. By five or six you will probably be struggling to keep them open. By seven or eight or even nine it will most likely be irresistible, and you’ll let your eyelids close. By ten your eyes may be shut, your breathing deep and regular.”

She saw the shine of his eyes in the darkness. Already she could sense his breathing slow. She used a different induction technique each time, whatever came to mind. She was freer, looser and more creative than she was with her paying clients.

She began to count, increasing the pressure of her hand on his forehead as she did and making her voice softer, slower yet more insistent.

His eyes were shut by the count of seven.

“And now, I want you to imagine this: warm honey drizzling off the edge of a spoon.”

He loved honey. He put huge glops of it on his breakfast cereal, and she’d taken note of the way he would stand there in the kitchen, seemingly mesmerized as he watched the honey slowly drip from the spoon he held up high.

“This honey isn’t
just ordinary honey. This honey is the color of morning light. This honey is warmth and sweetness and security. This honey is every happy moment in your life. Every beautiful memory. Every second where you felt truly alive.”

She knew he could see the honey. She could see it too. She was in a light trance herself. When the work was going well, it happened, and it was always a pleasure when it did.

“Keep watching the honey. Keep watching until there is nothing else in your mind.”

She paused, and felt the curve of his skull beneath her hand and the warmth of his body against hers, and thought, He’s the father of my child. He’ll be the daddy and I’ll be the mummy.

It was possible she was overly romantic when it came to the whole concept of fatherhood.

“And now I want you to take your attention to your feet. Imagine that your feet are dissolving into the bed like warm honey. They’re dissolving … liquefying.”

She continued with the honey metaphor as she slowly worked her way up his body, encouraging him to sink deeper and deeper into his trance. This was the deepest she’d ever taken him.

She pinched his arm and he didn’t flinch. Spontaneous anesthesia.

If he was a regular client, now was the point where she would plant a posthypnotic suggestion. If she was treating a smoker, she might say, “Every time you go to open your packet of cigarettes, you will feel an overwhelming sense of revulsion and disgust.” If she was treating an overeater, she might say, “You will eat slowly and mindfully and only what your body needs.”

But Patrick hadn’t asked for help with any particular problem. He just wanted stress relief. He just wanted a good night’s sleep.

As a therapist, she would only know what he told her.

As his girlfriend, she happened to know that this weekend had the potential to be extremely stressful.

She said, “Throughout this weekend you are going to maintain a wonderful sense of relaxation and well-being.”

Nothing wrong with that. He was already in that frame of mind anyway.

She said, “If anything goes wrong, if you hear or see anything that upsets you, or worries you, the touch of my hand on your right shoulder—like this—will instantly bring about a sense of deep relaxation.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Whatever life throws at you, you’ll be able to handle it. If something unexpected happens, you will have the resources to do what you know, in your heart, is right for you. You will not remember these suggestions. And now, on the count of three, you will come out of your trance, and you will immediately fall asleep, and you will sleep throughout the night without dreaming or waking, and in the morning you will feel refreshed and reinvigorated. One. Two. Three.”

His breathing changed, became shallower, and he made a comical sound that was halfway between a snort and a snore.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, as he turned over on one side and pulled one of the pillows into a vertical position and shoved it under his head. “G’night, darling.”

And then he was asleep.

Ellen turned on her side so that her back was pressed against his.

Had she just crossed the line, ethically speaking?

Flynn would say that she’d crossed it the first time she agreed to perform any form of hypnosis on Patrick.

Danny would laugh and say he didn’t believe there were any lines to cross. That was what being in a relationship was all about: trying to manipulate the other person to do what you wanted. “Everyone tries to hypnotize their partners,” he’d said to her once. “We’re just better at it than the average person.”

What did she think herself? Well. She didn’t believe she’d crossed the line, exactly, but perhaps she’d edged her toe over it.

The tip of her toe. She thought of Saskia. Now she could put a face to her. An intelligent, attractive face. Saskia wasn’t afraid to cross any line to try to get Patrick back.

Lines were there to be crossed.

So maybe Ellen was just doing what she needed to do for her unborn child. She was a lioness protecting her cub; a mother rushing into a burning building to save her child. Or maybe that was rubbish and she was trying to rationalize doing something that she knew was wrong.

Well. Look. She just wouldn’t do it again. She’d teach him to do his own self-hypnosis. That was the solution. There was something ever so slightly … unsavory about this habit of theirs. She enjoyed it too much. That was the last time.

She felt like an altar boy promising not to masturbate anymore.

She fell asleep and dreamed of Deborah-who-was-now-Saskia. She was sitting cross-legged in Ellen’s recliner chair for clients, dipping a spoon into a huge jar of honey. She took a spoonful and held it far above her head, and let a long thin line of honey drizzle into her open mouth.

Then she closed her mouth and looked at Ellen, and slowly, sensuously slid her tongue over her sticky lips.

“You crossed the line,” she said. “You know you did.”

“Don’t get honey on my chair,” said Ellen briskly, to cover her shame.

After we got off the plane, I stood in a far corner of the terminal next to a big pillar where I could see them waiting at the baggage carousel but they couldn’t see me.

Ellen kept looking about her like she was expecting to see someone she knew. Patrick was completely focused on the carousel, eyes narrowed, his whole body poised, ready to leap. He was always like that when we traveled. He seemed to think collecting luggage was some sort of test of strength and agility, as if he had to crash tackle his bag the moment it appeared and wrestle it to the ground. It always made me laugh.

It made Ellen laugh too. I saw her smiling when he suddenly shot forward and pounced on both their bags at once, re-emerging triumphant with his prey.

I gave him that bag as a birthday present the last year we were together.

Ellen is one of those people who ties a ribbon around the handle of her bag so it’s easy to spot. Her ribbon was a big, floaty, shiny blue bow, feminine and whimsical and yet so sensible. That ribbon sums up everything I love and hate about her.

I watched them walk off to the car rental counter. He was carrying both of their bags. I guess he’s being especially caring and chivalrous now that she’s pregnant.

I thought it was my birthright as a woman to have that time, at least once, where a man treats you like a princess, rubbing your feet at night, pressing his hand to your stomach, masterfully ordering you not to pick up anything too heavy.

But apparently not.

It probably would have driven me crazy anyway. I just like the idea of it. I’m too tall to be treated like a princess.

When they stopped at the counter, I saw him kneading the back of her neck as they talked to the car hire woman. At one point all three of them laughed heartily over something. After they left the terminal, I went to the carousel to pick up my bag. It was the only one left. Slowly revolving around, alone and ignored and invisible. No pretty ribbon. Old and tired and sagging in the middle. Now, I wonder who that could remind me of?

“Don’t look so sorry for yourself,” I snapped at it, and a man walking by quickly looked away.

I went to the same car hire place. No hearty laughs from the woman for me. Just grim slapping down of paperwork and dire warnings about the excess on the insurance and how it was my responsibility to look carefully for any damage on the car before I took it.

“Actually, I think it should be your responsibility,” I said.

The woman stared, and I said, “Oh, forget it.”

I drove to the Sheraton and steeled myself for the memories as soon as I walked into the lobby, but they’d renovated. The place looked completely different. It was like they’d done it on purpose.
You don’t exist anymore, Saskia. We’ve brought in interior designers to wipe away all trace of you.

There was no sign of Ellen and Patrick.

I went for a walk on the beach and tried to use Ellen’s dial technique for my leg pain. Maybe it works. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it. She would say that’s exactly the point: to
use
my imagination so that I don’t actually experience the pain.

I guess she will have the chance to use her techniques for a pain-free childbirth. She said that women have been known to have cesareans without painkillers, “using their body’s own natural anesthesia.” Sure. Someone cuts open your stomach with a knife and you don’t feel a thing. All you need to do is
believe
. Sounds like something from a Christmas movie.