The Hypnotist's Love Story (32 page)

Alfred’s shoes drummed against the floor. “Miss Bourke is hitting my legs!”

Bitch, thought Ellen.

Four-year-old tears were running down Alfred’s fifty-two-year-old face. “Now I have to stand up in front of everyone and say sorry to Pam and sorry to the whole class for breaking their Easter eggs, and everyone is looking at me like I’m … like I’m a bank robber.”

Ellen wanted to march straight back through time and remove Alfred from the preschool and take him out for an ice cream.

But there was only person who could do that.

She raised her voice. “I want to talk to grown-up Alfred now. Are you there?”

Alfred straightened up. He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. His voice deepened again. “Yes.”

“All right, Alfred, I want you to go back to that preschool now and see
your four-year-old self with your grown-up eyes. I’m going to count backward from five. Five, four, three, two, one … be there.”

Alfred stretched his neck.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see four-year-old Alfred?”

“Yes.”

“What would you like to say to him?”

“It’s all right, mate. Girls don’t like snails. They’re strange like that. You were just trying to help. None of it was your fault.”

Ellen checked her watch. The session was running overtime and she had Mary-Kate McMasters booked for the next one, assuming of course that she turned up. Time to wrap up with a few positive suggestions.

An image of Mary-Kate’s sad, dumpy face appeared in Ellen’s mind.

She looked thoughtfully at Alfred Boyle.

Mary-Kate and Alfred were both single.

“Single,” they’d both said immediately, with exactly the same resigned well-what-would-you-expect intonation in their voices when she’d asked about their relationship status for their intake paperwork.

They were of similar ages. She couldn’t think of anything else they had in common, but still, who could ever really predict the magical combination of personality attributes and backgrounds and chemistry that caused two people to fall in love?

So why not give them just the tiniest nudge? The barest flick of her fingernail could roll them together like two marbles. What would be the harm? Before she could change her mind, she started talking.

“You’ve been carrying around the feelings from that day in preschool for a long while now. Now you can begin to rewrite history. The next time you run into a sad-looking woman you may feel a strong desire to pay her a compliment…”

Ellen paused. Assuming Mary-Kate was the next sad-looking woman he
saw, how would she respond? Presumably not like four-year-old Pam, but still this was Mary-Kate. Ellen actually had no idea how she’d react. Was this a crazy idea?

“And
no matter how she reacts
, you’ll feel good about yourself. In fact, you’ll feel great.”

Ellen hesitated. How far should she push this?

Oh, to hell with it.

“You may even find yourself asking her out. You’ll speak clearly and confidently and you’ll look her straight in the eye, and if four-year-old Alfred starts to get in the way, grown-up Alfred will take charge. You’ll ask her out for a drink. Tonight if she’s free. To the Manly Wharf Hotel, perhaps. You could sit at one of those seats right out…”

OK, now she was getting carried away. She hurriedly finished off.

“And even if this woman says no, you’ll be filled with optimism and confidence and positivity, because all that matters is you took that leap. Nod to show me you understand.”

Alfred nodded once. His head had dropped forward toward his chest. He looked like a drunk who was agreeing that someone should call him a taxi.

Well, thought Ellen. What would be, would be.

She brought him out of his trance.

“How do you feel?” She poured him a glass of water.

Alfred took the water from her outstretched hand, tipped his head back and drank deeply. Then he put the empty glass back down on the table and grinned at her. He actually had quite a nice smile.

“Good, I think,” he said. He shook his head and chuckled. “Yep, I’ve always been such a hit with the ladies. Just what every girl wants. A hairy-shelled snail. I hadn’t thought about that in years.”

“A tomboyish girl might have appreciated the snail,” said Ellen.

“But you’re not saying
that
was the cause of my problem with public speaking, are you?” said Alfred.

“I’m not saying anything at all.”
Ellen folded her hands on her lap and smiled at him.

“It’s just—”

“What?”

“Well, it’s so trivial. It’s embarrassing. It’s not like we discovered I had a past life where I was, I don’t know, stoned to death by Egyptian monks because I gave a boring speech.”

“
Egyptian
monks?”

“I don’t know, I’m an accountant, not a historian! Anyway, I don’t believe in past lives.”

Excellent. That was something he had in common with Mary-Kate. They could chat about their lack of belief in past lives. Perhaps they’d been skeptical lovers in ancient Rome.

“Or at least if I’d repressed some really shocking, traumatic memory from my childhood,” mused Alfred.

It was interesting how many clients with perfectly happy childhoods longed to find something dreadful in their past.

“The most trivial incident can be traumatic for a child,” said Ellen. “And your subconscious retains those memories. That’s what we’re going to do at our next session. We’re going to reprogram your subconscious. Alfred, you’re going to be
amazed
at the new confidence you’re going to experience.”

As she made this pronouncement, she leaned forward and locked eyes with Alfred. She’d found that her clients remained extremely suggestible straight after they came out of a trance. It was a good opportunity for her to reinforce the session with some waking suggestions.

She looked at her watch.
Come on, Mary-Kate. Don’t cancel. This could be your destiny waiting for you
.

She wrote out Alfred’s receipt, and as she slowly led him down the stairs, the doorbell rang.

Yes!

“Ah! That will be my next appointment,” said Ellen joyously, as if it was a magnificent surprise to have another client show up.

“Oh, that’s … good,” said Alfred, who was probably now wondering if she had cash flow issues.

Ellen opened the door to reveal Mary-Kate’s unsmiling, dour face. Alfred stood back courteously to let her in first.

“Hi, Mary-Kate!” caroled Ellen.

Mary-Kate looked at her suspiciously. “Hi.”

“Oh!” Ellen slapped the side of her head (quite hard—she was a terrible actress). “I meant to give you … something, Alfred. If you could just wait one moment, I’ll be right back. My apologies, Mary-Kate. I won’t be long. Just, ah, take a seat, both of you.” She gestured at the two cane chairs she had sitting in the hallway next to a coffee table with magazines.

As she headed back up the stairs, she saw Mary-Kate plonk herself down and pick up a magazine from the coffee table.

Alfred coughed nervously and kept standing. He walked over to one of the prints Ellen had hanging on the wall and studied it intently like a serious buyer in a gallery.

Ellen went back into her office and found some notes on self-hypnosis for public speaking. She also picked up a relaxation CD for good measure.

Then she stood at her window and watched the ocean. Was she putting her toe across that ethical line again? They probably weren’t even talking to each other. She looked at her watch. How long before they’d start to worry that she’d collapsed or something?

She’d give them five minutes. Five minutes that could mean nothing at all in the stories of their lives, or five minutes that could potentially change everything, forever.

Which will it be, Alfred and Mary-Kate?

S
o I guess I should, that is, I mean I assume you don’t want … should I wait in the car?”

They had pulled up at the graveyard where Colleen was buried. Jack was in the backseat of the car, his head down, lips moving silently as he played with his Nintendo DS. He’d played for the whole hour and a half it had taken them to drive to Katoomba. Colleen’s parents had moved to the Blue Mountains a few years before she’d died, and they’d wanted her to be buried close to them. On the seat next to Jack was a giant bunch of Colleen’s favorite flowers (yellow gerberas) that Patrick had specially ordered and picked up from the florist that morning.

(It wasn’t like Patrick was buying flowers for another woman. A rival for his affections. A mistress. Certainly not. And it wasn’t as though Patrick had never bought flowers for Ellen before. He had. Many times. Beautiful bunches. So, then, why was she even thinking about the damned flowers when there was nothing to think about, nothing at all?)

“No, I want you to come.” Patrick turned off the ignition and unbuckled his seat belt. He turned to look at her and smiled uneasily. All morning, he’d been in a jumpy, skittish mood, laughing too loudly at her jokes, overly stern with Jack, and then suddenly hugging him to make up. It was as though he had intense stage fright about an upcoming performance.

“I’d sort of like to introduce you to her,” he said quietly.

“Ah,” said Ellen.

“Is that too weird?” He put his hand over hers.

“Of course not,” she said, while silently shrieking,
Of course it’s weird! Are you out of your mind?!

Patrick turned to the backseat. “Ready to come and see Mum, mate?”

“Just let me—” said Jack without looking up, his thumbs moving rapidly.

“Jack,” said Patrick sharply.

Jack sighed and tossed aside the Nintendo. “Fine.”

They all got out of the car. It was even colder than Ellen had expected and she pulled her coat more tightly around herself. She looked about, as she always did now, to see if Saskia had followed them today, but there was only an older couple murmuring to each other as they walked hand in hand back from the graveyard. The woman smiled at Ellen.

Since the book and flower incident, Ellen had only seen Saskia once, when she and Patrick and Jack were at their local supermarket. Jack and Patrick were arguing over breakfast cereals, and Ellen had looked up to see Saskia walking down the aisle toward them, pushing an empty trolley. Their eyes had met and Ellen had automatically smiled because it was Deborah Vandenberg she first saw: a client suffering chronic pain who was doing well with her treatment, who had chatted and joked with Ellen, a woman of a similar age to Ellen, who reminded her a little of Julia, who could so easily have been a friend.

A second later she remembered the true, peculiar nature of their relationship, and for some reason her nervous system had reacted as though she was embarrassed and her cheeks had flooded with color. Her throat
dried up and her eyes flew to Patrick and Jack, who were still obliviously discussing crunchy nut cornflakes. Saskia shook her head, almost imperceptibly, as if to say,
Don’t tell them
, and glided silently past.

“Are you all right?” Patrick had looked around, just as Saskia turned her trolley at the end of the aisle.

“Feeling a bit dizzy,” she’d said. (Pregnancy was so handy in that way.)

She’d felt obscurely guilty about that ever since. It felt like she and Saskia were somehow in cahoots to deceive Patrick. But there had been no point mentioning it to Patrick. Ever since Noosa, his hatred of Saskia seemed to have reached a new, more intense level. Ellen was frightened sometimes by the look in his eyes when he spoke about her. The night she’d thrown her grandmother’s plate against the wall, he’d come home with another lot of boxes to stack in the hallway (and flowers to apologize for slamming out of the house earlier) and he’d said, “She was at the house tonight. Psycho bitch.”

Why had Saskia shaken her head at Ellen? There had definitely been something conspiratorial about it. But didn’t she normally like Patrick to know she was there? Wasn’t that the point? And if not, what
was
the point? Did she really think that Patrick would eventually take her back? When and how would this all end? Saskia was a puzzle Ellen couldn’t stop trying to solve.

Now Patrick leaned into the back of the car and pulled out the bunch of gerberas. He held them in front of him with both hands clasped around the stems, like a nervous beau about to walk up to his girlfriend’s door. He gave Ellen a strange half smile.

“So,” he said.

Jack scuffed his foot against the grass and made a
pow-pow
sound through his lips like a machine gun.

“Jack,” said Patrick.

“What?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Come on. Let’s go.”

Jack ran ahead. Ellen walked alongside Patrick, looking at the names on gravestones, and wondered if it would be inappropriate to mention that she felt sick. She longed for the little pile of dry Vita-Weat biscuits she’d carefully wrapped in plastic for this morning’s journey and then left on the kitchen counter.

She was exactly eleven weeks pregnant today and it seemed that the nausea, which up until now had just been like a mildly unpleasant background noise, had suddenly intensified. She’d vomited this morning. She never vomited. She didn’t even like the word. It was horrendously uncomfortable and undignified, kneeling on the bathroom floor, bent over the toilet bowl. She’d wanted to cry for her mother, which was absurd, because her mother hadn’t been much use when Ellen was unwell as a child. Anne would always try to comfort Ellen by telling her about the much sicker children she’d treated that day.

Apparently Colleen hadn’t been sick for a single moment when she was pregnant with Jack. She’d played tennis every week right up until she was eight months pregnant!

She wasn’t imagining it. Patrick was definitely talking more about Colleen since their engagement. In fact, she’d started keeping a tally in her head, and there had been at least one reference to Colleen every single day for the last week. She’d learned that Colleen had put headphones over her pregnant stomach and played classical music to the baby every night (Ellen had wanted to do the same thing for her baby, but she’d gone off the idea now); Colleen had craved salt and vinegar chips throughout her pregnancy; Colleen had actually
lost
weight in the first few months of her pregnancy, which had worried Patrick; Colleen hadn’t suffered any mood swings; Colleen had a completely natural childbirth, and so on and so forth.