The Hypnotist's Love Story (25 page)

“Oh, no, Patrick, please don’t let me interrupt!” Saskia made friendly, flapping gestures with her hands, indicating that he should kneel back down. “You get right back to proposing. Lovely to see you both!”

She went striding off.

Patrick sat down heavily on the bench opposite Ellen, picked up the champagne glass and drained it.

Saskia stopped and called back. “I’ll see you on Friday for our appointment, Ellen!” She slapped her thigh. “The leg is doing pretty well!” She waved.

Ellen’s hand automatically went up and she waved back.

“You
know
her?” said Patrick. A panicky expression flew across his face. “Have you always known her? Is this like some sort of weird setup between the two of you?”

“No, no, no!” Ellen rushed to explain. “I knew her as Deborah. That’s what she called herself. Deborah Vandenberg. She’s been coming to see me about her leg pain.”

“Deborah,” repeated Patrick, and his eyes brightened with suspicion. “But you knew it was Saskia. Just then! You knew it was her.”

“I worked it out on the plane,” said Ellen. “When you told me about her bad leg. But I didn’t want to upset you by mentioning it. It’s my fault she’s here. I told her we were coming to Noosa … when I thought she was Deborah. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

She felt as though she had actually been part of a wicked conspiracy with Saskia.

Patrick lifted the lid of the jewelry box, then snapped it shut. He laughed disbelievingly, to himself. “I was sure I was safe. I thought I’d be able to propose without her watching, but I couldn’t even do that.”

“May I see the ring?” asked Ellen.

“It’s an antique,” said Patrick. “It’s got a history. Someone else’s history, I mean. It’s not like it’s from my own family, but I thought you’d like that.” He opened the box and flipped it shut again without looking at it. “I didn’t think you were the type for one of those standard shiny diamond rings. Jack helped me choose it.”

He was talking sadly and nostalgically, as if about something that had happened a long time in the past.

“It sounds perfect,” said Ellen. “So, could I … ?”

He pushed the ring across the table to her and she opened the box.

“Oh, Patrick.” The ring was white gold with a small oval aquamarine stone the color of the ocean. “It’s beautiful. It’s exactly what I would have chosen for myself.”

Ellen had never been especially interested in jewelry. She was not one of those women who could speak authoritatively about carats or cuts. “Ooh, sparkly!” she would say when newly engaged friends drooped their left hands at her. To her, their rings all looked identical.

But the absolute rightness of Patrick’s choice made her want to cry. It was like tangible evidence that he really saw her. It was a ring she could never have envisaged, or described, but one that said “Didn’t you know?
This
is who you are.”

Ellen regretfully closed the lid, unsure what to do next; she hadn’t actually said yes to his proposal yet. For the first time since she’d heard about Saskia’s existence, she felt a satisfying, righteous flash of rage. That moment had been
hers.
Right now she was meant to be doing that half-sobbing, half-laughing thing that women did, burying her head in Patrick’s chest, stopping every now and then to hold up her hand and examine her ring. It was meant to be a memory to cherish, and now it was gone forever.

“It was probably too soon to ask you,” said Patrick. “But it just felt so right and I thought, to hell with it, I know she’s the one, so I—”

He stopped and blinked slowly, like one of her clients coming out of a trance.

“Did you say you were pregnant?”

So he’s going to be the hypnotist’s husband.

He was doing the whole movie-scene deal. The pink-sky sunset. The champagne. The bended knee.

I thought: They’re actually going to live that life. See, it really does happen to some people. They’re going to have a beautiful, elegant wedding, probably on the beach, and it won’t rain, but if it does it will be funny; the men will hold up big umbrellas and the women will giggle and run in their high heels. She’ll only have one glass of champagne because she’s pregnant. And then the baby will be born, and everyone will gather in the hospital room, with flowers and jokes and cameras. Then they’ll have another baby, the opposite sex of the first one. They’ll have dinner parties with friends and such
busy
weekends, and they’ll brush away sentimental tears at their children’s concerts, and when the kids are older they’ll travel and take up hobbies and eventually move into a friendly retirement village, and when they die their children and grandchildren will gather around and mourn them.

Who would mourn me if I died today? My colleagues? I think they’d get over it pretty fast and then they’d be fighting for my office. Friends? In the space of a few years I’ve got myself crossed off everyone’s Christmas card list. It was my fault. I couldn’t be bothered. I never returned their calls or answered their e-mails. I was too busy following Patrick. It’s quite a time-consuming hobby. My hairdresser seems fond of me, but who would tell her that I’d died? She’d just think I’d left her for another hairdresser. Which I would never do. Maybe I should leave a note.
In the event of my death please let my hairdresser know.

There will be no grief or pain for the hypnotist and her husband, and if
there is, it will always pass. They’ll support each other until they’re over it. The doctor will give them prescriptions to fix the pain.

It’s strange, but now that this has happened I find I can no longer imagine getting back together with Patrick. Something has changed. He never proposed to me. We never even talked about it. He’d already had the big white wedding with Colleen. I spent ages looking through their huge leather-bound rectangle of a photo album, staring at Colleen and her big white poufy-sleeved dress, wondering what she would have thought of me.

One morning when we were lying in bed, Patrick said, out of the blue, “I’m keeping you forever.”

And that was all I needed. That was my romantic proposal and engagement ring and wedding ceremony and honeymoon all in one. As far as I was concerned, we were married from that moment.

But obviously not as far as Patrick was concerned.

Ellen is the sort of woman who makes a man feel the urge to go down on one knee and propose, whereas I am not.

When I walked over to them at that picnic table, I felt like some sort of hideous half-human creature. I could smell my own ugliness.

I accept it. It’s fine. They will be forever on the inside, and I will forever be on the outside.

But I’ll make sure they always know I’m still there, looking in, peering through the glass, tapping on the window. I will never go away.

“She’ll never go away,” said Patrick. “If you marry me, you’ll have to accept that she’s part of the package. My son. My mum. My dad. My brother. My stalker.”

“Yes,” said Ellen. “I understand.”

“I hope it’s a girl,” said Patrick. “The baby. I hope it’s a little girl. I’d love a beautiful little girl. Would you like a little baby girl?”

“Sure,” said Ellen.

Patrick wasn’t drunk, but his words were softening around the edges. They were sitting on the balcony of their hotel room, and he was drinking the rest of the champagne.

It appeared they were engaged. Ellen was wearing the ring on her left hand. It kept catching her eye. She had said yes.

Patrick was thrilled about the baby. Ecstatic, even. When the news of her pregnancy had finally sunk in, he’d pulled her into his arms and held her like she was something precious. “A baby,” he murmured. “Bloody hell. Who cares about anything else? We’re having a
baby
.”

Everything was perfect, except that Saskia’s face seemed to be permanently floating on the peripheral of Ellen’s vision, like the shocking memory of a bad car accident: the crunch of metal, the flinging back of the head. She kept replaying that moment when Saskia walked toward them: the wide, friendly smile, the eyes made blank by her dark sunglasses.

Ellen’s righteous fury had abated, and now she felt strangely spent, empty of feeling, as though she really had been in some sort of traumatic accident.

“It’s weird, but I didn’t feel as angry as I usually do when Saskia turned up today,” said Patrick. “I just felt this calmness. A sort of acceptance.”

So her posthypnotic suggestion had worked a treat. Ellen felt both professional pride and professional guilt. She said nothing. Her back ached. She wriggled around in her chair, trying to get comfortable, and fiddled with the ring.

“Is it too tight?” asked Patrick, watching her. “We can change the size.”

“It’s perfect,” said Ellen. “I’m just not used to wearing rings.”

Patrick emptied the rest of the champagne into his glass and settled back into his chair, stretching his legs out and entwining his toes around the bars of the balcony fence.

“Yes. A beautiful blond-haired little girl who looks just like you,” he said happily, looking out at the moonlit night.

“Except I don’t have blond hair.” Ellen laughed.

“Of course you don’t.” Patrick rolled his eyes at his own stupidity and reached out to lightly touch his hand against Ellen’s hair. “I think I was imagining her looking like Jack.”

Ellen thought of the photo she’d seen at his parents’ place of Colleen sitting on the hospital bed holding Jack. Her hair, she remembered, was long, wavy and very blond.

When they got back to Sydney, they told all and sundry about the engagement, and just their closest friends and family about the—
shhhh
—pregnancy.

People seemed surprisingly happy for them. They got tears in their eyes. They sent flowers and cards. They turned up with bottles of champagne and flamboyant hugs.

“Why do you find it surprising?” asked Patrick.

“I don’t know,” said Ellen. “I guess I didn’t think anyone would care that much, at our age.”

“They’re just happy to hear some good news for a change,” said Patrick. “People love happy endings.”

For some reason Ellen didn’t really like all the fuss and good cheer. She preferred to be the observer rather than the focus of everyone’s attention. All the questions—“When are you due?” “When will the wedding be?” “Where will you live?”—made her jittery, because they hadn’t worked out the answers yet. Also, it worried her that she would somehow let people down now.

There hadn’t been any tears in her mother’s violet eyes when she heard about the engagement, just a lift of her eyebrows before she quickly swept on her most gracious persona, the one where she appeared to channel the queen, and completely seduced Patrick with her well-mannered charm—“I really couldn’t be more thrilled”—and a check for five thousand dollars.

Privately she said to Ellen, “He doesn’t need to marry you just because you’re pregnant! You’ve known the man for all of five minutes!”

“He asked me before he knew I was pregnant,” said Ellen. “And I know everything I need to know about him.”

“So you think,” said Anne under her breath, and Ellen pretended not to hear. She took a deep breath and rose above it.

It was hard to tell exactly what Julia thought about the news. She screamed and hugged Ellen when she heard about the engagement, and said all the right gushy, girly things about the ring, but a fleeting shadow crossed her lovely face when she heard about the pregnancy.