The Hypnotist's Love Story (42 page)

“I had the pleasure of meeting another one of your satisfied clients on the way in,” said Ian. “Great little operation you’ve got going here. Regularly hand out refunds, do you?”

“You really need to talk to your wife about this,” said Ellen. She floundered; her professional identity suddenly seemed slippery and tenuous. She saw her mother’s face all those years ago: “Ellen, you can’t seriously be considering a career in this.” She thought of all the jokes and the sneers and the doubts she’d ever endured. It suddenly felt like she
was
a quack, a charlatan. “This is not the way it seems.”

“I bet you’re involved with these idiotic hypno-parties, aren’t you?” said Ian. “I guess it makes it easier to rip people off en masse.”

Oh, God, if he knew her connection to Danny. How would he handle this sort of attack? Or Flynn? Both of them would do a better job than she was doing now.

“I expect you cure cancer, do you?” said Ian. “Forget chemo. Just use the power of your mind.”

“I have never, ever made unsubstantiated claims,” said Ellen. “Look, for heaven’s sake, I’m not a faith healer. I’m a fully qualified clinical hypnotherapist and counselor. Hypnotherapy has been recognized by the Australian Medical Association.
Doctors
refer their patients to me.”

(Although not my own mother.)

“I expect you give them a nice little kickback for that.”

“I don’t actually.”

(Although she had sent Lena Peterson a nice box of chocolates for Christmas last year. Was that wrong?)

Ian stood up and went to the window. He tapped the glass as if he was testing its strength. “Ocean view. This is a great house. Business is obviously good.”

“This was actually my grandparents’ house—” began Ellen. She could hear Flynn:
You do not need to explain your financial situation to him.

Ian turned around to look at her. He spoke gently, almost kindly, as though he was paying her a nice compliment. “I’m bringing you down.”

“I beg your pardon?” She nearly laughed out loud. It just sounded so melodramatic. What was he talking about?

He smiled sweetly. “I’m putting you out of business.”

I
was driving back to the office from an on-site meeting when it occurred to me that I was only a few minutes away from the hypnotist’s house.

Don’t do it, I thought. You’ve got that meeting with Steve later. A million e-mails waiting for you. You’re in a good mood. Why do you always do this when you’re in a good mood?

But I was already turning left instead of right, as if I had no choice in the matter, as if her house had some sort of irresistible magnetic force.

I’d been feeling a bit strange about what I did on Sunday. I kept thinking about it and feeling amazed at myself: that I could go into someone else’s house and make biscuits. I imagine how that sort of behavior would sound to someone else. Like the people I just met at that development site. One of the women told me that she’d spent last weekend in Mudgee, and I thought: Imagine if you knew what I did on Sunday. How your face would change, how you’d take a careful step away, how I’d be instantly transformed from fellow professional to strange, crazy woman.

It never really felt like I was doing anything wrong when I went into Patrick’s house, because it never stopped feeling like home. That’s where I spent the happiest years of my life. I scrubbed that bathroom every Saturday morning. I painted Jack’s room. I chose the rug for the dining room. It never felt illegal or wrong; I felt like I had a right to be there, even if nobody else would agree.

But going into Ellen’s house and cooking biscuits, and opening the door to angry visitors like I lived there—I feel like I’ve possibly crossed a line.

I woke up at three a.m. on Monday morning with this thought clear in my head: I have to get help. Therapy. Proper therapy. I have to stop. I even went and looked up counseling services in the white pages on the Internet. I wrote down names and numbers. It was the responsible thing to do.

And then I woke up a few hours later to go to work, and everything seemed so ordinary in the daylight, and I thought, Oh, look, I don’t really need
therapy
. I hold down a job. I’m not suicidal or bulimic or hearing voices. I’ll just stop. The biscuits will be my last hurrah. My au revoir gift.

That feeling lasted all through yesterday, and I felt great last night. I even went next door and reminded the happy Labrador family that it was garbage night. Which was a caring, neighborly thing to do, not the act of someone who needs therapy. They bounced about, all grateful because they’d forgotten that it was garbage night, and they had so much rubbish from the move, and oh, by the way, how was Sunday? For a moment I completely forgot the mythical fortieth birthday party, but then I did a completely believable act of remembering it, and saying how it was a great party, and the weekend already seemed like such a long time ago, even though it was only Monday, that’s what work did to you, and oh, ha ha ha, and tra la la la, isn’t life a hoot.

And today I went to work without thinking about Patrick or Jack or Ellen or the new baby at all. I enjoyed the meeting.

It was for a new shopping complex. It’s in a great spot high up with views of the ocean, and I thought of Ellen’s office with those big glass windows and the way the sun reflects off the water, and I told the developers
that we need an area like a village square, with big glass windows, somewhere you could sit and have a cup of coffee and see the sky, with enough space for your toddler to run around in circles and pretend to be an airplane. It would be the sort of place I had needed when Jack was a toddler and I took him shopping. It’s strange how I still feel like I’m the mother of a toddler, even though he’s a schoolboy now and he doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s like I’m frozen in time. The developers said, OK, chuckle, chuckle, we’ll call it Saskia’s Serenity Spot, with just a touch of that condescending but flirtatious yes-dear tone they get, as if the little lady was asking for a bigger kitchen, but I’m going to fight tooth and nail to make sure it stays there. I’m doing it for the mothers.

So I was filled with vigorous professional satisfaction, and remembering what I loved about town planning, and when I got in the car I had a phone call, and it was Tammy.

My old friend Tammy Cook. The one who let me stay in her spare room after Patrick said, “It’s over.”

She was a good friend to me at that time, taking care of me like I was an invalid. She made me chicken soup and cups of tea, and held my hand while I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and tried to breathe, even though I felt like a lorry had parked on my chest. I remember asking her if life would ever feel the same again, and she said, “Of course it will, honey.” She was wrong, but still, she was a nice girl, the sort of girl who calls you “honey” and says, “I love you.” I can’t actually believe I once had a friend like that. It’s like remembering that I once spoke fluent French, when now I can’t understand a single word.

After I moved out of her place and into the duplex, she kept trying to be my friend. She wanted me to go dancing and drinking in nightclubs and bars. She wanted me to snap out of it, to pull myself together, to show him, to get back out there.

I remember thinking that it wasn’t fair. If Patrick had been killed in a car accident, I would have been allowed to grieve for him for years. People would have sent me flowers and sympathy cards; they would have dropped
off casseroles. I would have been allowed to keep his photos up, to talk about him, to remember the good times. But because he dumped me, because he was still alive, my sadness was considered undignified and pathetic. I wasn’t being a proper feminist when I talked about how much I loved him. He stopped loving me, so therefore I had to stop loving him.
Immediately
. Chop, chop. Turn those silly feelings off right now. Your love is no longer reciprocated, so it is now foolish.

He and Jack were both gone from my life as if they were dead, but that was hardly a tragedy. Breakups happen to everyone. It was the same with Mum’s death. Old people die all the time. And she was sick! So, a blessing really. So what that you’ll never hear her voice again. So what that you’ll never read Jack another bedtime story. So what that you’ll never make love to Patrick again.

Get over it, get on with it, get a grip, girl. Everyone wanted me to hurry up and make myself happy again—cut my hair, sign up for evening classes—and it was just plain irritating when I wouldn’t, when I couldn’t. It was no wonder that Tammy slipped out of my life.

And now here she was again, after all these years, her voice on my mobile phone sounding exactly the same; Tammy always sounded slightly puffed out, like she’d just run around the block.

“Saskia, honey, I’m back in Sydney!” she said. I didn’t know she’d left Sydney. “You’re not on Facebook!” she said. “How are your old friends meant to find you if you’re not on Facebook, you philistine!”

She acted as though we’d just lost touch the way ordinary people do. She didn’t even mention Patrick. She asked if I’d have a drink with her on Wednesday night. And I said sure, while I sat in the car and felt the sun on my face, and I thought no way do I need therapy! I’m meeting an old friend for a drink tomorrow night! I’m perfectly normal.

Then five minutes later I found myself driving to the hypnotist’s house.

I’ll just drive by, I told myself. I won’t stop the car. Jack will be at school, and Patrick will be at work, and Ellen will be sitting in her striped chair, in her cozy little
glass haven, offering chocolates, letting her liquid voice rise and fall while the sunlight dances around the walls.

As I drove there I wished I was still Deborah going for another appointment about my leg pain. It’s strange how much I enjoyed those sessions. The pain has been worse again lately. I haven’t even bothered with any of Ellen’s techniques. Now that I’m not Deborah to her, I don’t feel entitled to use them.

But Patrick was there.

As I turned the corner into her street, I saw them coming out of the house together, hurrying as if they were running late for an appointment. Patrick was wearing jeans. He had the day off. Why? He never took a day off during the week. Ellen was wearing jeans too, and a beautiful long gray fitted coat with cute pom-poms bouncing about on little strings. The sort of coat only someone quirky and delightful could wear. You couldn’t tell she was pregnant yet.

They looked like a couple; nobody looking at them would think that they didn’t belong together. And there it was, that strange feeling of exquisite, tender pain: delicate but fierce, like a long, thin, gleaming needle slowly piercing my flesh.

Where could they be going? I didn’t even bother fighting it; I had to know. If I could just know, it wouldn’t hurt so much. I always think that, even though the knowledge always hurts more.

So I followed them. I was driving one of the work cars because mine was acting up again, so Patrick didn’t see me or do any of his clever maneuvers to get rid of me.

They drove to Jack’s school.

A school concert, perhaps? Or a soccer game? One that I’d missed? I thought about texting him to ask, not that he would answer, of course, but then Ellen stayed in the car while Patrick went into the school. He was half running. Was Jack sick?

But then only a few minutes later he reappeared, walking quickly, carrying Jack’s
schoolbag while Jack ran to keep up with him. They jumped in the car and off they went again.

I couldn’t think where they’d be going at this time of day, and my desire to know was now a raging thirst. I was leaning forward now, my hands clenched hard around the steering wheel, my vision focused entirely on the number plate of Patrick’s car.

I dream about that number plate.

Lance from work rang on my mobile and I let it go to voice-mail. Following them was all that mattered. I lost them at a set of lights on Military Road, when some idiot driver slammed on her brakes at an orange light, as if her sole purpose was to thwart me. I screamed with frustration and slammed my hands so hard on the steering wheel they will probably bruise. It was pure luck that I found them again. When I got to the end of Falcon Street, I turned left onto the Pacific Highway, for no particular reason, just because I was in the left-hand lane, and I saw the three of them walking along a footpath. Ellen pointed at a building and they disappeared inside.

I found a spot nearby and didn’t bother putting money in the meter. I walked back to the same building while pain grabbed and twisted at my leg.

When I got to the empty lobby, I stopped at the directory board that listed various business names. Dental surgery. Chartered accountants. Immigration specialists. It could have been anything.

And then I saw:
Sydney Ultrasound.

That’s where they were going. To see the baby.

The baby.

It felt personal, as if all three of them were doing this to hurt me, as if this entire building had been placed here for the sole purpose of hurting me.

He would hold her hand, and they would listen to the heartbeat and exchange teary, radiant smiles. I’ve seen the movies. I know how it works. Jack would see his little brother or sister for the first time.

You’ll be the best big brother in the world, I used to tell him when
Patrick and I were trying to get pregnant. Jack said he’d prefer a little sister. His best friends were all girls at preschool. “I want a little sister called Jemima,” he said. “With black hair.” And then he added, “Please.” I was teaching him manners at the time. I said that would be fine. I quite liked the name Jemima.

I thought, Thank God I followed them. Otherwise I might never have known what day it was that they went for the ultrasound. It would have suddenly occurred to me, probably at three a.m. one morning, that they must have been due for an ultrasound by now, and then I would have lain awake, obsessing over the details, wondering when it was, and where, and what they wore. At least this way I had some control. I was still part of it; I still existed. Even if they didn’t know I was there,
I
would know. I could say, “Fancy seeing you here!” as they came out of the office, or I could send a text tonight saying, “How was the ultrasound?” or I could do nothing at all, but I would be a part of it from the beginning: from that very first pregnancy test, of course.