The Hypnotist's Love Story (7 page)

“There you go. She’s a grown-up woman. A middle-aged woman, in fact. No excuse. She’s loopy. Loony bin material.”

Ellen sighed and stretched out her arms and legs as hard as she could, before releasing them and letting her body melt into the bench. “We’re all a little crazy, Julia.”

T
he news that she was unexpectedly meeting Patrick’s son that night for the first time caused Ellen to feel a completely out-of-proportion sense of panic.

“Sure! Of course, of course!” she said to Patrick, nodding her head like a maniacal puppet, when he rang to ask if it was OK to bring Jack along with him to dinner tonight because the kid from school he’d been planning to visit had come down with some virus.

“He can just eat whatever we’re eating,” said Patrick. “Or we’ll just
order him a pizza or whatever. Don’t stress. Oh, and he’ll bring along a DVD to watch.”

So, what, should she give the child a sliver off each of their pork medallions? Should she rush out and buy him a lamb chop? But there wasn’t time. She was seeing two clients that afternoon and the first one was due in five minutes.

All she had to drink was champagne and wine. She needed Coke, or lemonade, or at the very least, juice. She had strawberries in liqueur and King Island cream for dessert, entirely inappropriate for a child.

He’d expect ice cream. Cake. Cupcakes? Too childish? She mustn’t insult him by treating him like a little kid. Good Lord. She needed hours to prepare for this. She needed to ring her friend Madeline, who was the expert on all things children; to text Julia, who would tell her she was being an idiot; to e-mail her friend Carmel in New York, who would order her a book on Amazon with a title like
The Secret to Positive Step-Mothering
; to Google “eight-year-old boys and how to talk to them without appearing desperate to be their mother.”

When she and Patrick had talked about her meeting Jack for the first time, they’d agreed that it would be during the
day,
not at night; probably a trip to the aquarium. Some sort of activity to keep the pressure off. She had planned to make funny, interesting, seemingly off-the-cuff (but actually carefully scripted) remarks about fish that would appeal to an eight-year-old boy.

She felt a chill as she remembered something else:
Her DVD player wasn’t working.
The poor motherless child would be bored out of his mind.

Games! They’d have to play games. Did children still play board games? Or should they just sit around and talk? But what about?

For a moment she actually felt close to tears.

She needed to reframe this problem in a more positive light.

Ellen, he’s a kid, not the queen of England or the president of the United States.

Well, that wasn’t at all helpful because, actually, Ellen would be more comfortable meeting the queen or the president. The queen reminded her
of her grandmother, whom she missed every day, and President Obama seemed like a jovial, chatty sort of fellow. Ellen was an only child who had grown up around adults, and her job brought her into contact with new people all the time. She wasn’t shy, and although she had a tendency for self-loathing (working on this was an ongoing self-improvement project), she didn’t really feel socially inferior to anyone.

Except children. Yes, truthfully, she felt inferior to children.

They were their own species with their own language and culture. They seemed so full of self-confidence these days. When she’d gone to the shops today after the pool, a little girl whom Ellen wouldn’t have thought had been more than eight went gliding by, chatting away into a pink mobile phone. She was wearing a fur-lined hooded coat, her face was painted like a tiger and she was gliding because her sneakers appeared to have tiny wheels magically hidden in the soles. Not only that, her shoes had flashing pink lights along the side. Ellen had stared, full of wonder, at this exotic tiger princess on her invisible skates.

A few of her friends had babies, but babies were easy. You could cuddle them, and make them laugh just by tickling their palms or blowing raspberries into their soft, sweet necks. Oh, she adored babies, but kids …

Actually, in spite of the fact that she was in her midthirties, many of her friends of similar age were childless. “You girls all think you’ve got forever,” her mother said. “You do realize that you’re born with all the eggs you’re going to get? Not that I’m in any rush to be turned into a wrinkly, gray-haired old granny.” A clipped laugh.

OK, so Ellen didn’t have much experience dealing with children. But it had to be more than that causing this sense of panic. She peeled back the layers of her consciousness with brutal efficiency to reveal the naked, hairy truth.

She wanted to be this child’s stepmother
.
She wanted him dressed in a cute little suit at her wedding. She wanted him to be a big brother to her own little baby, because she was thirty-five and born with all the eggs she was going to get. She wanted his daddy to be the one because she couldn’t stand to look up another profile
on that awful Internet dating site and find another middle-aged, bald, chubby man staring smugly at her out of the computer screen, demanding a “slim lady who takes care of herself, for snuggles and long walks along the beach.” Yes, she wanted this child to love her and approve of her and save her from snuggles with chubby, smug men.

And of
course
that was all too much, and all too soon, and all very embarrassing, and if the kid sensed her crazy desperation (and she suspected that children were like dogs, with an instinct for fear), then he would—

The doorbell rang in an impatient way.

Ellen looked at her watch. It was her two-o’clock client. She ran down the stairs, two at a time, and then stopped at the bottom and recited her standard pre-appointment affirmation:
Breathe in, I am now fully present with this client, breathe out, I will give everything I have to give.

She opened the door, smiling calmly and professionally. Neurotic Ellen was now safely stashed away in a closed cupboard at the back of her mind.

The client was Rosie: her bride-to-be who had promised her fiancé that she would give up smoking by her wedding day.

She was a short, curvy woman with big trusting round eyes and a tiny gap between her two front teeth, giving her an innocent, childlike look. Ellen couldn’t actually imagine her smoking. It would be like watching a toddler with a cigarette in her mouth.

At their first session Rosie had mentioned that she was marrying “Ian Roman” and given Ellen an expectant look.

I’m meant to recognize that name,
thought Ellen.

“He’s in the media,” said Rosie. “He’s quite, um, prominent.”

And then Ellen thought,
Ian Roman!
It was one of those names that sank into your subconscious via osmosis. He owned newspapers or television stations or something. His name appeared in the financial pages. Not that Ellen made a habit of reading the financial pages.

“So my married name will be Rosie Roman.” Rosie gave an artificial little laugh.

“You don’t have to change your name,” pointed out Ellen.

“Oh, no, I’m not a career woman or anything.” Rosie waved her hand dismissively, as if she’d just been offered something far too expensive for her tastes. “I’m just an ordinary person.”

Rosie seemed in a bad mood today, moving her head from side to side as if her neck was sore, and then pulling hard on the hem of her jumper as though it had shrunk in the wash.

“How are the wedding plans going?” asked Ellen, leading her up the stairs.

“Don’t ask,” said Rosie.

“Oh, dear.”

“Stupid time to give up smoking, when I’m stressed out of my mind.”

“Not necessarily. It’s often a good time to break a habit when you’re out of your day-to-day routine.”

“I guess.” Rosie didn’t seem convinced.

Ellen watched Rosie’s shoulders relax as they walked into her glass office. The combination of the light and the ocean view was so powerful that sometimes she thought she probably didn’t need to do much else for her clients but allow them to sit there.

“So how is it going?” asked Ellen, when they were sitting down.

“I’m still smoking like a chimney,” snapped Rosie.

Before Ellen had a chance to respond, Rosie said, “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I know it’s my fault. I haven’t even been listening to the CD you gave me.”

Ellen had given her one of her CDs with a specially prepared script for breaking the smoking habit. She’d made them years ago, and clients were often effusive about them, although she found it unbearable to listen to her own voice.

“Why haven’t you been listening to it?”

Many clients didn’t get around to listening to her CDs, and they always told her this with guilty, defiant looks, as if they were admitting they hadn’t done their homework but knew they couldn’t really get into trouble because they were grown-ups and were
paying
for this.

Rosie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just can’t seem to think of anything else besides the wedding. Like, for example, I despise the color I picked for the bridesmaid dresses. Apricot! It was like I was suffering temporary insanity.”

She lifted a chocolate out of the bowl and then dropped it again.

“My fiancé gave up smoking years ago. He just decided one day when he was driving along the F3. He wound down his window, threw out the half-f packet of cigarettes and never smoked again.”

“Litterbug,” said Ellen.

Rosie looked at her with surprise and giggled. “Yes.” Then her smile vanished abruptly, as if she’d been caught out.

There was something not quite right here. Ellen had a feeling that Rosie was lying to her about something. People were always lying, of course, whether consciously or not.

“Do you want to give up smoking?” said Ellen.

Rosie widened her eyes. “Of course!”

“Well, sometimes there are unconscious blocks to letting go of a habit. I’m thinking we might do something a bit different and explore that today.”

“Sure,” sighed Rosie. “Although I can tell you, there’s nothing mysterious about it. I just need more willpower.”

“Well, let’s see.” Ellen paused, trying to decide on what induction to use. Then she knew the perfect metaphor. “What color do you wish you’d chosen for your bridesmaids?”

“Blue,” said Rosie immediately.

“OK, would you like to choose a spot on the wall to focus on? Anywhere you like.”

Rosie sighed and shrugged and looked around the room. She kept her eyes fixed on the same spot in the far right-hand corner that almost everyone chose and said, “OK.”

“Soon you will blink.”

Rosie blinked.

“That’s right,” said Ellen warmly. “And sooner or later your eyes are going to close. It might happen straightaway or it might take a little longer.”

Rosie closed her eyes.

Ellen watched Rosie’s chest rise and fall and let her own breathing fall into the same rhythm. She spoke rapidly and smoothly, imagining her words pouring into Rosie’s mind like liquid from a jar.

“I’m wondering if you can visualize a wall. And I’m sorry to tell you that it’s painted apricot. But the good news is you’re repainting it an exquisite blue. Your paintbrush is moving up and down in rhythmic strokes. Up … and … down. Up … and … down.”

Too complicated?
Ellen had found she needed to be careful with her metaphors. Men often got too literal. A man might say afterward, “You should have had me paint an undercoat first.” Women tended to go off on tangents. One of her earliest clients had said that she loved to sunbake, so Ellen did what she thought was a pretty safe induction about lying on a tropical beach. Afterward, the client admitted that she’d spent the whole time trying to choose which swimsuit to visualize herself wearing.

Ellen watched Rosie’s eyes move rapidly behind her eyelids and noted the tension in her body: her shoulders up, her hands gripping the sides of the chair, her fingers pressing hard into the leather. A cloud moved across the sun outside the window and a beam of light caught the diamonds of Rosie’s chunky engagement ring.

“Each time you see that paintbrush move, notice your body sink into a deeper feeling of relaxation. You’ll probably find your breathing is starting to flow in rhythm with the paintbrush. Up … Down … In … Out. Up … and … down. In … and … out.”

She watched Rosie’s tiny, pixielike black boots fall outward in a V-shape. “Watch their feet,” her mentor, Flynn, used to tell her. “That’s the giveaway.”

“The wall is nearly finished. By the time it’s entirely blue … or perhaps a little while
later … you will be enjoying the most glorious state of relaxation you have ever experienced.”

Rosie’s mouth drooped, her face sagged and her head lolled to one side. If some of her clients knew how they looked when they were in a trance they would be horrified. It was something that Ellen had never mentioned to anyone, not even other therapists. It felt like something deeply personal she shared with her clients.

OK, Ellen, just exactly what are you going to do with this blue wall you’ve got in front of you?

But she knew. Sometimes her work felt clumsy and forced. Other days, like now, it felt natural and fluid. She was in a light trance herself. She was in the “zone.”

“Rosie, you have the power to turn that wall into a deep rich blue curtain like you might see on a stage. And behind that curtain somebody important is waiting for you. I don’t know who, but it’s someone with great wisdom, someone you trust implicitly. You’re pulling back the curtain and that person is waiting for you. Maybe they’re stepping forward to hug you.”