The Hypnotist’s Love Story

  They'd been dead for over a year, but today for some reason it didn't seem possible that they weren't inside. They must have opened that door to her hundreds of times. It didn't feel like she was just recalling memories. It seemed perfectly reasonable that they were still there, somewhere, on some other plane of existence, and if she just sat here quietly for long enough and really concentrated, she could slip through time or matter or something and rest her head on her grandfather's shoulder just one more time and see him redden slightly the way he always did whenever she hugged him.

  "What's on your mind, Ellie?" Her grandmother was the only one who had ever called her Ellie. ("I did not, and never would have, named my child 'Ellie,'" Anne would shudder.)

  She longed to tell her grandparents about this new development in her life, that David Greenfield, that strange, enticing name on her birth certificate, was no longer the carefully selected sperm donor of her youth but the "loveliest man her mother had ever known." It was like hearing that Santa Claus really did exist after all, when you no longer cared or believed in the possibility of magic, when it was just plain confusing.

  "That mother of yours." Her grandmother would shake her head and put the kettle on again. Ellen sighed and smiled. Yes, that's what this was really all about. She wanted her mother reprimanded for creating this upheaval in her life. Her grandparents were always on her side.

  And the reason she wanted her mother reprimanded was just fear. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. The same fear that caused her grandfather to look wary when he opened the door. Is that change knocking on my door?

  She sighed, took her keys out of her bag and stood up. Her eye was caught by something on the wrought-iron mosaic table near the front door. Her grandmother had made that table after she'd done a mosaics course. (It wasn't actually very good. The green and orange rectangles were all out of alignment. Apparently the teacher had kept scolding her grandmother for talking too much during class.)

  A book had been placed upright in the center of the table, carefully displayed like it was for sale in a bookshop. There was a pink camellia flower lying diagonally next to it.

  An icy thumb caressed Ellen's spine. It was the book she'd lent Saskia. She'd returned it, as promised. Ellen picked up the book and flicked through the pages. No note. Just the creepy, careful way it was displayed. And the flower. What did the flower mean?

  "Is this the hypnotherapy place?" A voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Ellen jumped and gave a startled, girly shriek.

  "Oh! I'm so sorry to frighten you like that!" A man in his late forties or early fifties with a humble, apologetic look on his face stood at the bottom of the porch stairs looking up at her. He was carrying a notebook with a pen carefully clipped to the side, and wearing a business shirt that appeared two sizes too big for him, without a tie. He looked like a man running late for his new Bible study group.

  Ellen pressed her hand to her chest to calm her thumping heart.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just very deep in thought." She smiled and held out her hand as she walked down the steps to meet him. "This is definitely the right place. You're Alfred, right? Alfred Boyle. I'm Ellen."

  Alfred was a new client who had found her on the Internet and e-mailed a few weeks back to ask for written confirmation of her pricing. He'd said in his e-mail that he was a partner in an accounting firm and that he "required help improving his public speaking skills in a professional setting."

  As Ellen opened the front door for him and led him up the stairs, she glanced around hoping for a fleeting glimpse of her grandparents (what would they have to say about Saskia?), but the house was empty, and no matter how hard she sniffed, hoping for the scents of her grandmother's baking, all she could smell was the Thai chicken curry she'd made the night before.

  She left the book and the camellia flower on the hall table to think about later.

  Chapter 14

  Freud always said that the reason he stopped using hypnosis was that a patient jumped up and kissed him. Apparently the real reason was that his false teeth no longer fitted properly after his gums had been ruined by his cocaine use and he couldn't speak well enough to easily induce trances. The lesson for us? Floss!

  --Excerpt from a speech delivered by Flynn Halliday

  to the Northern Beaches Hypnotherapists Meeting,

  August 2010

  Ellen, my dear. You are looking well."

  "Thank you, Flynn."

  Flynn Halliday bent to brush his cheek against hers.

  It was a month since Ellen had returned from Noosa and she was attending the regular local chapter meeting of the Australian Association of Hypnotherapists. Flynn was president and Ellen was treasurer. They ran the meetings in a small room at a local community center, and Flynn and Ellen had arrived half an hour early to set up the room.

  "How have you been?" asked Flynn, as they dragged tables and chairs into a horseshoe shape. "Any news?"

  Ellen hesitated. She was feeling guilty. She always felt guilty around Flynn, because she felt like she'd let him down in many ways.

  She'd known him since she was in her early twenties. He'd employed her for many years in his hypnotherapy business as an assistant, a trainee therapist and finally a hypnotherapist. He'd wanted her to go into partnership with him, and she knew he'd been very hurt when she decided to go out on her own.

  There was also that thing she'd never spoken out loud, or even properly admitted to herself; the thing about the way Flynn looked at her. Sometimes she thought she was imagining it, and she was behaving like a typical fatherless daughter by misinterpreting the perfectly acceptable fondness of an older man for a younger colleague. Other times she was quite sure that if she'd ever given Flynn the slightest encouragement, he most certainly would have courted her: with poetry, probably, elaborate compliments and thoughtful gifts.

  Flynn, who had never married, or even been in a relationship as far as Ellen knew, was in his late fifties, with fine, fair hair and a rosy, cherubic face. He looked like an elderly choirboy. The idea of sex with Flynn seemed illegal.

  There was no need to mention the pregnancy yet. Although over the last few weeks she had begun to feel profoundly different (strange little poking sensations in her belly, tender breasts, mild nausea that lasted all day long and a permanent sense of quivering on the verge of tears), she looked exactly the same, and anyway, she thought that Flynn would prefer to think of her as a virgin.

  But it would be strange not to mention the engagement.

  "I do have some news, actually," she said, pressing her thumb to her ring. "I'm engaged."

  Flynn had been facing away from her. He waited just a beat too long to turn around.

  Ellen's eyes filled. Oh Flynn, you silly man. If only it was possible to live a parallel life, a spare one, where she could have let Flynn court her and marry her, and she could have made him happy. Except without the sex.

  "Congratulations!" Flynn came across the room and gave her a clumsy, vaguely peppermint-scented kiss.

  He stood back and clasped his hands together like a country vicar. "Wonderful."

  As Flynn groped about for something else to say, Ellen thought about Saskia. If only her relationship with Flynn wasn't so complicated, she would have asked his advice. She had a lot of respect for his opinions when it came to the human psyche.

  Ellen wished she'd never told Patrick about Saskia returning the book. He'd been battling insomnia ever since, pacing the house, frustrated with his own powerlessness.

  "I hate that you have to deal with this," he'd said. His face looked older, weighed down with stress. "I'm meant to make your life better. Not harder."

  "She just returned a book," said Ellen. "I'm not frightened." She wasn't. Not really. Only a mild fluttery sense of unease that could have just been a natural reaction to all the changes going on in her life, nothing to do with Saskia at all.

  "So, that's just wonderful news," said Flynn again. Then an expression of panic flew across h
is face. "It's not that Danny fellow, is it?" he said.

  "No. I'm marrying a surveyor actually," said Ellen. "I shall be a surveyor's wife." What? The oddest things came out of her mouth when she was feeling awkward.

  "Surveyor! Man of the land, right, wonderful." Flynn kept his hands clasped and shook them as if he was giving himself a warm handshake. "Yes, yes, because that Danny-- Have you heard what he's doing?" Danny and Flynn had been introduced only once by Ellen at an industry function, and there had been instant mutual dislike.

  "I haven't talked to him for a while."

  "He's treating hypnotherapy like Tupperware. He's running these parties and he's calling them--"

  "Hypno-parties!" Marlene Adams sailed into the room. She was another hypnotherapist of a similar generation and mind-set to Flynn. (Why hadn't he fallen for her?) "Isn't it dreadful! I heard him talking on the radio just yesterday, and I thought to myself, What? I beg your pardon? Hypno-parties? Well, that's just going to do wonders for our professional credibility, isn't it!"

  "So, next Sunday is the last Sunday of the month," said Patrick, later that afternoon.

  "Old Jeans," said Ellen. "This box says 'Old Jeans.'"

  She had stopped in the hallway to look at the neatly written notation in black marker on a large dusty cardboard box. Patrick and Jack had been officially living at her place now for just a week. However, the process of moving in their possessions was proving to be complex. Apparently Patrick didn't believe in movers. They were "overpaid thugs." Instead, every couple of days, whenever he got a chance, he picked up a few boxes in the back of his company pickup truck and dropped them off.

  Ellen would have preferred that he take a few days off work and hire some overpaid thugs to do the job properly. Instead, her hallway was rapidly filling with giant cardboard boxes, which Patrick didn't have time to move and which were too heavy for Ellen to lift. Her clients had to shuffle sideways every time they walked through her hallway.

  "Does that mean this cardboard box is filled with old jeans?"

  "Is that a trick question?" asked Patrick.

  "Why do you keep old jeans?"

  "For doing stuff around the house, working in the garden, that sort of thing," said Patrick in a patient, manly tone.

  "OK, but a whole box of them?" Ellen ran a fingertip over the layer of dust on the box. She had a feeling this box had been sitting in Patrick's garage for years. These jeans would never be used, and he would never throw them out. Her nose tickled and she sneezed.

  "Bless you," said Patrick. "So as I was saying ... it's the last Sunday of the month."

  She looked at the next box. It said "Old Shirts." She could smell a damp, moldy smell. Actually, she could see a patch of furry green mold growing on the side of the box.

  He was a hoarder. She hadn't known this about him. His house had looked perfectly acceptable when she visited. Very tidy and organized, in fact. All these boxes must have been crammed behind cupboard doors and stacked up to the ceiling in his garage.

  Her throat tickled and she sneezed again.

  "How many more boxes do you think you'll be bringing over?" she asked, trying to make it sound like she was just casually interested.

  "I've barely scratched the surface," said Patrick cheerfully. "We've been in that house for over twenty years. Collected a lot of stuff."

  Ellen felt a rising sense of hysteria.

  "Why? Is it bugging you? Obviously this is only temporary. I'm not planning on using your hallway as a permanent storage area, if that's what you're thinking."

  He put his hand on her waist.

  "You should have driven a lot of this, this ... stuff straight to the rubbish tip from your place," said Ellen and moved slightly so that his hand fell away. "You would never have missed it."

  She recognized that cool, precise voice. It was her mother's voice. Just recently Julia had said that she found herself speaking more and more like her own mother, and Ellen had said, "There's no danger of that happening to me."

  Anne had a violent dislike of "stuff." (She always spat out the word "stuff" like a profanity.) Ellen's possessions were always disappearing when she was a child. "You hadn't touched that stuff in weeks," her mother would say when Ellen discovered some toy or piece of clothing had been donated to the "poor people." Ellen had always felt envious when she visited friends and saw their kitchen bench tops laden with the detritus of their chaotic family lives, the framed photos on bookshelves overflowing with books, the strawberry-shaped magnets holding up school merit awards and colorful drawings on the refrigerator. Her home, and therefore her life, seemed so sterile in comparison. She equated messiness with love and warmth and those sweet, vague, plump mothers who distractedly offered her peanut butter sandwiches before hurrying back to the stove or the laundry.

  On the rare occasions when Anne wasn't at work and Ellen's friends visited, her mother would take far too much notice of them, skewering them with her violet eyes, offering lime juice (what kid drinks lime juice?), asking their opinions on current affairs (they didn't have any opinions, of course, except for Julia, who thought Ellen's mother was fabulous) and then making sarcastic little jokes they didn't understand.

  Ellen couldn't believe that she'd just used the word "stuff" in the same context as her mother; it just goes to show how your childhood experiences are imprinted on your subconscious. When she found the time, she would need to do some serious work on this and delve into her true feelings on the matter, or otherwise she'd find herself offering lime juice to her child's friends one day.

  "It is bugging you," said Patrick. "Look, I promise it will all be gone by the weekend."

  He looked so sweet and apologetic that Ellen felt a rush of love for him and her eyes filled with guilty tears. (Pregnancy hormones! It was quite fascinating observing their impact on her emotions.)

  "That's fine, there's no rush, I'm just being silly." She blinked rapidly, and continued down the hallway without looking at the boxes. "What were you saying about Sunday?"

  They went into the kitchen, and Patrick put the kettle on. He always put the kettle on the moment they walked into the kitchen, taking it for granted that they would be having a cup of tea. There was something old-fashioned and ceremonial about it, and it reminded her of someone. Who? Of course, it was her grandfather. Her lovely grandfather making tea for her grandmother.

  Yes, she did adore Patrick. Thank God. She knew it was silly and unrealistic, but she felt panicky whenever she experienced even a moment's irritation with him. They were having a baby together. She had to remain vigilant; any cracks in their relationship had to be patched up immediately. It was absolutely vital. This child, her child, was going to grow up with a mother and a father.

  "So what were you saying about this Sunday?" she said again, as Patrick placed the cup of tea in front of her.

  This Sunday she was meeting her father for the first time. Her stomach clenched on cue as the thought crossed her mind. It was impossible to pretend that she didn't care or that she wasn't nervous. Her body gave it away every time she thought about it.

  "It's the last Sunday of the month," said Patrick. He turned away to the refrigerator. "Have we got any crumpets?" He spoke with his back to her as he burrowed through her refrigerator shelves. "Oh good, here they are. So, I wondered if you'd like to come along with us. Whole-meal? Why ruin a good crumpet by making it whole-meal?"

  "What are you talking about?" said Ellen. He was going to eat all the crumpets now and she wouldn't have any for her morning tea tomorrow. Also, he wasn't making any sense. "Why do you keep saying 'the last Sunday of the month' like it means something to me?"

  Patrick looked up with surprise as he put the last two crumpets into her toaster. "You know--on the last Sunday of the month, Jack and I always visit Colleen's parents for lunch. In the mountains."

  "You still visit Colleen's parents?" said Ellen confusedly. "Every month?"

  "They're Jack's grandparents," said Patrick. "We always stop at Colleen's grave
along the way."

  "You have never told me that before," said Ellen. She was aware that her heart rate was up. Just slightly. "Never."

  "I'm sorry, I thought I had," said Patrick. "Anyway, doesn't matter--"

  "You've never mentioned it," said Ellen. There was no way in the world that she would forget something like that. She was a woman. She was Ellen. She might have forgotten what model car he drove, or what football team he followed, but she would not have forgotten that he visited his dead wife's grave and family every month.

  "It doesn't matter," began Patrick again.

  "It does matter," said Ellen. "You've never mentioned this before. I know. I would have remembered."

  "I didn't say I had mentioned it. I thought I had mentioned it," said Patrick. "Obviously I didn't. But it really--"

  "When?" said Ellen. "When did you think you had mentioned it?"

  The crumpets popped up. Patrick went to lift them from the toaster and burned the tips of his fingers.

  "Ow. Look, I don't know. I genuinely thought I had!"

  "You didn't." Ellen knew she was being horrible.

  "Fine! I forgot to mention it. I'm sorry. Can we let it go now?"

  "I can't stand it when you say that!" said Ellen, and it immediately struck her that he'd never said it before. It was Edward who used to say that. "Can we just let it go?" he'd say, in that exact same exhausted tone. It was amazing how that long-lost memory had somehow floated to the surface of her consciousness after all this time.

  "You can't stand it when I say what?" Patrick looked taken aback.

  "Nothing," said Ellen. "Sorry."

  She wondered if he'd deliberately, or subconsciously, avoided mentioning Colleen too much before they were engaged. She'd noticed that ever since she'd accepted his proposal, her name had been cropping up more often. Just the other day, he'd walked by the laundry when she was putting in the laundry power and commented that Colleen had always said it was a good idea to put the laundry powder into the machine before the clothes so that it was fully dissolved or something. She'd felt a tremor of irritation. It seemed that Colleen had been something of a domestic goddess. She also sewed. One of the boxes in the hallway said "Sewing Machine." "Colleen made her own wedding dress on that machine," Patrick had said when Ellen asked him about it. "Well, I won't be making my own dress," Ellen had said lightly, "I can't even thread a needle," and Patrick had said, "Oh, no, I wouldn't expect you to." Which had somehow made Ellen feel he was really saying, "Of course I wouldn't expect you to ever be as extraordinary as Colleen."