I haven’t felt like this about any of the other girls Patrick has dated.

The thing about Ellen—

It makes me feel good that I can use her name.

I used it a lot at our last session. “Thanks, Ellen.” “See you next week, Ellen.” Each time I use her name it’s like I’m slapping Patrick across his self-satisfied face.

Don’t think you’ve moved on, boy. Making a new life that has nothing to do with me. I’m still here. I’m tossing her name about. I’ve been in her house. I’ve used her bathroom. I know what brand deodorant and tampons she uses. She’s nothing special.

Except maybe she is. She might even be too good for you, buddy. She might be out of your league. Out of our league.

The thing about Ellen is that it seems like she is exactly the same person on the outside as she is on the inside. That’s the impression she gives anyway, as if she is without artifice or affectation, as if she doesn’t have to filter every word that comes out of her mouth to make sure it gives the impression she wants to give.

Of course, she must have some sort of filter. Everyone has a filter. It’s just that her filter is something quick and simple that carefully discards anything that might accidentally offend anyone.

Whereas my filter is a labyrinth of pipes and funnels and sieves that converts everything I think into something acceptable to say, depending on the situation and the person and what I’m trying to prove at that particular moment.

She has nothing to prove. She really believes all that “power of the mind” crap. She’s passionate about it. It’s like her religion.

She comes across as a bit sanctimonious at first but I think she is actually a genuinely good person—in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She wishes only good for the world. Whereas you and I, Patrick, we’re sort of flawed. We don’t wish everyone well, do we?

I feel like such a fake when I’m with her, not just for the obvious reasons. If I met her as my true self, I would still be aware of that difference between us.

I can understand why you think you might love her, Patrick. I do understand. I love her a little bit too.

It’s just that on our first Christmas Eve together you and I fell asleep flat on our backs, like sunbakers; we were holding hands with the taste of raspberries in our mouths from that wonderful liqueur Stinky gave us, and the ceiling fan whirled above us, and the room seemed to rock, just gently, and I remember thinking it was like we were two children on a raft, floating down a magical river.

That night happened. I don’t care how sweet or pure-hearted Ellen is, that night happened. To us.

When she didn’t even exist.

Remember how we both had a crush on Cameron Diaz?

Well, that’s how it should be with Ellen. We should have met her at a dinner party, and on the way home we could have talked about how lovely she was, and how interesting and weird all that hypnosis stuff was, and by the time we got home we should have forgotten all about her.

She’s extremely nice, but she’s like Cameron Diaz, Patrick. She’s not meant to be a real person in our lives. She’s nothing to do with us.

Ellen and Patrick were driving to her mother’s place. Patrick was behind the wheel. He was the sort of man who automatically assumed it was his job to drive, which was fine with Ellen, who was a nervy driver. (She remembered how Jon always carefully, correctly shared the driving. “Your turn,” he’d say, tossing her the keys, and then he’d sigh and snort and criticize her driving the whole way.)

“So your mother never met anyone else after your dad,” said Patrick. “Jesus. This traffic is out of control.” He banged his foot on the brake and the car jerked. “Sorry.”

He was clearly nervous. It was such a pity that Ellen couldn’t reassure him by saying something like, “Oh, my mother is going to adore you!”

Her mother probably wouldn’t adore him. Out of all of Ellen’s past relationships, Anne had liked Jon the best, with his witty, caustic remarks. Of course she had. Jon was the one who had done the most damage to Ellen’s self-esteem, the one she’d loved who hadn’t really loved her back.

If only she had one of those sweet, slightly plump, chatty mothers who were sort of vague about politics and business and anything outside the domestic realm. If only she had a gray-haired, bespectacled father who would warmly shake Patrick’s hand and ask him man-to-man questions about surveying, while the sweet mother fussed about, trying to get the “fellows” to take a second piece of cheesecake.

It wasn’t going to be like that at all.

“Mum has had a few long-term relationships over the years,” she told Patrick. “But not for a while now.”

“And your dad is just … not in the picture?”

“Never anywhere near the picture,” said Ellen. She paused, aware of a slight flash of irritation. “Like I said.”

She had told him her family history a few weeks after they started dating. She had perfected the telling of the story over the years, so that it was the ideal party piece or dinner party anecdote, unusual and interesting and intimate, just the right length, with no embarrassing emotion likely to cause guests to shift uneasily in their seats.

She always started the same way. “My mother was a woman ahead of her time.” Then she would explain that early on the morning of the first of January 1971 the intensely pragmatic Doctor Anne O’Farrell made a New Year’s resolution to become a single mother. She was a successful, independent woman in her thirties and she didn’t especially want to be married, but she did (oddly) want a baby. With the help of her two closest female friends, she made a list of potential candidates to father her child, along with their positive and negative attributes: their education levels, their medical histories and their personality traits.

Anne had kept these lists and given them to Ellen when she was a teenager. Her “father” was a list of bullet points in her mother’s scrawly handwriting with the figure “85%” circled next to it. The highest score by ten percent.

Her father’s positive attributes included “postgraduate education level” (he was a surgeon; Anne had met him at the university), “good teeth,” “small ears” (her mother abhorred large, flappy ears), “excellent skin,” “no family history of heart disease, diabetes or respiratory problems” and “good social skills.”