The Hypnotist's Love Story (27 page)

Ellen looked at the time. She wasn’t expecting any clients. Saskia, she thought, as she walked down the stairs.
And now there is no large plumber to protect me.
Just in case, she picked up one of her grandmother’s heavy glass candlestick holders from the hall table, laughing at her serious reflection in the hallway mirror. But, still, she didn’t put it down.

She opened the door.

It wasn’t Saskia. It was a thin, short, nervous-looking girl smoking a cigarette and smiling up at her apologetically.

Ellen knew her face perfectly well, but for a moment she couldn’t place her; she’d been so sure it was Saskia, she couldn’t get the name “Saskia” out of her head.

The girl dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath her foot. Then she picked up the butt and held it in her cupped hand.

“I can’t believe I lit this up while I was waiting for you,” she said. “I’m an idiot. Anyway, as you can see, I’m still at it.”

Ellen stared at the crushed cigarette and said, “Rosie.”

“Yes,” said Rosie. “I’m sorry. I know I don’t have an appointment. I just got back from my honeymoon this morning, and I came by on the off chance you had some free time…”

“I saw your wedding photos in the paper last week,” said Ellen, trying
not to sound resentful.
You still married him after our breakthrough! Why did you marry him if you knew you didn’t even like him?

“
Those photos were awful,” said Rosie. “I looked so ugly, and you saw the color of the bridesmaid dresses?”

“The pictures were black and white.”

“Oh, right, of course. Well, they were awful. Anyway, do you … could you fit me in?”

“Of course I could,” said Ellen warmly, guilty about her resentment. She stood back and ushered her in, discreetly replacing the candlestick holder on the table.

“You’re probably wondering why I still married him,” said Rosie, when she was settled in the green recliner.

“Here,” said Ellen, offering a tissue in the flat of her hand so that Rosie could finally dispose of the cigarette butt she was still holding.

“It was the most stupid of all reasons,” said Rosie. “You’ll be horrified.”

“I’m sure I won’t be.” Although she might very well be.

“When I left here after our last session, I was so ready to call off the wedding. I knew it would be a huge deal. The invitations had gone out. You know the
prime minister
was on the guest list. She had to be in Japan or something, but, you know … And my mum had lost twenty kilos and bought the most expensive dress she’d ever owned, and my dad had spent days working on this terrible speech, and my friends were all so jealous, which isn’t the reason to marry somebody, but, you know, everyone thought I was marrying out of my league, which I was, which I
did,
but anyway, that’s not why I did it—it was something that happened after I left here.”

“What happened?” asked Ellen.

“I thought I’d go for a walk on the beach,” said Rosie. She was tapping at her lips with two fingertips in a V-shape: the way of a smoker longing for a cigarette. “To clear my head, to think about how I could possibly explain it to Ian, and I saw this couple sitting on the beach and they were kissing, really kissing, you know the way people kiss when they’re at the beginning of a relationship?”

“I know,” said
Ellen. She remembered that kiss with Patrick outside the museum.

“And I thought, oh, that’s sweet, but then as I got closer, I thought, that’s Joe! My ex-boyfriend. We broke up a year ago. I thought I was over him. I thought I didn’t care less, but the
way
he was kissing this girl, like he’d never experienced such bliss, it just killed me.”

“Ah,” said Ellen.

“And just like that, I thought, I can’t do it, I can’t call off the wedding,” said Rosie. “We were going on our honeymoon to this expensive resort in Malaysia, where my ex-boyfriend and I had always wanted to go, but we couldn’t ever afford it, and I wanted him to hear about it. I wanted him to imagine me there with another man. I wanted to wipe that blissful expression off his face. He’d always had a thing about money and wealthy people being somehow better than him, and I knew that we had mutual friends who would tell him all about the wedding—and I don’t know, it was like I lost my mind. And I just went ahead with the wedding, and decided that I did love Ian, of course I did, how could I not? I convinced myself that I’d just got confused in my session. I sort of blamed you, to be honest. So I got married, and that was all fine, but you know what?”

“What?” said Ellen.

“Two things. The resort in Malaysia wasn’t that great, it was actually pretty awful, and we had to cut the honeymoon short because of some merger or coup or something or other. And then, do you know what I heard this morning? My ex only went out with that girl for a few weeks. He’s single again. But I actually couldn’t care less, either way! I never really wanted to get back together with him, I just couldn’t bear to think of him being so happy with someone else and then hearing that I was single again. Isn’t that the most pathetic thing you ever heard in your life?”

“Of course not,” said Ellen. “We all have the most peculiar motivations for what we do.”

There was a pause. Rosie fidgeted and then said suddenly, “You’re engaged!” She pointed at Ellen’s ring and Ellen realized she’d been drawing
attention to it by twisting it around her finger. It had very quickly become a habit. “Congratulations! I bet you love him. I bet you love him properly.”

“Well.” Ellen smiled foolishly. She didn’t want to sound smug.

“Anyway,” said Rosie. “Ian wants to try for a baby straightaway.”

“So you’re ready to give up smoking once and for all,” guessed Ellen.

“No,” said Rosie. “I want you to hypnotize me into falling in love with him. I mean, love is just a state of mind, right? I don’t want to have a baby with someone I don’t love. You can do that, right? Make me believe that I love him? So I haven’t made the worst mistake of my life?”

E
llen’s mother was nervous.

It was suddenly perfectly clear. Ever since they had arrived at the restaurant for lunch, Ellen had been observing Anne, trying to work out what was different about her. Anyone else would have said that Anne was calm and at ease as she chatted with Ellen about the pregnancy, argued amiably with Ellen’s godmothers about the choice of wine and asked the waiter probing questions about the specials. Yet, there was something odd about the way she was sitting: her back was unnaturally straight, even for someone who was a passionate advocate of good posture, her chin too high, her shoulders too braced. Her beautiful violet eyes kept sweeping past Ellen. Normally Ellen was aware of her mother’s eyes giving her a rigorous health check: monitoring her skin tone, her weight, the whites of
her eyes. She had always thought that Anne would have preferred to strap a blood pressure monitor around her arm and shove a thermometer in her mouth each time they met rather than hug her.

She turned her attention to her godmothers. Phillipa had an air of suppressed excitement, as if she was about to see a slightly risqué show. At first, she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary about Melanie, but then she saw the way her eyes kept returning to Anne, waiting for something. Ellen remembered Mel’s phone call, only two weeks ago now, when she’d said that “Anne was behaving oddly.” With the pregnancy and the engagement she’d forgotten all about it.

As soon as the waiter left after taking their orders, Ellen spoke up. “OK, what’s going on?”

Anne’s hand went straight to her neck, and Ellen saw that she was wearing a beautiful, expensive-looking necklace that Ellen had never seen before, and also that the skin of her neck seemed older and more vulnerable than the rest of her, like a crumpled piece of silk; Ellen wanted to reach out and smooth it.

“Where did you get that necklace?” asked Ellen.

“You really can’t put anything past this one,” said Phillipa proudly. “She’s always been like that. Remember that time we tried to convince her that—”

“Pip,” said Melanie. “This is between Anne and Ellen.”

“Exactly! I agree! I don’t even know why we’re here! Would you like us to go off somewhere and give you two some privacy?”

Anne sighed. “The three of us brought up Ellen together. That’s why I wanted you two here as well. You’ve both been like mothers to Ellen. The four of us are a family. We’re a family and this is … a family matter.”

Ellen was horrified. Her mother did not talk like this.

“It’s cancer, isn’t it?” she said.

“It’s good news.” Anne smiled. Suddenly she looked radiant. “I came around to tell you the other night actually, but then we got distracted, didn’t we.”

“OK,” said Ellen.

“Well, it’s just that I’ve met up with your father, that’s all.”

“Well, not quite all,” said Phillipa.

“I’m sort of … in a relationship with him,” said Anne.

“It’s
so
romantic,” sighed Phillipa.

“I don’t understand,” said Ellen. “I thought he was married and living in the UK.”

“Divorced,” said Anne blissfully, as if divorce was one of life’s sweetest pleasures.

“And he’s moved back to Sydney,” added Melanie. “Your mother has been seeing him for weeks. She never told us. I
knew
something was going on.”

“It’s all due to me,” said Phillipa. “He found me on Facebook! He asked if I’d kept in touch with Anne O’Farrell, and when I told your mother, I could tell by the expression on her face that she still had a thing for him, even after all these years!”

“A
thing
for him?” said Ellen. She could feel the most profound sense of irritation rising in her chest. The three of them were acting like teenagers. “But you picked him from a list!”

“Yes, yes, all that happened,” said Anne. “Don’t worry. Your life isn’t based on a lie. The part I didn’t ever tell you was that I did actually have a little crush on him.”

“More than a little,” said Melanie. “Pip and I saw right through her, of course.”

Now all three of them were chewing at their expensively lipsticked mouths, like schoolgirls trying not to giggle in class. Anne refilled their wineglasses, and Ellen, who was drinking mineral water, felt like their middle-aged mother. They were all being so
silly.

“
And it turns out that he’s always had a thing for me too,” said Anne with pride. “He thought about me throughout his marriage. I was always popping up in his dreams apparently.”

“That poor woman,” said Ellen.

“What poor woman?” Her mother frowned.

“His wife! The one he was engaged to when you slept with him to conceive me!”

“Oh, don’t be so—” Anne stopped and flicked her hand as if to wave away a harmless insect. Ellen suspected she’d been about to say “boring.”

Mel spoke up. “Ellen, your mother had nothing to do with their marriage breakdown. There is nothing untoward going on here.”

Ellen thought about some poor woman in London, sleeping next to her husband each night, while he dreamed of a violet-eyed girl back in sunny Sydney. Nothing untoward indeed.

“So.” Ellen tried not to sound snappish. “You’ve told him about me?”

Anne’s moony expression vanished and she looked nervous again.

“He was very shocked, of course, and so cross with me for not telling him. He said he would have called off the wedding if he’d known and married me. Imagine! I could have been quite the little housewife.”

“Oh, Mum,” said Ellen.

There was something cozy and self-satisfied about her mother’s tone. It made Ellen’s whole existence seem tacky and trite instead of bohemian and brave.

“You’ll meet him, of course, won’t you, Ellen?” said Phillipa. “It will be just like that television show where they reunite lost families. I’m crying already, just thinking about it.”

“I will meet him, of course I’ll meet him, but there’s nothing romantic or heart-wrenching about this,” said Ellen. “We just share the same DNA.”

“But now you know your parents were in love!”

“We thought you’d be thrilled.” Mel gave Ellen a curious, analytical frown, as though she were an accounting discrepancy she needed to solve. “You were always so desperate to meet your father. You were obsessed with him for a while.”

“When I was fifteen,” said Ellen. Now it just seemed like an awkward sort of social obligation.

“Don’t you want to see what he’s like?” asked Phillipa.

“I’m curious, I guess,” continued Ellen, except she wasn’t particularly. She was too focused on her own life at the moment: her baby, her soon-to-be “stepson” and “husband.” Her husband-to-be’s ex-girlfriend. She didn’t have time to devote to building a new relationship.

“Well, there’s no rush,” said Anne. “Whenever you’re ready.” Her hand kept returning to her neck, to caress the stone of her new necklace.

“So the necklace is a gift from him?” asked Ellen. “From, ah … David.” Surely she wasn’t meant to call him Dad?

Anne removed her hand. “Yes. It’s for our one-month anniversary.” She flushed. “I know we’re too old for that sort of thing.”

“Awwww,” said Phillipa.

Ellen’s mother was clearly in love, and she was in love with Ellen’s father, which in most cases was considered appropriate and convenient and the way the world was meant to work. Ellen couldn’t understand why she felt so unhappy about it. Was it just resistance to change? Did she not want her mother to love anyone else except her? She would have to think about this when she got home.

“I’m happy for you, Mum.” She did her utmost to sound sincere.

“I’m not counting my chickens, it’s early days, of course,” said Anne briskly, but then she smiled her bizarre new smile and reached out to touch Ellen’s hand. “Your dad is the loveliest man I’ve ever known.”