Hypnotized

I never believed such beauty ever really existed.

22

Olivia

It’s true that I had much too much to drink, but I felt really happy. I couldn’t remember ever being so happy. I looked up into Marlow’s face and I could hardly believe I had found such a perfectly gorgeous man. I felt so lucky and so blessed. I leaned on Marlow, his body warm and sheltering as an ancient oak, as we waited to get our coats. Outside, he stopped and pulled my collar up. And I looked up at him and the rest of the world just fell away. It was just him and me. There was so much I didn’t know about him. The world was our oyster.

In the taxi, on the way to his flat, I tried to keep it light.

‘I saw a documentary yesterday about a hypnotist,’ I told him.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yes, this hypnotist had been asked to cure a football team of their smoking habit. All he did was touch their foreheads and they were dropping on the ground like flies. Minutes later they woke up cured of all need to smoke. And when he lit a cigarette and gave it to them they were physically sick from it.’ I paused. ‘The hypnotist looked suspiciously like you.’

He grinned. ‘Yeah, that was me.’

‘How come you can’t do that with me then?’

‘That’s TV for you—high impact editing. It took me hours to get those guys down.’

I touched his hand. ‘I hardly know anything about you.’

He grasped my hand firmly. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘Do you have family?’

‘Yes, I still have family back home. I just don’t see them anymore.’

‘Why?’

He sighed. ‘It was a mistake on my part to cut them off. I shouldn’t have. They were just trying to help. Everybody was trying to help. They just didn’t know how to.’

‘You can always make up.’

He grasped my hand tightly. ‘I will. I see now how wrong I was. I was in pain so I struck out at those that were closest to me.’

I blinked. Just as he had spoken I’d had a flashback. I looked at him in wonder. ‘I just remembered something.’

He looked worried. ‘What?’

‘I remembered that I had a pet peacock called Andrew. He used to fly up to my room and peck on the lead windows and when he saw that I was awake he used to fly back down and wait for me to come downstairs. And we would walk in the garden, my arm around his neck.’ I turned back to him and laughed. I felt excited about that memory. It was the first clear memory I had had since leaving the hospital.

I remembered Dr. Greenhalgh saying, ‘Memories are never truly gone. They prowl waiting for a gap in the mind’s door. When the gap is found they leap out from the unknown into the known.’

‘Do you think my memories are returning?’ I asked Marlow.

‘Maybe,’ he said, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.

‘You don’t sound happy about it.’

‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up. They could never return, Olivia.’

When we got to his place, he disappeared into the bathroom and I took a tiny bottle out of my purse and put it on the dining table. Then I took all my clothes off and, sitting on the table, waited for him.

I had a surprise for Dr. Kane.

Marlow