I opened the car door and got out all hunched over, like an old lady. The kookaburras laughed like crazy.

Chapter 7

Remember …

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

You can’t get stuck in hypnosis.

You are always in control. You can stop at any time.

Hypnosis is a natural state of mind.

Help yourself to the chocolates!

—Laminated card stuck to Ellen O’Farrell’s office wall

Ellen woke to the feel of Patrick’s fingertip running slowly, delicately up the length of her arm.

The fingertip on the arm was always his opening move.

Jon used to kiss the back of her neck. Tiny butterfly kisses.

Edward would lick her earlobe, enthusiastically and wetly, which tickled unbearably. He mistook her shrieks and convulsions for crazy sexual excitement and she never got around to clearing up the misunderstanding.

Andy would whisper in her ear, his breath hot and irritating, “You feel like … ?” (“What?” she always wanted to say. “I feel like what? Finish the sentence!”)

She wondered if Jon was kissing the back of someone’s neck right now, and if Edward was licking an earlobe and Andy was whispering his unfinished question.

Why are you thinking about ex-lovers?

With her eyes still closed, she rolled toward Patrick to give him easier access to her arm. She liked the fingertip thing. She loved the fingertip thing.

She’d loved Jon’s butterfly kisses too.

So what? Concentrate on the fingertip.

Presumably, Patrick had used the same techniques on Saskia, in this very same bed, possibly on these very same sheets.

Which was interesting, but not at all relevant.

Once you’d perfected your sexual moves you didn’t tend to change them. She herself still kissed exactly the same way that boy in the caravan park had taught her to kiss when she was fifteen. He tasted of beer. Disgusting and delicious. What was that boy’s name? Chris? Craig? Something like that.

Patrick tugged at her nightie. “Let’s get this off.”

She wanted to be in bed with Patrick right now; there was nowhere else she wanted to be. On the other hand, it didn’t especially please her, the idea of Jon kissing someone else’s neck.

She helped Patrick pull the nightie off over her head.

She wondered what Saskia was doing right now. Where did she go last night, after she lost them at the lights? Did she go home and look at old photos of herself and Patrick? Did she cry?

Was Ellen responsible for another woman’s pain? Should she give him back? Of course, she had no intention of giving him back. He didn’t want Saskia. He wanted Ellen.

This was the way the world worked. Relationships ended. If they didn’t, she’d still be with the beery-breathed boy in the caravan park.

Julia was right. Saskia needed to be a grown-up and move on.

But, on the other hand, wasn’t there something noble about Saskia’s refusal to let go? She was crazy with passion. Ellen had never let passion make her do anything crazy.

“What are you thinking about?”

Patrick was up on his elbow, looking down at her, smiling. He brushed back her hair from her forehead.

“Saskia,” she answered honestly, without thinking.

Patrick retracted his hand. “I cannot get away from that woman, can I?”

“I’m sorry,” said Ellen. She went to pull him back toward her, but his lips had compressed into a thin line and he looked like a grumpy schoolteacher who has just about had it up to here with you kids.

He said, “Now the bitch is in bed with us.”

He got out of bed and walked into the en suite bathroom, closing the door behind him unnecessarily hard.

Ellen settled herself back on her pillow and gazed up at the slowly whirling ceiling fan. (Around and around and around. She saved it up as a good image for an induction. “Imagine you’re watching a ceiling fan.”)

Look, Saskia. You stopped us from having sex. He’s angry with me because of you.

Every time she was with Patrick, part of her was imagining how Saskia would react if she was there, watching. It was like she was performing in her own reality TV show with an audience of just one. If Patrick knew how much time she was devoting to thinking about Saskia, he’d be furious.

Outside the window, the kookaburras burbled with laughter.

If you stare at someone for long enough from behind, they will sense your gaze and turn around. They don’t actually see you, but they feel something different in the atmosphere.

That’s why I’ve always believed that if I thought about Patrick for long enough and hard enough, he would sense it. If someone can feel a gaze across a room, then shouldn’t they be able to sense a torrent of true emotion, a tsunami of feeling, from across a handful of suburbs?

I imagine my feelings like a dense cloud, floating above the streets of Sydney, and one day Patrick is standing in the shower (he likes his showers long and hot, steam billowing) with the window open and all of a sudden he senses it—my love—he’s breathing in the cloud of my feelings, and he turns off the taps and thinks, “Saskia.”

And while he’s drying himself he thinks, “I made a mistake.”

And then, before he even gets dressed, he calls me. And everything is right again.

People get back together. It happens all the time. Why shouldn’t it happen to us?

Ellen could hear the sound of Patrick’s shower running.

She must have upset him; he’d been looking forward to this morning. Jack had stayed with his grandparents, and Patrick wasn’t picking him up until they went there tonight for dinner. He’d talked about how they would sleep in till late this morning, and eat breakfast and read the papers in bed. He’d bought croissants especially. Now she’d ruined his morning.

Was it any wonder that the poor man didn’t want to hear his stalker’s name mentioned when he was trying to make love to Ellen?

Overcome with remorse, she threw back the covers.

Without putting her nightie back on, she got out of bed and tried the bathroom door. It wasn’t locked. The shower was pounding. There was so much steam she could hardly see.

“Are you going to join me?” said Patrick from the shower. He didn’t sound like an angry schoolteacher anymore.

She pulled back the screen.

A few minutes later her legs were locked around Patrick’s waist and she wasn’t thinking about Saskia at all.