“Fancy that,” I said.
“You knew this,” she said. “I think a part of you knew exactly what you were doing to him.”
“I could send him a card to apologize,” I said finally, in a stupid, silly voice.
It was such a bad joke she didn’t even bother to react. She just looked at me, driving that pin straight through my heart again, so I fluttered and squirmed and finally grew still.
I was only joking about the card. After I came home from the hospital, I never tried to see or contact Patrick again. I stopped going to Jack’s games. I wasn’t even tempted. Not really. It was like a particular food I’d once loved had made me violently ill. So although I could remember how good it tasted, whenever I thought of it or automatically reached for it, I remembered how sick it made me, so the desire was outweighed by the revulsion.
We talked a lot about grief: for the loss of my mother and Patrick and Jack and the children I wouldn’t ever have. We talked about how I’d taken my grief and used it like a weapon against Patrick, how I’d turned the pain and the rage outward, away from me, as if I’d been handed a flaming sword and I’d turned it on Patrick in a desperate, frenzied and ultimately useless attempt to avoid being burned myself.
I used up a lot of her tissues.
We talked about how Patrick’s decision to break up really wasn’t anything to do with me at all; it was about him and his own grief for Colleen. “If Ellen had met him at that conference he probably would have broken up with her in exactly the same way,” said my psychiatrist.
“No, they’re
soul mates
,” I said. “It was true love for them.”
“It was timing,” she said.
We talked about friendship and how I’d let myself slip out of a social network. We talked about hobbies, other than stalking your ex-boyfriend. We talked about ways to deal with future relationships and future rejections.
I stopped using quite so many tissues.
Then one day I turned up and we chatted about a movie I’d seen on the weekend, and a new fish recipe I’d tried, and how we both wanted to eat more fish, and at the end of the session my psychiatrist said that she thought I probably didn’t need to make an appointment for the following week, and so I didn’t. I had a pedicure instead.
Ellen told me that I should leave Sydney, but I haven’t.
I’d miss my friends too much.
Tammy is living in the townhouse with me now, and we see a lot of our
neighbors, Janet and Pete. Their kids are in and out of our place all the time. Tammy and I looked after them last weekend so Janet and Pete could go away for a weekend.
I did end up going out with Janet’s brother for a few months. The boogie-boarding guy. Toby. He was fun and it was a good distraction for a while, but he’d just come out of a relationship and in a strange way I had too, so we were both weird and fragile, and the relationship amiably petered out.
We’re still good friends, which is an odd experience for me. I’ve never been friends with an ex-boyfriend before. I don’t really understand how it works, or what the rules are, but so far it’s been fine, sometimes a bit awkward. We chat but avoid eye contact.
Kate says she thinks Toby and I are destined to end up together because of some complicated thing to do with the way he looks at me (I didn’t think he did look at me, but apparently he does when I’m distracted), but I don’t know. She’s pregnant at the moment and overly sentimental. She rang me last night to tell me that she and Lance had been for the ultrasound, and the baby was a boy, and that they’d like me to be the baby’s godmother.
Me.
She said, “I know I haven’t known you that long, so tell me if it’s an imposition.” Then she said, “Saskia? Are you still there?”
My godson will be born next year.
Speaking of babies, I saw the hypnotist with her baby today.
It wasn’t deliberate. I’ve never breached the terms of my AVO, and I make a point of avoiding areas where I’m likely to run into them again.
It was early evening and I was at Circular Quay. I was meeting Tammy and Kate for a drink at the Opera Bar before we saw a play. Kate had got cheap tickets on some website. It was a beautiful evening and the Quay was crowded with people walking back and forth between the ferries and the Opera House.
Ellen was walking straight toward me pushing a stroller: one of those big colorful contraptions. I only caught a glimpse of the baby. Patrick’s baby. It was a girl. She was wearing a purple dress. Little legs stuck straight out in front of her with white socks.
I
stopped dead and someone behind me said, “Hey, watch out.”
I saw Ellen’s face light up. It was as if she was looking straight at me. I smiled back, because I’d always thought we could have been friends in a different world, and I really wanted to tell her that it was the strangest thing, but since I’d broken my pelvis and ankle my mysterious leg pain had vanished.
And then I realized that she was smiling at someone behind me, lifting a hand to wave. I didn’t even turn my head to see if it was Patrick, or Jack, or someone else. I kept walking and let myself melt into the crowd.
T
hank you so much to the legendary Amy Einhorn and all the talented people at Amy Einhorn Books for their support. Thank you also to my lovely agent in the U.S., Faye Bender.
Writing this book gave me the excuse to learn about the amazing world of hypnotherapy. I’m so grateful to Lyn Macintosh for all the time she spent introducing me to her fascinating profession. Errors and flights of fancy are most definitely my responsibility.
Thank you to my friends: Mark Davidson for explaining police procedures, Janelle Atkins for answering questions about town planning and Jackie Mikhael for getting herself hypnotized just so she could report back to me.
Thank you to my father, Bernie Moriarty, for telling me about surveying and my mother, Diane Moriarty, for telling every single person she meets about my books.
Thank you as always to my sisters, Jaclyn Moriarty and Nicola Moriarty, who read my first drafts, and Katrina Harrington, who helped proofread my last draft.
The following books were very helpful to me in the writing of this
novel:
Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy
(2001) by C. Banyan and G. Kein;
Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Guide
(2008) by Tad James with Lorraine Flores and Jack Schober;
Finding True Magic
(2006) by Jack Elias;
The Art of Hypnosis
(2010) by C. Roy Hunter; and
The Psychology of Stalking
(1998) by J. Reid Meloy.
Liane Moriarty is the author of three bestselling novels:
Three Wishes The Last Anniversary What Alice Forgot
. She is also the author of the Nicola Berry series for children.
Liane lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband, son, and daughter. Her website and blog can be found at
www.lianemoriarty.com
.