The Hypnotist's Love Story (54 page)

Then they left, their blue hats under their arms, their guns in their holsters. My heart was still hammering three hours later.

“Knitting is how I met Lance,” said Kate. “He sat next to me on a bus and he said, ‘What are you knitting?’”

“Great pickup line.”

“I know. So creative,” said Kate. “What about you? You’re single, right?”

I said, “I haven’t
been in a relationship for three years, but I guess I haven’t really felt single for that time.”

“What do you mean?” Kate glanced up. Her needles kept moving.

I wasn’t going to say anything, I barely knew the girl. I had the right to remain silent, but all of a sudden the words came pouring, tumbling out.

He’s early, thought Ellen, as she went to the door.

Her father was coming to take her out. They were going, bizarrely, to some event in Parramatta called the Festival of the Olive.

It was David’s idea. “Might be interesting,” he’d said when he rang to suggest it. “It’s at Elizabeth Farm. Don’t know if you’ve been there. It’s Australia’s oldest surviving European dwelling.” He was obviously reading aloud from something. He cleared his throat. “Sounds like a bit of fun. Something different.”

She wished she could stop comparing her meetings with her father to Internet dating (it was so inappropriate), but she couldn’t help being reminded of a certain type of needy man, one who was overly eager to impress and tried too hard to think of “different, interesting” dates.

It broke her heart a little to think of her father looking up “events” on the Internet, searching for something that would appeal to his thirty-five-year-old daughter, in the same way that he probably would have taken her off to an amusement park and bought her a stuffed toy if they’d met thirty years earlier. “We don’t need to do anything, we can just talk,” she wanted to say to him, but actually, she wasn’t sure what they would talk about. Damn her mother to hell.

She opened the door with a fond, daughterly smile on her face, to be greeted by a woman wearing oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes.

“Quick,” said the woman. “Let me in.”

“Sorry?”

The woman tipped her glasses down to reveal familiar round blue eyes. “Sorry to be so dramatic. It’s me, Rosie. I’ve had photographers chasing me all day.”

Ellen opened the screen door. She hadn’t heard anything from Ian Roman since his visit two weeks earlier or from the journalist, and she’d given up leaving messages for Rosie.

“Why are there photographers chasing you?” asked Ellen.

“You haven’t seen today’s paper?” Rosie pulled off her cap and sunglasses. She looked tanned and pretty, happier than Ellen had ever seen her.

“No,” said Ellen. Her heart rate picked up. Mary-Kate had said the newspaper story had been dropped, but Ellen still felt sick each time she turned the pages of a newspaper, imagining how it would feel to be confronted by her own face and name under some horrible headline. She had a newfound empathy for anyone who had ever borne the brunt of bad press. It was funny how she’d always thought she had ample supplies of empathy; it turned out that to be truly empathetic she had to experience it.

Rosie pulled out a tabloid paper from her bag, folded in half. She held it up and tapped a finger on the front page.

It was a black-and-white photo of Ian Roman with a tall, leggy woman leaving what looked like a hotel lobby. The implication was obvious even without the headline, which read: “Roman Is Roaming!”

Ellen read the first paragraph:

High-profile media magnate Ian Roman was married only three months ago, but the honeymoon appears to be well and truly over.

“
Ian is having an affair with some supermodel,” said Rosie. “They need a photo of me looking heartbroken and dowdy.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Ellen.

“It’s fine,” said Rosie dismissively. “He’s just saving face. He thought I was about to break up with him, so he wanted to get in first. He would have tipped off the photographers. But listen. Ian told me he visited you.”

“I did have the pleasure of his company,” said Ellen in her mother’s dry,
cool voice. It came in useful sometimes. She led Rosie into the living room. “Tea? Coffee? Cold drink?”

“No, no, I’m not staying. I’m sorry for turning up out of the blue.” Rosie sat down in front of Ellen on her grandfather’s leather chair. Her legs were so short the tips of her ballet shoes only just reached the floor. She leaned forward, her hands clasped together as if begging for forgiveness. “I just wanted to talk to you face-to-face and apologize for what I’ve put you through. I’ve been away, you see, and I didn’t take my mobile with me. I only just got your messages this morning and I drove straight here.”

Ellen winced as she remembered that awful day. “I probably sounded hysterical—”

“Oh, God, you had reason! I can just imagine the things he said. He acts like, I don’t know, Rambo, or Tony Soprano.”

“He was quite … intimidating. He said he was going to ‘bring me down.’”

“What a jerk.” Rosie took some gum out of her bag, unwrapped it and began chewing rapidly. She pointed at her mouth. “Nicotine gum. I’m finally off the cigarettes.”

“Well, as your husband made clear, I wasn’t much help there.”

“Are you kidding? I would recommend you to anyone!” Rosie chewed vigorously and looked off into the distance, presumably trying to think of a good reason as to why she’d recommend Ellen.

“So Ian overheard you talking to your sister about me,” prompted Ellen.

“I had no idea.” Rosie leaned back; now her feet didn’t reach the floor. “I would have thought eavesdropping on my trivial conversations was beneath him. And he got it wrong, of course. I was just telling my sister how I’d
asked
you to hypnotize me into falling in love with him, and she was telling me I was an idiot.

“Anyway, then she convinced me to go and join her on a family holiday in Queensland. It was wonderful. Just your average beach holiday, building sandcastles with my nieces. Prawn sandwiches. Ian would have hated it. It
just sort of confirmed everything that is different between us. I’m just so … average.”

“Nobody is average,” said Ellen automatically.

“I am,” said Rosie. “I’m extremely average. I don’t know why he even showed an interest in a hobbit like me. I’m not his type. That supermodel in the paper. That’s his type. She’ll look good on his yacht.”

“I don’t know, Rosie,” said Ellen. “I think he really loved you. That’s why he was so angry.”

“No,” said Rosie. “It was just his pride. Anyway, it’s over. It was a big mistake on both our parts. I never really loved him. You know that. You helped me work that out.”

“I think,” said Ellen, “that you never even let yourself love him, or like him, or even know him at all because you were so busy wondering why he chose you. I think you were blinded by the Ian Roman image. The money. The power. His big tycoon act. He might love an average beach holiday.”

Rosie blinked. Chewed some more.

“He chose you,” said Ellen. “A man in his position could have any sort of trophy wife. He didn’t choose a supermodel, he chose you.”

She was trying to say:
The fact that he chose someone ordinary-looking like you means that he saw something extraordinary in you, and
that
means maybe there is more to him than you think.

She thought of Patrick’s words: You think love is black and white. All women think that.

Rosie frowned. Something flickered in her eyes. She looked down at her hands and kicked her legs. Then Ellen saw her face close down as she made her decision. No. She lacked the self-esteem or the courage or the something; her marriage to Ian Roman died in that instant.

“Whatever,” said Rosie. “He’s cheated on me now anyway. We’re done. Don’t worry about it. I’m not. As I said, I came here to apologize and to let you know that he won’t be coming after you. I told him that if I ever saw anything negative about you in the papers, I’d do a tell-all interview about
my marriage to Ian Roman and that I could probably come up with some really interesting sexual fetishe she’d never live down. You’re safe.”

“Thank you,” said Ellen.

“He doesn’t have any strange sexual fetishes, by the way,” said Rosie, as she stood and picked up her bag. “Actually, the sex was quite good.”

It was illogical that Ellen felt sad about the end of this marriage. Rosie didn’t love Ian Roman, and the horrible Ian Roman was probably out on his yacht right now, drinking champagne with his supermodel. Except that maybe Rosie and Ian could have been happy together if it wasn’t for their pride.

Rosie held out her hand. She smiled. She really did have a very pretty smile. “Back to my average life.”

As Rosie was leaving, Ellen’s father was coming down the footpath. He stopped to hold the gate open for her.

“Patient?” he said, as Ellen ushered him in.

“Client,” Ellen corrected him. “We don’t call them patients.” She watched Rosie walking off, and said, “With hindsight I would have treated her completely differently.”

“Hindsight,” said her father. “It’s always just a fraction too late.”

“Well,” said Kate. She paused, looked around the room for inspiration. Her eyes didn’t meet mine. “Holy shit.”

She hadn’t said a word the whole time I’d been talking. She just kept knitting, nodding her head occasionally and sometimes lifting her eyebrows. I had no idea what she was thinking. I told her everything that had happened and everything I’d done. I didn’t try to mitigate myself in any way. If only I’d had a terrible childhood, I could have put it down to that, but I couldn’t actually blame anyone or anything. My guilt, I told her, was absolute.

“You didn’t know you were visiting a crazy person,” I said at last.

It had felt so good telling her. I couldn’t stop. It was like I was tearing
away at a horrible scab with my fingernails, but now I’d done it, and I was sitting in front of her, red-raw and exposed, I was filled with regret and a terrible sense of loss. I’d really liked her. We could have been friends. Now I’d ruined everything.

“Oh, well,” said Kate. “I’ve done some pretty crazy things.”

“Really?”

Kate put her head to one side, considered. “Well, no, not really. Not compared to that. I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Thank you.”

She kept knitting.

“I bet you’re a Scorpio, hey?” she said without looking up.

“Well, yes, actually, but I don’t—”

“You don’t believe in astrology. Scorpios never do. But anyway, you’re very passionate, you Scorpios. All brooding and mysterious. I always wished I was a Scorpio. Or a Leo. I’m a Libra. We’re indecisive.” She kept knitting. “I don’t really believe in any of it either.”

She unwound some wool around her wrist. “You must have really loved him,” she said. “And the little boy.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I guess if I really loved them I should have ‘set them free,’ or whatever that stupid line is. Loving them is no excuse.”

Ever since that night I kept seeing a recurring image of Patrick’s face when he saw me standing at the end of his bed. It wasn’t just that there was someone standing there, it was that it was
me. I was his nightmare.
I’d made myself his nightmare.

“You know what I think you should do?” said Kate.

“You think I should get counseling,” I said tiredly. She and the hypnotist were right, of course. “Professional help” was required.

“I guess, if you want,” said Kate. “But I was just going to say, I think you should stop it.”

“Stop it.”

“Yes, that’s my extremely wise advice. Stop it.”

“Just … stop it.”

Kate began to giggle. “That’s what I’d say if I was your therapist. Saskia, just
stop it
. Take up knitting instead.”

I picked up my needles again. Kate smiled. “That’s it. See, you’re cured. That’ll be two hundred dollars please.”

It seemed that the universe had seen fit to send me a brand-new friend. I wondered if my mother had arranged it. I imagined her in the afterlife, dancing with my father in a starry ballroom. Maybe they’d been talking about me, shaking their heads at my shocking behavior. Maybe after Jack and I went crashing down the stairs, my Mum said, “I
told
you she wasn’t going to grow out it! What she needs is a brand-new friend.” Then she’d had an inspiration: “I know! A knitter! I always wanted her to learn to knit.” And she’d rushed off to fill out the appropriate paperwork.