The Hypnotist's Love Story (34 page)

Ellen saw me and then quickly looked away, almost like she was embarrassed or guilty, as if she was the stalker, not me.

That’s what Patrick calls me. A stalker. I got such a shock the first time he said it. How could I be a stalker? I wasn’t some deranged stranger. We’d lived together. We’d
tried to have a baby together. The only reason I follow him is because I want to see him, to talk to him, to try and understand.

But perhaps, technically, that’s what I’ve become. A stalker.

Never thought I’d be forty-three years old and alone. Never thought I’d be childless. Never thought I’d be a stalker.

I shook my head at Ellen because I didn’t want to upset Jack if Patrick started acting like I was a potential murderer. I try to be invisible when they’re together. It’s my own personal code of stalker ethics.

I didn’t see any point in following them all the way up to the mountains today. I don’t like those winding roads, and also I didn’t want Patrick speeding with Jack in the car. So I got as far as the freeway, just to confirm that’s where they were going, and then I took the next exit.

“Have fun!” I called to the back of their car as it disappeared into the distance. And then the whole of Sunday lay in front of me, like a malicious joke. As I drove home, I imagined them talking in the car. So much to chat about and plan. The wedding. The baby. What they’ll all have for dinner tonight. I wonder if Ellen prepares Jack’s school lunch for him. Has she slipped into the Mummy role as easily and enthusiastically as I did? I can still remember the lunch I made for Jack’s first day of school. Ham and cheese sandwich on whole-meal bread. A peach. He loved peaches. Little box of sultanas. Carton of apple juice. A buttered slice of his favorite banana loaf. I planned it so meticulously. Talked about it with Mum. “Did he eat everything?” she rang up to ask that night. “Everything except the sultanas,” I told her. Patrick had no idea what Jack had in his lunch box. Food doesn’t really interest him.

When you’re responsible for a child, when your days are filled with the tiny details that make up a child’s life—his lunch box, his schoolbag, his shoes, his favorite T-shirt, his friends, his friends’ mothers, his TV shows, his temper tantrums—and then you’re told that you are no longer responsible, that you are no longer wanted, that your services are no longer required, that you have been made redundant, like an employee walked to the door by security, it is difficult.

It is quite profoundly difficult.

Jack must have asked for me. He must have been so confused.

I let him down. I blame myself for my mini-breakdown or whatever it was that happened to me when Patrick broke it off. I couldn’t stay in the same bed, so I went to stay at my friend Tammy’s place. Tammy. Whatever happened to Tammy? She tried so hard to stay friends with me, but then she sort of slid out of my life along with everyone else.

I remember waking up in Tammy’s room five days later, and realizing it was Friday morning and that Jack had swimming lessons straight after school, and I always had to remember to pack his things the night before, and who would take him? I worked nine-thirty to two-thirty p.m. I had rearranged my working hours so I could pick him up from preschool, and now for the last few weeks, school. I was happy to do this. I had more flexibility than Patrick and I loved picking him up. I was Jack’s mother. I didn’t mind when I missed out on a promotion because I wasn’t working full hours. That’s what all mothers do; they put their careers on hold for their children.

So I called Patrick, to remind him about swimming lessons, and that’s when all this started: my habit. My “stalking” of my old life.

Because Patrick treated me like a stranger. As if Jack’s swimming lessons were nothing to do with me,
when just the week before
, I’d been at swimming, helping Jack adjust his goggles, talking to his teacher about maybe moving him up a class, making arrangements with one of the other mothers for a play date with her son. “It’s fine,” Patrick had said. All irritable and put out. As if I was interfering. As if I’d never had anything to do with Jack. “We’ve got it all under control.” The rage that swept through me was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I hated him. I still loved him. But I hated him. And ever since then it’s been hard to tell the difference between the two. If I didn’t hate him so intensely, maybe I would have been able to stop loving him. I know that doesn’t make sense.

If he’d just let me
ease
my way out of being his wife—I thought of myself as his wife—and Jack’s mother, if he’d just listened to me with the respect I
deserved when I called up to remind him things about Jack, if he’d just sat down with me and let me talk and let me say how much he’d hurt me, if he’d ever just said, “I’m sorry,” and meant it, then I think I could have let it go. Perhaps then I would have eventually healed, like people do. Instead it got infected. It spread. Like gangrene. It took hold. It’s his fault. I know what I do is unacceptable. Deep down I do know this. But he started it. Mum used to say that when she met my dad it was like a perfect love story. I thought Patrick was my perfect love story. Except he’s not. He’s the hypnotist’s love story. I’m the ex-girlfriend in the hypnotist’s love story. Not the heroine. I’m only a minor character.

Or perhaps I’m the villain

No one spoke as they left the graveyard and drove toward Frank and Millie’s place.

Jack sat quietly in the backseat absorbed in his game again. Patrick concentrated on driving the winding mountain road.

Ellen tipped her head back against the car seat. The nausea was still there, but it was manageable, as long as she didn’t have to wait too long to eat once she got to Frank and Millie’s place. One dry piece of bread would do the trick.

She watched the world whip by outside the window like a movie on fast-forward. Quaint little mountain villages with cafés and secondhand bookshops and antique stores. She remembered a romantic weekend in the mountains with Jon in the very early days of their relationship. She let the memory slip away. He was getting married. So was she. Life was moving forward. She needed to keep her eyes on the road ahead. So did Saskia. So did Patrick, actually.

She wondered if he was thinking about Colleen right now, comparing her with Ellen, wondering what his life would have been like if she hadn’t died.

If only she could read his mind. She glanced at his inscrutable profile.

Of course, there was a way.

Most nights Patrick still asked for a relaxation exercise before they went to sleep. It was part of their routine. He trusted her completely. She could easily take him into a deep trance and ask him to tell her how he felt about Colleen, and then use a posthypnotic suggestion so that he would never remember what she’d asked.

But that would be wrong. Totally unethical. She couldn’t go poking about his mind without his permission. It would be like reading his diary.

And it would be unfair because he couldn’t do the same thing to her. She wouldn’t want him finding out that she still had complicated feelings about Jon.

So of course she would never do such a thing. It was the sort of thing Danny would do to a girlfriend if he were ever in a relationship.

She couldn’t believe she’d even allowed such a thought to cross her mind. It wasn’t like her. She was becoming increasingly disappointed with herself lately. She wasn’t nearly as compassionate or moral or as patient a person as she’d always thought herself to be.

But goodness me it was tempting.

“
Dad?” said Jack suddenly from the backseat.

Ellen started guiltily.

“After we’ve finished lunch, can we go for another bushwalk to that same place we went last time?”

“Sure,” said Patrick. “Oh, actually, no, mate, we might have to leave straightaway because I need to go back into the office this afternoon for a few hours.”

Jack groaned.

“Next time,” said Patrick.

“You’re going into the office this afternoon?” said Ellen.

Patrick glanced over at her. “Oh yeah, sorry, didn’t I tell you? I’ve got to catch up on some paperwork. I’ve just been swamped.”

So presumably that meant she would be the one taking care of Jack. She’d been planning to catch up with Julia this afternoon. It had been ages since she’d seen her, and Julia was looking forward to hearing all about the visit to Colleen’s parents. She could hardly speak freely if she had Jack with her.

“So I’m looking after Jack this afternoon?” she double-checked.

“Well, he’s big enough, he doesn’t need a babysitter anymore, do you, mate?” said Patrick. “He’ll just do his own thing. Actually, you’ve got some homework to finish off, haven’t you, Jack?”

Ellen suppressed a sigh. Since Patrick and Jack had moved into her house, she’d experienced the pleasure of homework supervision for the first time. It was awful. It was so hard to get Jack to just sit upright at the table with his pencil in hand and his books open in front of him. He would half slide off his chair, resting his cheek on the table like he was ill, or else he’d keep running off, disappearing on unexplained errands as they occurred to him.

She was still finding her way with Jack. It wasn’t like he was rebelling against her, or treating her like a wicked stepmother. He was perfectly friendly and relaxed with Ellen; she was the one who felt on edge. She noticed that her voice got terribly
bouncy
whenever she talked to him. It reminded her of being fourteen and in love with the one-legged boy at the neighboring school. Giles was kind to her, as he was to all the girls who adored him, and the patient, distracted expression he got on his face while Ellen babbled on at the railway station, trying desperately to make some sort of impression before the 3:45 train arrived, was identical to the one on Jack’s face. It said:
I couldn’t care less really, but I’m a nice person
,
and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m just going to keep smiling until you stop talking.

And it was even worse when she tried to play it cool, to act as if she didn’t care what Jack thought of her, because he was so self-contained, so busy with his own life, that he really did just completely forget about her existence, which was exactly what used to happened with Giles too.

Well, this was what she had signed up for. She’d loved the idea of a stepchild, of an instant family. She should be happy that Patrick was treating her like a wife and taking it for granted that she would be in charge of homework this afternoon. She should be focusing all her attention on poor little Jack, who had lost not one but
two
mothers by the age of five and was probably suffering from terrible abandonment issues.

“YES!”
shouted Jack, holding his computer game aloft.

“Jesus,” said Patrick. “Don’t kick the back of my seat.”

But shouldn’t Patrick have checked with her first? Wasn’t he taking advantage of her? To assume she’d be available?

Of course, then again, she herself hadn’t bothered to check with Patrick before she’d made the arrangement to have coffee with Julia. So she’d been acting like a single person too, like Jack wasn’t her responsibility at all.

It was so difficult to work out what was fair and what wasn’t. Presumably parents had some sort of procedure, an approval process when you were making arrangements. She’d have to ask her friend Madeline about this.

“I thought you said you’d clear out all the boxes from the hallway this afternoon,” said Ellen.

Saturday had been taken up with Jack’s sports activities, and Patrick had promised he’d have the boxes gone by the end of the weekend.

“Oh sure, don’t worry,” said Patrick. “When I get back from the office I’ll do it.”

He wouldn’t. She knew he wouldn’t. He’d be too tired after today’s trip, and then the office. It would be too late. Jack would want his attention when he got home, and then Patrick would want to collapse on the couch in front of
60 Minutes
. It would be mean to remind him then. It would be considered “nagging.” She would have to put up with another week of those boxes sitting in the hallway.

All that clutter was having a catastrophic effect on the feng shui of her house. She seemed to remember that the front entrance was called “the mouth of chi,”
where all the energy was meant to flow through. No
wonder
she was feeling so irritable—all the energy was being stopped at the front door!

Of course, now was certainly not the time to push the issue of the boxes; not when Patrick was so uptight about the lunch with Frank and Millie.

But the words were as irresistible as the last chocolate in the box.

“You won’t move them,” she murmured to the window, as if saying it quietly didn’t really count.

“What did you say?” Patrick spoke sharply.

“Nothing.”

“Ellen! I just said I
would
move them.”

“So you did hear me.”

“Are you two fighting?” asked Jack with interest.

So much for beautiful poignant moments, thought Ellen.