The Hypnotist's Love Story (3 page)

A stalking ex-girlfriend was fine!

It was
interesting.

Although, then again, stalking …

She saw notes written in letters cut out from magazines and newspapers. Messages written in blood on walls. Crazy fans sitting outside celebrities’ houses. Violent ex-husbands shooting their wives.

But who stalked a
surveyor
? (Even if he did have an especially lovely jawline?)

“So when you say
stalking
, what does she actually do? Is she violent?”

“No.” Patrick looked as if he was being forced to answer a series of highly personal medical questions. “Never physically violent. Occasionally she yells. Gets a bit abusive. She makes phone calls in the middle of the night, sends me letters, e-mails, text messages, but mostly she’s just there. Wherever I go, she’s there.”

“You mean she follows you?”

“Yes. Everywhere.”

“So, goodness, this must be horrible for you!” There was that middle-aged lady again. “Have you been to the police?”

He winced, as if at an uncomfortable memory. “Yes. Once. I spoke to a female police officer. I don’t know if she—look, she
said
all the right things, I just felt like an idiot, like a wuss. She suggested I keep a ‘Stalking Incident Log’ recording everything, and I’ve done that. She said I could take out a restraining order against her, so I was thinking about doing that, but then, when I told my ex that I’d been to the police, she said if I took it any further, she would tell them
I’d
been harassing
her
, that I’d hit her—well, you know, I’m the
guy
, who are they going to believe? Her, of course. So I backed right off. I just keep hoping she’ll stop. And the years keep rolling by. I can’t believe it’s been going on so long.”

“It must be…” Ellen was going to say “frightening,” but that might offend him; it was her belief that the male ego was as delicate as an eggshell. She said instead, “Stressful.” She couldn’t quite keep the undercurrent of joy out of her voice.

“In the beginning I really let it get to me,” he said. “But now I’ve sort of accepted it. It’s
just how my life has worked out, but it’s hard on new relationships. Some women get freaked out by the whole thing. Some of them say they’re fine with it at first, but then they can’t handle it.”

“I can handle it,” said Ellen, quickly, as if she was at a job interview and she was proving she was up to the challenge. Hearing about ex-girlfriends’ weaknesses always brought out a competitive urge to prove she was better.

Flustered, she took a mouthful of her wine. She’d just put her cards on the table. She had basically just said: I want a relationship with you.

She pretended to be frowning down at her wineglass, as if she was about to make some disparaging comment on the quality of the wine, and when she finally looked up, Patrick was smiling at her. A big crinkle-eyed smile of pure pleasure. He reached out across the table and took her hand in his.

“I hope you can,” he said. “Because I feel really good about this. I mean, about us. The possibility of us.”

“The possibility of us,” repeated Ellen, savoring the words and the feel of his hand. It was all such rubbish about getting clinical and jaded when you were in your thirties. The feel of his hand was shooting endorphins throughout her bloodstream. She knew all about the science of love, how her brain was currently surging with “love chemicals” (norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine), but that didn’t mean she wasn’t as susceptible as anyone else.

So now all their cards were on the table.

“What made you tell me tonight?” asked Ellen. His thumb was tracing circles in her palm.
Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. “
About your stalker?”

His thumb stopped.

“I saw her,” he said.

“You saw her!” Ellen’s eyes darted about the restaurant. “You mean, here?”

“She was sitting at a table under the window.” He gestured with his chin over Ellen’s shoulder. She went to turn around to look but Patrick said, “Don’t worry. She’s gone now.”

“What was she doing? Just … watching us?”

Ellen was aware of her heart rate picking up. She wasn’t sure how she felt: frightened, possibly a little thrilled.

“She was texting on her mobile,” said Patrick wearily.

“Texting you?”

“Probably. I’ve got my phone switched off.”

“Do you want to see what she said?” Ellen wanted to see what she said.

“Not particularly,” said Patrick. “Not at all, actually.”

“When did she leave?” If only Ellen had known earlier, she could have seen her.

“When I stood up to go to the bathroom, she followed me. We had a little chat in the corridor. That’s why I took so long. She said she was just leaving, and she did, thank God.”

So she must have walked right past Ellen! Ellen searched her mind for a memory of a woman walking by but came up blank. It was probably when she was doing her self-hypnosis, damn it.

“What did she say?”

“She always puts on this pathetic act, as if we just happened to run into each other. You’d think she’d look like a crazy bag lady, with, you know, crazy hair, but she looks so normal, so together. It makes me doubt myself, as if I’m imagining the whole thing. She’s a successful career woman. Well respected. Can you believe it? I always wonder what her colleagues would think if they knew what she does in her spare time. Anyway … shall we talk about something more pleasant? How was your fish?”

Are you kidding?
There was no other subject Ellen wanted to talk about more. She wanted to know every detail. She wanted to understand what was going through this woman’s head. She normally understood a woman’s perspective in any given situation. She was a girl’s girl. She liked women;
it was men who often mystified her. But stalking your ex-boyfriend for three years? Was she a psychopath? Had he treated her badly? Was she still in love with him? How did she justify her own behavior to herself?

“The fish was great,” said Ellen. She tried to suppress her greed for more information. It was a bit unseemly when this was obviously such a distressing part of this man’s life. She knew it was one of her flaws: a ravenous curiosity about other people’s personal lives.

“Who is looking after your son tonight?” she asked, to help him change the subject.

“My mother,” said Patrick. His face softened. “Jack adores his grandma.”

Then he blinked, looked at his watch, and said, “Actually, I promised I’d call him to say good night. He wasn’t feeling that well when I left. Would you mind?” He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

“Of course not.”

“I don’t normally call him when I’m out,” he said, as he turned the phone on. “I mean, he’s a pretty independent kid now. He does his own thing.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s just that he’s had this really bad cold and then it turned into a chest infection. He’s on antibiotics.”

“It’s
perfectly
fine.” She wanted to hear him talking to his little boy.

His phone was beeping, over and over.

Patrick grimaced. “Text messages.”

“From your, ah, your stalker?” Ellen tried not to look too avidly at the beeping phone.

He studied the screen on his phone. “Yes. Mostly I just delete them without even bothering to read them.”

“Right.” She couldn’t help herself. “Because they’re nasty?”

“Sometimes. Mostly they’re just pathetic.” She watched his face as he read the messages, pressing buttons with his thumb. He smiled ironically, as if he was engaged in nasty banter with an enemy. He rolled his eyes. He chewed on the edge of his lip.

“Want to read them?” He held out the phone to her.

“Sure,” said Ellen casually. She leaned forward and read as he scrolled through the messages for her.

Fancy seeing you here! I’m at a table under the window.

You look good in that shirt.

You ordered the pork belly? What were you thinking?

She’s pretty. You two look good together. S xx

Ellen recoiled.

“Sorry,” said Patrick. “I shouldn’t have shown you that one. I promise you, you’re not in any, you know, danger.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” She nodded at the phone. “Keep going.”

Nice running into you tonight. We should do coffee one day soon?

I love you. I hate you. I love you. I hate you. No, I definitely hate you.

Ellen sat back.

“What’s your professional opinion?” asked Patrick. “Certifiably crazy, right? Remember, this relationship ended three years ago.”

“How long did you go out for?”

“Two years. Well, three years. She was my first relationship after my wife died.”

She wanted to ask how it ended but instead she said, “Why don’t you just change your phone number?”

“I used to change it all the time, but it’s not worth it. I’m self-employed. I need people to be able to track me down. Hey, I’d better call my son. I’ll be quick.”

Ellen watched him as he dialed a number and held the phone to his ear.

“It’s me, mate. How are you going? … What did I have? Oh, pork belly.”

He glanced down ruefully at his plate. “Yeah, it wasn’t that great. Anyway, how are you feeling? You’re OK? You took your antibiotics? What’s Grandma doing? Oh really? That’s good. Yeah. OK. Well, maybe if you just tell me quickly.”

He stopped talking and listened. His eyes met Ellen’s and he winked briefly.

“Is that right? OK, well—right. A volcano? Parachuting? Geez.”

He kept listening, tapping his fingers on the tablecloth.

Ellen watched his hand. It was a lovely hand. Big square-cut fingernails.

“OK, mate. Listen, you might have to tell me the rest tomorrow. I’m being really rude to my … friend. OK. See you in the morning. Waffles, of course. Yep, definitely. Night, kid. Love you.”

He hung up the phone, switched it off and put it back in his pocket.

“Sorry,” he said. “He wanted to tell me every detail of this movie he’d seen. Gets that from me, I’m afraid.”

“Really,” said Ellen.

She was feeling a shot of intense pleasure at the back of her skull. She loved the way he talked to his son, so casual and funny and masculine and loving. She loved the fact that they were going to have waffles tomorrow morning. (She loved waffles!) She loved the way he said “Love you” so unself-consciously.

A waiter took away their plates, balancing them on his forearm. “Was the pork belly all right, sir?”

“It was fine.” Patrick smiled up at him. “Just wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”

“Can I tempt you with the dessert menu? Or coffees?”

Patrick raised his eyebrows at Ellen.

“No thank you,” she said.

“Just the bill then, thanks, mate,” said Patrick.

Ellen looked at her watch. It was only ten o’clock. “I’ve got some nice chocolates at home,” she said. “If you want to have coffee at my place. If you’ve got time.”

“I’ve got time,” said Patrick, and his eyes met hers.

Of course, they never bothered with the coffee and chocolates. As they made love for the first time on the clean sheets, there was a sudden flurry
of hard rain on the roof, and Ellen thought briefly of Patrick’s stalker, and wondered where she was right now, imagining her standing under a streetlight in the rain with no umbrella, raindrops sliding heedlessly down her pale, tortured (beautiful?) face, but then all the interesting sensations of a new lover filled every corner of her mind and she forgot all about her.

E
llen walked barefoot along the beach early the next morning, her trousers rolled up to her knees so she could let the waves break around her ankles, thinking about Patrick (she loved the name Patrick, nothing namby-pamby about it at all!) and everything that had happened the previous night.

His son. (So cute!)

His crazy ex-girlfriend. (Intriguing! Although also possibly somewhat frightening. She wasn’t sure.)

His body.
Goodness,
she had thought, as if she were a swooning heroine in a Regency romance, when he unbuttoned his unassuming striped business shirt. Just thinking about his chest gave her a shot of pure lust and she pressed two fingers to her tender lips, grazed from all that kissing.

He had left right at midnight. Like Cinderella. He said that although his
mother was staying at his place to look after his son, and would have gone to bed in the spare room, he always felt as if he was somehow taking advantage of her if he stayed out too late.

“I hate doing this. Of course, if we—you know—I’ll be able to let her know I’m staying overnight,” he’d said as he buttoned his shirt back up over his caveman chest.

“It’s fine,” Ellen had said, her voice thick with sleep. She was happy he was going. She preferred to lie in bed and think about him, rather than have him actually there and worry about what her hair looked like in the morning.

“I’ll call you,” he’d said when he kissed her good-bye.

Her phone had beeped with a text message at six a.m.

When can I see you again, please? I think you’ve got me hypnotized!

Which was cheesy. But extremely lovely.

So it looked like it was happening. She was at the beginning of something new.
Here we are again.
She took a deep breath of salty air and it caught in her throat. For a moment she felt the weight of all those previous disappointments.

Please let this one work, she thought pathetically.

And then, with more spirit,
Come on now, I deserve this!

Ellen had been in three long-term relationships: Andy, Edward and Jon. Sometimes she felt like she was always dragging the memories of these relationships along with her, like three old tin cans on a string.

Andy was a freakishly tall young banker. Their three-year relationship always seemed vaguely fraudulent to Ellen, like they were just pretending to be in love and doing a really excellent job of it. When Andy got an overseas posting, neither of them even mentioned the possibility of Ellen going with him. The whole affair left her with the same sense of grimy regret she felt after eating McDonald’s.